School fete roster

A fete roster has two levels. Most templates have one.

Most Australian school fetes are not rostered from one desk. A fete convenor sits above a layer of stall convenors, one per stall, each recruiting and rostering their own volunteers. The convenor owns the shape of the roster and the empty slots. The stall convenor owns the names in it.

Build the sheet that way or it will not get used. Every line needs a named stall convenor and a mobile beside it: the job on the Thursday before is to ring fourteen coordinators, not two hundred parents.

Give each class a stall

The model that works is one stall per class or year level — Year 1 on drinks, Year 5 filling show bags — with the class parent rep as stall convenor. That turns an anonymous ask into a peer ask, which is what fills a fete.

One-hour shifts

One or two hours, with two and a half as the outer limit, and one hour converts best. Give parents the reasoning verbatim: shifts are cut small so you can still enjoy the fete with your own kids, or work a shift around sport or a party. Ask for a floor, not a range — at least one hour per family.

A roster you can copy

A 10am–3pm Saturday fete at a mid-sized primary school. Bump-in, setup, pack-down and the working bee are single blocks signed up to once; everything else is hourly.

That is 230 sign-up slots across the weekend, from twelve staffed lines plus the crews at either end. A twenty-stall fete runs past 350. Which is why the answer to "how many volunteers do we need" is hundreds, and why you need a count, not a feeling. The .xlsx and .csv version adds filled and vacant columns and a running total.

Sizing your own stalls: BBQ four to five, never fewer than three — one cooking, one serving, one on money, and money off food. Drinks, cake and Devonshire tea three to four. Trash and treasure four — one of them does nothing but tidy the tables. Games two, face painting three, gate two, HQ two continuously.

The lines nobody puts on the roster

• Fete HQ. One staffed stall as the hub — spare rosters, first aid, lost children, lost property, sunscreen. Its own line, from before gates until the last stall cashes up.
• Floaters. A named reserve pool for the midday peak and no-shows. Two an hour, and all get used.
• Convenor hours are not shift hours. Stall convenors arrive hours before gates and stay through pack-down. Give them their own row and roster their break by name, or they will not take one.
• The day's decisions need owners. Who calls wet weather and by when, who holds the keys, who counts out and collects the floats, who marshals every vehicle off the oval before gates.

Setup and pack-down are where it falls over

Look at almost any school's public fete sheet the week before: setup and the food stalls full, the after-close pack-up and the Sunday cleanup carrying nearly all the vacancies. Nobody wants to carry trestle tables to a shed in the dark.

Opening those shifts first and asking individually helps; the fix that moves the numbers is structural. Split pack-down in two. A during-close shift from 2.30pm strikes the quiet stalls while the fete is still running, in daylight; an after-close shift takes the marquees and the heavy gear. Ninety minutes each, with an end time in the ask. A twilight fete makes the split compulsory: undivided, it lands after bedtime and never fills.

Food and permits: who actually decides

Fete food rules vary by state and often by council. Within a state it depends on what you sell, whether it is eaten straight after cooking, and whether you are a non-profit. That combination is why advice from another state — or from a club two suburbs over — is unreliable, and why this page will not tell you what applies to you. Getting it wrong runs both ways: groups buy certification they never needed, and groups skip an obligation they had.

The people who can actually answer it:

• Your local council's environmental health officer. They handle notification, permits and inspection, and they will take a phone call from a volunteer committee. Ring before you print a roster, not after.
• Your state food authority — the NSW Food Authority in NSW, Queensland Health in Queensland, and the equivalent in each other state and territory.
• Food Standards Australia New Zealand publishes the national Food Standards Code and specific guidance for charities and community groups.
• Your own parent body or committee. The P&C, P&F, school council or club committee usually holds the insurance and very often already has a standing answer from last year.

Two things hold everywhere. The food you sell has to be safe and suitable, and the people handling it need skills and knowledge appropriate to what they are doing. Everything past that is local, and worth ten minutes on the phone.

The habit almost no school has

Give every stall convenor a folder holding what is known about that stall — suppliers, quantities, last year's helpers, what sold. It comes back updated after the fete, and the wrap-up happens a fortnight later while people still remember which shift had nobody on it.

Put it online

The table above pastes straight into the free volunteer roster: set the shifts, share one link per class group, and let parents put their own names down while full shifts close themselves. No signup, and it prints for the HQ table. The roster templates page has shorter blocks for the canteen and the sizzle.

Common questions

How many volunteers do you need for a school fete?

Count slots, not people. A 10am–3pm fete with a dozen staffed lines comes to about 230 sign-up slots once bump-in, setup, pack-down and the Sunday working bee are counted, and a twenty-stall fete runs past 350. A smaller number of families cover that, most doing one to three hours each.

How long should a school fete volunteer shift be?

One or two hours, with two and a half as the outer limit, and one hour fills fastest. Short shifts let parents still walk around the fete with their own kids or work around sport and parties, which is the reason they say yes. Ask for at least one hour per family rather than offering a range.

Who organises the volunteers for a school fete?

Two people, not one. The fete convenor owns the master roster and the empty slots. A stall convenor for each stall recruits and rosters that stall's volunteers and reports back. Allocating one stall per class, with the class parent rep as stall convenor, is the usual way to fill it. Build the roster one to two months out and send every helper their details in the last fortnight.

Do you need a food licence for a school fete stall?

It depends on your state, usually on your council, and on what the stall sells — food cooked and eaten straight away is generally treated differently from food held hot or cold for hours. Non-profit fundraising is often treated more lightly than a commercial stall, but often is not always and the detail varies. Your council's environmental health officer is the one who decides, and your P&C or P&F has very likely asked them before.

Do fete volunteers need a Working with Children Check?

Ask the school, because the rules differ by state. A parent volunteering in an activity their own child takes part in is generally exempt in NSW and Victoria, but the exemptions are narrower than people assume and a school or P&C can require a check anyway. Sort it out well before the day rather than at the gate.

How do you get the pack-down shifts to fill?

Split it in two. A during-close shift from about 2.30pm strikes the quiet stalls in daylight while the fete is still running; an after-close shift takes the marquees and heavy gear. Ninety minutes each, with the end time stated in the ask. Open those shifts before the daytime ones, ask people individually, feed the crew, and put whatever is left on a separate Sunday working bee.

Or let people claim their own shift

The spreadsheet is the easy part. Chasing the names is the hard part. The volunteer roster tool is free and takes a minute: you set the shifts, share one link, and people put their own name down. No accounts, and you can still print it or export it at the end. There is also an overview of all five roster shapes if you want to compare them.