Your PTA's own website, for £20 a month.
I built this for the parent association at my kids' school. It takes payments, sells preloved uniform, runs your 100 club and keeps parents up to date. I host it and look after it, so all you do is use it.
First month free. No setup fee. I never take a cut of what you raise.
Sound familiar?
Most PTAs I know run on a Facebook group, a couple of WhatsApp chats, a spreadsheet nobody wants to touch and a cash tin in the school office.
It sort of works. Then the chair or treasurer steps down, and half of what you know goes with them. Passwords, who's paid, where the raffle money went.
RunYourPTA puts it in one place that belongs to the PTA, not to whoever happens to be running it this year.
- The Facebook group
- Three WhatsApp chats
- Paper forms in book bags
- The cash tin
- Uniform in bin bags
- Treasurer's spreadsheet
- ClassDojo messages
- "Who has the password?"
What's in it
All of this is running at my kids' school right now. You get every bit of it.
Raising money
Take money online without anyone counting coins at the kitchen table. Payments go straight into the PTA's own account.
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Lucky Squares
Basically the 100 club, done properly. Parents pick squares on their phone and pay by card. The winning order is locked in before anything goes on sale, so nobody can say it was fixed. Run a few grids at once, any size, any price.
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Monthly Draw Coming soon
Parents sign up once by Direct Debit, for a couple of pounds a month, and they're in every month's draw. The draw happens on its own, so there's nothing for you to organise.
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Preloved uniform shop
Get the uniform cupboard online. Parents reserve what they need and pay online, at the office, or whatever they can afford. They can ask for an email when their size comes in.
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Donations
Parents can donate any amount by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. The money goes straight into your SumUp account.
Keeping parents in the loop
One address to give out at the school gate, with everything on it.
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News and a proper diary
Post news with photos. Your events and the school's term dates sit in one diary, and parents can add the lot to their phone calendar in one go. School sent the dates as a spreadsheet? Just upload it.
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Photos
An album for each event. Nothing goes public until someone on the committee has checked it.
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What we fund
Show parents what came in and what it paid for. Nothing gets people giving again like seeing the new playground equipment with their name on the list.
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Parents' forum
A private place for "what time does the disco finish?" You approve every account, and it closes on its own when a family's youngest leaves.
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Home learning sheets
Free, customisable spelling and maths worksheets. Parents type in the week's spellings or pick the times tables, then print or save as a PDF. Not really PTA stuff, but it keeps people coming back to the site.
Running the committee
Built for volunteers who do this in the evening after the kids are in bed.
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No passwords to hand over
Committee members log in with a link sent to their email. When someone steps down, remove them and they're out. That's the handover done.
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Change the words yourself
Every bit of text on the site can be edited from the dashboard. You don't need to ask me.
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The right access for the right people
Give the uniform volunteer the uniform bit and nothing else. Same for whoever looks after the forum.
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Only the bits you want
Switch features on and off from the dashboard. No uniform cupboard? Turn the shop off.
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Figures for the treasurer
Lottery totals for your council return, who's won what and what's been paid out, all worked out for you.
Have a click around
There's a demo site for a made-up school, Oakwood Primary PTA. Buy a square, reserve a jumper, have a nose at the dashboard. None of it's real, so you can't break anything.
PTA, PTFA, PSFA, Friends of…
Whatever you call yourselves. I set the site up with your name, logo and colours, so it looks like yours. Because it is.
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Oakwood Primary PTA
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Friends of Millbrook School
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St Mary's PTFA
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Hilltop PSFA
One price, and that's it
No tiers, no extras, no "contact us for pricing".
£20
a month
Or £200 a year, which gets you two months free.
What you get
- Your own PTA website, with every feature on this page
- Set up with your name, logo and colours
- Hosting, backups and security updates
- New features as I add them
- Help from me whenever you get stuck
First month free. No setup fee. No contract. I'm not VAT registered, so there's no VAT on top.
Includes up to 300 emails a day from your site, which is far more than most PTAs need. If you ever need more, I'll talk to you before anything changes.
I don't take a cut
Not of donations, not of Lucky Squares, not of uniform sales. Whatever you raise is yours. The £20 a month is all I ever charge, however much money comes in.
Not included
- Card fees. SumUp takes about 2.5% of each payment. It comes off the payment before it reaches you, and it doesn't go to me.
- Your own web address, like oakwoodpta.co.uk. It's about £10 a year, and I'll buy it and set it up for you. Or you can have a free one from me instead.
What if we want to stop?
Just tell me. If you pay monthly, I'll stop charging at the end of that month. If you've paid for a year, your site stays up until the year runs out. Either way, when it closes I'll send you a copy of all your data, like events, news, uniform stock and lottery records. Then I'll delete it from my server.
Questions people ask
Who hosts it, and where?
I do. Your site is hosted on a UK cloud server. I keep it updated, keep an eye on it and back it up. You never have to think about servers.
What about GDPR and parents' data?
In GDPR terms, the PTA is the "controller". You decide what's collected and why. I'm the "processor". I store it and keep it safe for you, and I don't use it for anything else. I'll sign a data processing agreement with you so that's all written down.
Card details never touch the site. SumUp deals with those. Some things tidy themselves up too. For example, children's names on the forum are deleted automatically when the family leaves the school.
Do we need anyone techy?
No. If you can post on Facebook, you'll be fine. Everything's done through normal forms in the dashboard, and I'll talk you through it when we set it up.
How do payments work? Whose account does the money go into?
Yours. You open a free SumUp account in the PTA's name, and I connect it to your site. Money goes from SumUp straight into the PTA's bank account. It never passes through me, and I don't take a percentage of any of it.
Is Lucky Squares legal?
Yes, as long as your PTA is registered to run it. It counts as a lottery, so you'll need a small society lottery registration. You apply for it directly with your local council. It's a short form and a small fee, and it doesn't go through me.
Running it within the rules is the PTA's responsibility, not mine. The site does help, though. It puts the right details on every ticket, checks buyers are 16 or over, makes sure at least 20% goes to the PTA, and gives you the figures for your council return.
Our committee changes every year. Is that a problem?
That's exactly what it's built for. Add the new people, remove the old ones, and their access stops straight away. There are no shared passwords to pass on, and everything the last committee did is still there.
We're not a registered charity. Can we still use it?
Yes. Lots of PTAs aren't, especially smaller ones. It works either way.
Can we have our own web address?
Yes, and I'd recommend it. An address like oakwoodpta.co.uk looks the part and is easy for parents to remember. I'll buy it for you, set it all up and look after it. It costs about £10 a year, and that's the only extra.
If you'd rather not pay for one, that's fine too. I can give you a free address instead, like oakwood.runyourpta.co.uk.
Can we try it first?
Yes. Have a go on the demo site, and your first month is free anyway. If it's not for you, just tell me before the month's up and you won't pay anything.
Hi, I'm Ollie
I'm chair of Gnosall St Lawrence PSFA, the parent association at my children's primary school in Staffordshire.
In my day job I'm a software developer, and I lead an engineering team. So when our PSFA needed a website, I built one. Then I kept adding to it as we needed things: the uniform shop, Lucky Squares, the forum.
It's made a real difference to how we run things, and I reckon plenty of other PTAs are in the same boat we were. So I've made it so any school's parent group can have one, with their own name on it.
It's just me. When you email, you get me.
Fancy a chat?
I'm always happy to chat on the phone. Fill in the form with your number and a good time to ring, and I'll call you. Or just send a question.
Rather use WhatsApp? Fill in the form and press "Send on WhatsApp" instead, and we can carry on there.
If forms aren't your thing, email me at support@kaiforge.digital.