We hosted our first Harvest hoedown for our school community and we had a huge turnout! Almost 250 people attended. We had a DJ planing family friendly tunes, a pumpkin cake walk, a craft area, face painting, and a chili cook off contest with some teachers. We also had a free show by a local clogging group. We made $700 in 2 hours and the goal was not to raise funds but have fun! Everyone loved it.
Hi everyone!
This thread has so many great ideas for family night event ideas, thought it would be helpful to bump it up in case anyone is looking for something new!
I think there is some misinformation going on about movie nights.
First of all you can not just show a movie - you must have a movie license to do so. Watching a movie at school is not like watching a movie at home - you are making a public performance so you must get a license to do so. Schools have some freedom to show movies without having a license - but according to the laws you must have a curriculum tied to the use of the movie - which generally does not apply during just a movie night. For example, if a teacher is reading the book "Winn Dixie" and then shows the movie - that is part of a curriculum.
Another mistruth is that you cannot charge for the movie. According to the people we have our movie license with you can charge, but you just cannot make more money that the cost of the license. For example - a one time fee to show one movie is $75, therefore I can make $75 from admission but no more than that. We have purchased a yearly license for $350. So we can charge admission but we can never ever make more than $350 from admission. if you are charging an admission price, make it very low so that you don't go over that amount and then make the bulk of your money from concessions.