Work

Carlton North Primary School

Like many primary schools, Carlton North Primary school has been running an annual fete for over 20 years. It is a major fundraiser that requires a huge contribution of time from the enthusiastic parent community.

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Challenge

In the past, communication for this 50+ strong committee was done via email and a series of long committee meetings. Every year, an enormous amount of knowledge was lost as the parent community transitioned through the school.

Solution

After integrating Podio, a platform built for business organisation, our team has streamlined internal communication for the fete committee, allowing Carlton North primary to eliminate the overarching Fete Coordinator role, a volunteer position that demanded hundreds of hours of commitment each year.

Carlton North Primary required a technological revolution.

The goal

Carlton North Primary school was in need of an accessible digital solution that would organise team communications and internal processes while storing data and content for the annual fete committee.

The committee needed an online workspace that could manage their meetings, stalls, timelines, donations, suppliers, volunteers and newsletters and be accessed on any device by any team member at any one time.

Our team streamlined all internal processes with software.

The process

Podio is an incredibly flexible, cost-effective tool for database management, communication and collaboration. Starting from just $9 per month per user, the large parent-run committee is now able to access a cloud-based, real-time feed of activity across the fete’s planning from their mobile phone or desktop computer. Members can see all activity, similar to a Facebook feed, showing them what is happening and allowing for ideas sharing and collaboration at a time that suits them.

In 2017, the committee piloted the use of Podio to solve their communication woes, aiming to streamline the efforts and capture an online manual for running this major fundraising event. We set up an online workspace to capture:

  • Meetings: minutes and actions
  • Stalls: how to run them, the volunteers needed, suppliers
  • Timeline: actions, when they were due and who was responsible
  • Donations: a database of all donations, the amount donated and contact details for social media mentions, photos and thank you certificates
  • Suppliers: the payment management process for suppliers that needed to be paid for their goods and services
  • Volunteers: an online portal for capturing and rostering parent volunteers for the day
  • Newsletter: an online area for drafting weekly communications about stall activities and donation requests
Having Podio has been a life-saver. We are able to share all our timelines, store all our documents and automate notifications across the committee and staff. It puts everyone in the committee in control and gives the school full transparency of progress towards the fundraising target, with dashboards and reports on money raised, volunteer numbers and costs

Kathryn Andrews


Fete Coordinator for 16 years

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03 9347 7828

Level 1, 196 Faraday Street
Carlton, VIC 3053, Australia

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