It is crucial, now more than ever, that schools begin to look at securing extra income where possible so that the future of the educational institution and its pupils are not left at the mercy of the decisions made by inconsistent government funding policies. Here is how you can make the most use of resources freely available to your school to establish a steady income on the side, and also strengthen relations with the local communities.

It was an every-man’s story of utilisation

I was lucky enough to grow up around family members who were entrepreneurial (without even realising it). Thinking back to my childhood, I remember my aunts who used to make and sell wine, jams, Indian pickles and other items. I also remember my second eldest uncle (my dad had 2 brothers and 3 sisters) having business ventures with varying success. He used to run an Independent cinema for about 10 years.

In the early years, this was the only Indian cinema in London and the business used to be lucrative. As the years went by, we saw the franchises waking up to the fact that there were just under a million (988,781) Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi population in London itself, and started showing Bollywood movies in local franchises.

Using resources when times got hard

Our business started losing the regular Bollywood fans and the festival goers alike to the likes of Vue and Cineworld which provided online booking services and comfy seats. Nevertheless, he would still keep the cinema open during hours for the odd customers and other services

These other services I mentioned above included a wide range of activities. For instance, one of the three screening rooms was once hired out for a wedding in 2011. The big screen (which used to be the second before the IMAX, then third biggest screen in UK) was hired out for a concert once. The room accommodated about 800 people and was a roaring success.

Once the film revenue started petering out, he began to hire the venue out on a regular basis. Some events like the Sunday protestant church gatherings were done in the morning, so it did not even have to sacrifice his screens during cinema’s opening times.

Regularising the income flow

What began as an occasional venue let gradually turned into a regular stream of revenue for my uncle’s cinema. This worked so well that the new owners of the building turned the place into an exclusive Wedding Hall venue.

As E-Commerce balloons, how many opportunities are your facilities missing out on, simply by not trying? Schools, Colleges, Universities and Nurseries can use OFEC’s bookating™ system to easily hire out venues and create a regular fuss-free income stream.

How you can make it work for you

With a Lecture theatre, meeting rooms, Astro Pitch, Sports Hall, Performance space (dance studio), recording studio, drama studio, kitchen and bistro and the school hall as places you can hire, the possibilities are endless (no really). The government expects all schools to offer access to a varied menu of activities, childcare, parenting support and community access to the facilities. It is the responsibility of every school (or other institutions) to provide these services. However, creating an income from these services that you may be providing already can vastly improve the financial situation.

Just by doing a quick google search for facilities for hire in London brought back 37,900,000, and 1,420,000 out of those results were from School facilities hire. Thinking from a potential client’s perspective, making a cold application can be off-putting; as most websites require an application form PDF to be printed out, filled in, sent hard copy of (or signed, then scanned and emailed).

With Bookating, you can hire a venue with the click of a button (and filling in the relevant application online). There is not only the option for easy booking, but you can repeat-book events (like hiring out the dance studio every Saturday mornings) and the system then add the applications to the existing workflow of the administrative team automatically. The relevant administrators are notified at once and they can manage the booking out of venues in real-time using calendar view, managing easy communications and building a client-base without even leaving the office or doing any ‘sales’.

What is stopping you from hiring out your venues ?

• Paperwork- OFEC has it covered.
• Time management- the Bookating service can be accessed from any internet service and is live 24/7.
• What more, it can even be used by students, thus also enriching their after-school (or before school) life.

Give us a call today on 01865 556070 for more information.