Funding and fundraising

Creative thinking about funding opportunities can pay dividends! One school seeking to buy water bottles for its pupils used some of its Standards Fund allocation for the purchase. (The Standards Fund is a programme of specific grants aiming to enable schools to achieve improvements in education standards.) The headteacher was satisfied that properly hydrated pupils would be better able to learn more effectively, which would impact on their educational achievement, and that this was an appropriate use of the Fund. The Healthy Living Blueprint (part of the government’s Healthy Schools initiative) wants schools to ensure pupils have access to drinking water throughout the school day. Decent toilets are the logical next step if pupils are not to be discouraged from drinking.

Grants
The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) provides grants. Your school could make a case for using a grant to improve the school toilets. Note: grant applications should be completed by the school themselves – not a parent or pupil. However, parents, pupils and school nurses may like to find out about grants and present their findings to the relevant staff members. A good place to start is the DfES website, www.dfes.gov.uk or the TeacherNet website, www.teachernet.gov.uk.

For information on different types of funding available:
www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/resourcesfinanceandbuilding/funding/
capitalinvestment/typesoffunding/nds

For funding related to accessibility issues:
www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/sen/schools/accessibility/sai

For building:
www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/resourcesfinanceandbuilding

For security (e.g. tackling bullying):
www.dfes.gov.uk/schoolsecurity/fundinghome.shtml

For building, repairs and maintenance:
www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/resourcesfinanceandbuilding/funding/
capitalinvestment/introduction

The DFES currently has an investment programme aimed at secondary schools called Building Schools for the Future. Around £2 billion a year will be spent on rebuilding and renewing all secondary schools over the next 10 to 15 years. At the same time there will also be substantial new investment in primary school buildings, through the Primary Capital Programme. This offers the real opportunity to transform school toilets and to plan appropriate drinking water facilities in every school.

Budget allocation
Different schools prioritise different things to spend their money on. The governors might feel that other things are much more important than pupils’ toilets. In order to use school money to improve the toilets, ask the headteacher and governors to put pupils’ toilets at the top of their list, and consider toilets in each budget meeting. You can use the lobby letters on the Bog Standard website for this.

Ofsted
If your school toilets have been mentioned in an Ofsted report as poor or in need of improvement, approach your LEA for help. While no school wants to draw attention to its deficiencies, it could be worthwhile ensuring the Ofsted inspectors are shown the school toilets.

Fundraising
Other ways of raising money are by traditional fundraising. A disadvantage of fundraising for toilets is that it is an unappealing subject to some people. Some people won't want to hear about the health problems that pupils suffer because they don't like to think or talk about bladders and bowels.

A way around this is to do a humorous fundraising event. Many pupils (particularly younger ones) find toilets amusing, and a toilet-related fundraiser may generate publicity in the local press. A humorous fundraiser doesn’t have to detract from the seriousness of the problem.
  • Pupils could conduct a tour of the school to include toilets, which people would pay to attend. This would raise awareness of the problems, as well as raise money. To make it appealing, pupils could promote it as a horror tour, dressing up in costume and making up stories. This would be a good fundraiser to do around Halloween. (Note: a free drink or snacks would encourage people to attend). Make sure you get permission from the head.
  • Sell water bottles to parents on Sports Day and/or the school fair. Label the bottles with information about water, toilets and health (which you can find on the Bog Standard website) and explain that you're raising money to improve the pupils’ toilets.
  • Have a stand at the school fête involving a toilet game. For example, you could make a board with cardboard toilet lids arranged on it. A person lifts a lid to see if there's a prize underneath it.
  • At such events, you could ask parents/teachers/local people if they'd like to help in any way. Ask them to write down their name, contact details and how they would like to help. Advertise for money or help in the programme of the school play.
  • Do a sponsored event. If you live in a city, pupils could, with appropriate supervision, do a relay race between all the public toilets there. Other pupils could stand at points along the route with leaflets and collection buckets. T-shirts could be printed with a slogan, school name and the reason for fundraising (don't forget to ask the t-shirt printer for a discount). Get permission from the local council and the police before you do this.

Sponsorship
Invite sponsorship from local businesses to refurbish the toilets or pay for a cleaner or attendant. This could involve financing a project, or could involve free and/or discounted:
  • Fixtures and fittings (toilets, sinks, taps etc)
  • Paint, tiles, paintbrushes, rollers
  • Services (painters, tilers, electricians etc)

What can the school offer the sponsors?

  • Logo/plaque outside the toilet
  • Feature in school newsletter
  • Inclusion in press release
  • Advertising in the school newsletter, prospectus or play programme
  • Involvement in their local community

Remember, for someone to sponsor your school toilet project, you will need to demonstrate that you will promote their company in return. If they can't offer you anything for free, always ask for something at a discounted or trade price.

Involving the local community
Staff, parents and governors may have special skills they can contribute to improve the toilets. For example, someone's parent may be a plumber or the art teacher may like to organise a mural. Can pupils make mirrors in design and technology classes?

Appeal for help from the community at large – pupils as well as adults. Many people will be able to do something to help, whether it's:
  • Coming up with fundraising ideas
  • Organising a fundraising event
  • Filling in grant application forms
  • Helping at an event
  • Helping with painting, decorating, or sourcing supplies
  • Raising awareness
  • Putting up a poster in their shop

Suggestions from the Times Educational Supplement governor’s forum page (started 02-12-02 and ended 08-01-03)

A governor asked if fellow governors knew where they could find funding to refurbish their toilets or how they could encourage the board of governors to make funding the toilets a priority.

The varied (and summarised) suggestions were:

DIY
  • Get the parents involved. Introduce parents to the reality of the disgusting toilets and explain the budgetary problems. Provide practical ways they can help whether through offering their skills, sponsoring individual items of sanitary ware or money raising. “Parents get a lot of abuse but they are a huge free resource and schools should make better use of them.”
  • Get members of the governing body to refurbish the toilets, either using their DIY skills or by involving contacts in the building trade. “It would do wonders for their image in the school community.”
  • Use the School Council to raise the profile and importance of the school toilets.

Make toilets a priority in school budget
  • Discuss the toilets with the Head Teacher and with their backing get the premises committee to get toilets onto their next agenda to go and inspect the toilets and make them a priority in funding.

Community Services Projects
  • Use Community Service Projects to get extra labour at no extra cost.

Suggestions from an LEA projects officer
  • Each school gets a Devolved Formula Capital allocation based on pupil numbers and a lump sum. While it is up to the Head/Governing Body to decide how this is spent, as toilets are a Health and Safety issue, our LEA would be happy to authorise spending of Devolved Capital on this.
  • Try the Seed Challenge funding. “Our LEA doled it out on issues identified in the Suitability Assessments, and as smelly toilets came up again and again, bids addressing this were prioritised.”
  • Approach your school and ask how Devolved Capital is being spent and whether some of it could be diverted to toilets. There’s a lot of Devolved Funding going to schools - so get the school to use some of it on the toilets!
  • Schools should have a routine repairs and maintenance budget which they use for the toilets.
  • The worse the toilets are, the less the children look after them and so they go downhill even quicker.

Kick up a stink
  • Most LEAs have Health and Safety contingency budgets
  • Ask a councillor to stand up in a council meeting and give notice that if money is not made available the governing body may have to close the school for health and safety reasons.
  • “Kick up a stink. The toilets will help you out on that one.”

As the governors say: “Don’t give up, the loos are important”

© Copyright Bog Standard - Better Toilets for Pupils