Belmont State School

“So, here at Belmont State School we have a great student council, and the student council made up of children, wanted to get some water bubblers.

They bought their problem to the P&C because they had a few little fundraising ideas themselves, but water bubbles being $22,000, we needed to come up with an idea that was going to raises a lot of cash and quite quickly. That’s because we wanted the student council which is mainly made up of year sixes to see the results of their ideas.

We weren't having a fete till next year, so we decided to look at a few other options. Sausage sizzles on average only make a few thousand, so we looked at a fun run and we set ourselves a few targets. We know we had 900 students, so if everybody got involved, if everybody fundraised, we could reach the target.

The students were involved, the teachers were involved, and the parents became involved. The parents came to watch the kids doing the fun run, obviously a lot of parents helped their children fundraise.

The prizes were a brilliant incentive for the kids to actually get on board and raise money.

The online fundraising was absolutely brilliant because these days a lot of kids have grandparents overseas or aunts and uncles overseas. So, the online fundraising actually allowed those families overseas to participate in helping out their grandchild’s school.

So, for instance my daughter got her grandparents involved and for the first time they were able to donate from England and help raise money for the school. So, online fundraising was a brilliant bonus for choosing the School Fun Run.

On the (Fun Run) day it all ran smoothly. It was only an afternoon, so it was probably two hours out of everybody's time from lunchtime to 3 o'clock. So, it wasn't like a carnival (fete) where you're setting up for months and months ahead.

The effort we put into it, versus that the reward we got out of it, made it just stack up a lot better than other options that we could come up with, and certainly a lot better than the carnival (fete) option.

Some advice I'd give to anybody thinking of running a fun run is to promote it. Get everybody involved… the teachers, the students, the parents… because the more people you get involved the more money you'll raise and the more fun the kids will have.

If you're thinking about doing a fun run, all I can say is do it! It's easy, it's uncomplicated and once you've done one, you'll be just planning the date for your next year's fun run.”