Virtual Balloon Race for your PTA.
Meet Sarah. Sarah volunteers for the PTA and wants to raise some cash to buy a new friendship bench. Sarah is lost for ideas, everybody is stuck at home and can’t come out.
This makes Sarah sad.
Then somebody tells Sarah about the Virtual Balloon Race, apparently it costs very little to setup and everybody can join in and buy balloons from home. Sarah starts thinking she might become the hero of the PTA – this makes Sarah feel better.
Sarah tells the other PTA members about the race and as it’s only £39 they also think it’s a fantastic eco friendly money making bonanza.
Sarah is promoted to hero of the PTA…. she might be able to buy the friendship bench she’s always wanted. Fingers crossed this thing works.
The other PTA members agree to take the risk so Sarah ventures to balloonrace.com, fills in a form and pays £39 to set up her page – www.balloonrace.com/SarahsPTA
The page is blank so Sarah adds some details about the Friendship bench and offers Amazon vouchers for 1st, 2nd & 3rd prizes – the balloon that travels the furthest wins. Sarah adds some information about the PTA and how they’re missing everybody at home.
She sets a start & finish date and enters the PTA Paypal details into the high tech admin area and decides on a price of £3 per balloon (She could have sold the balloons by ParentPay or cash but goes for the Paypal option). Sarah even adds her own background for the balloons to fly over.
The School sends out their weekly email to all the parents and includes a link to the balloon race page.
Sarah is very nervous – this could be humiliating if nobody responds and she will go from hero to zero.
Then….. one day when Sarah is walking her dog, her phone goes “PING”, she looks at it…. It’s Paypal and a £3 sale.
Over the next 4 days Sarah has to mute the Paypal app as it’s “PINGING” all day and all night….. it PINGS 137 times.
Sarah has a Paypal balance of £345.57 after Paypal has taken its charges. When she takes off the Amazon vouchers and the original £39 balloon race fee she has raised a big chunk of cash towards her dream friendship bench.
Before the race starts Sarah gets a bad email that makes her sad. Somebody wanted a Blue balloon and accidentally purchased a Red balloon and miss spelt their Sons name. Fortunately Sarah still has the password to the race admin, she logs in, changes the balloon colour, corrects the spelling…. this PTA person is a tech wizkid.
On the race day Sarah is back to being afraid, what happens if she’s done something wrong and the virtual balloons flop.
The balloons are due to set off at 12 midday. At 12.15pm Sarah checks her phone and WOW – all the balloons have moved…. And Jonny Sidebottom is leading….. this crazy scheme might actually work.
Children at the school (and at home) visit the race page and follow their balloons flying across the island. They like to read the funny messages their friends have added.
On the final day all the balloons stop moving and the Leaderboard turns Red. The winners are clearly shown and everybody can search to see where they’ve finished.
If it wasn’t for lockdown Sarah would have been carried across the playground on everybody’s shoulders – a true hero and remembered for years to come whenever somebody sat on her Friendship bench.
Sarah & her dog (Betty) lived happily ever after.