Find your fundraising gold ticket with Wonderful bars!
Image: A group of adults cheering with confetti falling on them.
If you want to take part in this fun activity while avoiding potential lawsuits, you need to use a different name – such as Wonderful bars!
The story behind Wonderful bars
The Wonderful bar idea is simple and easy to organise. All you need to do is buy some chocolate bars – most PTAs opt for the 100g ones – and place a golden ticket inside the wrapper of one or a few of them, depending on how many prizes you want to give away. Sell the chocolate bars to your school community and whoever finds a gold ticket wins a special prize!
Stocking your chocolate factory
For your first trial of Wonderful bars, we suggest buying as many chocolate bars as you have pupils to see how things go. You’ll probably sell out of them pretty quickly, but it’s a good way to gauge your school’s enthusiasm for them. If you don’t sell out, you can always use the leftover chocolate as prizes for another event, as ingredients for a bake sale or have another go at Wonderful bars later on in the term.
When considering where to bulk-buy your chocolate from, our partner, Bookers, provides access to products at wholesale prices – head to our supplier directory to find out more. Some supermarkets also sell 100g chocolate bars relatively cheaply.
Best before vs use by
Worried that your unsold chocolate might go off? Most chocolate is labelled with a ‘best before’ date rather than a ‘use by’ date, and there is a key difference – it’s an offence to sell food or drink if it has passed its ‘use by’ date, but you can sell things that have passed their ‘best before’ date. Just make sure it’s still good quality, the packaging isn’t damaged and the ‘best before’ date is clearly visible.
Choices, choices…
Wherever you choose to buy your chocolate, don’t forget to keep preferences, allergies and dietary requirements in mind. Buyers might want to choose between dark, milk, white and dairy free chocolate.
Hold on to your wrappers
It’s best practice for ingredient and allergy information to be available to anyone buying chocolate from you. The easiest way to do this is to put your Wonder bar wrapper over the top of the chocolate bar wrapper you’ve bought. If you want to be extra cautious, have the ingredients and allergy information printed on your Wonder bar wrapper, or make it clear that the original wrapper is still underneath. Head to our health and safety webpage on Your PTA Expert for more information on allergies.
The legal bit
It’s unlikely you’ll need a special licence to sell Wonderful bars, but it’s always best to check with your local authority as the rules may differ in your area. Find out more about the different licences you might need on Your PTA Expert.
Get a sweet design
For the Wonder bar wrapper, you could ask an artistic volunteer, jump on Canva, run a competition for the kids to create one or use Parentkind’s very own design. We also have a gold ticket that’s free to download, edit and print out – with no trademark worries!
Side note: as well as the name, the very recognisable font used on the book-based chocolate bar is trademarked. You can use a similar purple colour, but make sure it’s not the same shade of purple as the famous chocolate brand beginning with ‘C’ (yep, you can trademark a colour too!).
Not a fan of ‘Wonder’ bars?
You could use your PTA or school name, or come up with something catchy that isn’t trademarked. Search for your preferred name on gov.uk/search-for-trademark before you design your wrappers.
In it to win it
When sourcing prizes, you could stick to the theme and have the winner receive even more chocolate! Or reach out to local businesses and your community for donations. If you want the pupils in your school to win something that isn’t a physical prize but is more of a perk, here are some things you could organise with your school:
- Early lunch pass
- Teacher/headteacher for the day
- House/behaviour points
- Classroom disco/karaoke
- Free ticket for a future PTA event
Whatever you decide, make sure to explain on the gold ticket how winners can collect their prizes and if there is a timeframe in which to do so.
Make an event of it
Now that you know how to run a Wonderful bar fundraiser, when is the best time to do it?
Well, we think just about any time is a good time for chocolate! Wonderful bars could easily be part of other fundraisers such as fairs, discos, pamper evenings or fun runs. It would also be a great alternative to an Easter egg raffle.
Many PTAs hold Wonderful bar fundraisers on World Book Day, but just be careful not to theme it around the-children’s-book-that-shall-not-be-named (although that particular book would make a superb prize).
As well as having Wonderful bars at events, you could sell them in the lead up to one – it’s a great way to make a bit of extra cash to help pay for a disco, for example, and the gold ticket prize could be a ticket to the disco!
The price of chocolate
The amount you charge for your Wonderful bars will depend on how much you paid for them in the first place, but we think £1.50 to £2 for a 100g chocolate bar is reasonable (as of autumn 2025).
Get the word out
You’ve got the chocolate bars, the gold tickets, the prizes and the date – now is the time to shout to your school community about it.
Canva has some wonderful templates you can use to make posters, social media graphics and flyers. Tell your supporters at the school gates, via WhatsApp groups, in your PTA’s newsletter and through the school’s communication channels.
To really draw the crowds on the day you sell your Wonderful bars, why not set up a stand to look like an old-fashioned chocolate shop? The possibilities are endless!
Has this inspired you to have your own Wonderful bar sale? Let us know how it goes by emailing [email protected].
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