How much money can a fundraising stall make?
School fayres and charity days run on the same arithmetic wherever you go: a stall that costs a few hundred pounds to hire, charges a couple of quid a go, and pays out small prizes to the people who win. Get the sums right and one stall can clear a few hundred pounds for the cause in a Saturday afternoon. That sums up the thinking behind the side stall range here at DB Entertainment, and it is why the DIY Hook A Duck is the unit we hire out most often for fetes in Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster.
The DIY Hook A Duck makes a tidy worked example. Hire is from £295, and we can supply good-quality toy prizes at £1.75 + VAT each, call it £2.10. A £3 charge per go is roughly what most people settle on, so a hundred goes brings in £300, and if a third of those players win a toy the prizes have cost another £70 or so on top. That makes the duck pond a stall for a busy field, a multi-day fundraiser or a full weekend, where the volume of goes does the work, and it is why committees on tighter sums usually start with the £95 hoopla or the tombola drum at £25 and bring the bigger stalls in once the raffle money is counted. Nobody runs the pond with a prize on every go, either: most stalls pay out on winning goes only, or stock two prize tiers so the cheap toys go out steadily and the better ones stay rare.
Which fete stalls raise the most?
The ones with a short queue and a quick cycle time. The Hook A Duck works because a go lasts twenty seconds and the pond can be seen from across the field. The Tin Can Alley travels in a road case that opens up into a striped backboard reading "All Off The Board To Win": three balls to knock all eight numbered cans off, and no power needed, so it can sit on a slope, a playground or a village hall floor. The Coconut Shy is the one that pulls the adults in, with real coconuts on posts and a striped pop-up gazebo carrying the stall; we have run it on Doncaster Scouts weekends and at town-centre events as well as school fetes. Hoopla is the quiet earner of the range: from £95, fully manual, and the cheapest way to put a proper traditional game on the grass.
For bigger fundraisers there is more to pick from. The prize wheel can be printed with your own segments, and the odds can be weighted so the star prizes stay rare while the small ones come up often enough to keep a queue. We have run it at freshers fairs and corporate fun days where a company is raising money for a nominated charity. If you would rather see the whole range in one place, the side games list covers everything from buzz wires to garden games.
Do you need to staff a fete stall?
Not necessarily. DIY means you run it: the hire includes the trough, ten ducks with rings on their heads, the fishing rods and the table the pond sits on, and a small pump keeps the water moving. Plenty of PTAs and charity committees prefer to keep the stall in the hands of their own volunteers, and the DIY version exists for that reason. If the rota is stretched, the attended Hook A Duck is the same price with one of our staff included, so somebody else deals with the float and the queue. The no-power games (hoopla, cans, coconuts) also mean you are not paying for a generator on top of the stall.
Where should the stall go?
Placement decides most of it. A hoopla tucked round the back of the burger van will cover its £95 and not much more; the stalls that take money sit where the queue for the bouncy castle has to walk past them, near the gate or along the path between the tea tent and the main attraction. It is worth a walk of the field before you commit to a spot on the plan.
One thing to know about the Hook A Duck before you book it: the trough holds water, so it needs a flat, stable base. It is fine indoors on hard flooring, outdoors on grass or hard standing, and it will not go on wood chip or a mixed surface where the water can slop about. If you are planning a fayre, a school fun day or a charity fundraiser in Barnsley, Worksop or anywhere across the rest of the UK, call 0114 345 0135 and we will talk through which stalls suit your field. We hold a five-star Google rating on 200-plus reviews, most of them from days out like this.
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