AquinasFest Survey Results - Grouped by Topic

Car Raffle Responses I would like the raffle tickets to decrease in price so that more could participate. While I would buy more than $100 worth of tickets at $10-$20/ticket, I will not buy one $100 ticket, as this still puts it out of reach for many (although $100 is a great improvement over the $500)

Once, a few years ago, the parish changed the raffle items from $100 tickets for the car to $20 tickets for a choice of three different items (a cruise, an electronics package or maid service). The result was that the amount of money raised was significantly less. There was not a huge increase in the number of people that participated by buying tickets, so the parish went back to raffling the car.

The raffle now seems to cater to a select few people. Would like to see it go back to a variety of prizes with tickets that are affordable to all parishioners. Cash prizes or large items (TV, Computers, BBQ grills) could entice more ticket buyers.

Having a big raffle might be great but it is difficult for people that do not have a lot of money to come up with $100. Some families may not be able to afford $100 for the entire weekend but I bet they might spend $20 for the opportunity to win a TV, Yeti cooler, bicycle, shopping cards, etc. There should be both opportunities for people to participate.

Bingo

The Friday night bingo, doors opened up at 5:30, which is way too early, to start festivities, 6:30 maybe start bingo at 7pm that would be better.

The start times (and possibly Saturday evening in lieu of Friday evening) are being explored for next year.

Start bingo at the advertised time! The start of Bingo was delayed some, as more people were coming in. Next year, it is expected to begin at the posted time.

I wish Bingo was on Saturday or there was a Sat night activity. My kids have band on Friday nights due to football so we cannot participate in Bingo. Moving Bingo to Saturday night is being explored for next year.

Increase bingo cost to 20 dollars for 10 bingo games. The Bingo event is considered more a family-fun event and less of a fund-raiser. Prices were kept low on purpose.

Bingo was a lot of fun Agreed!

We enjoyed BINGO the most! Our family had such a great time!! Kid drawing was a huge hit for our kids. Great idea! The drawings for the kids was a wonderful addition this year!

For bingo please have a larger packet if you will charge $10, especially since the prizes are gift cards and not cash! This is supposed to be a family friendly fun night!!

The committee felt that the prices were reasonable and that families had an opportunity to have fun.

Live Auction

Live auction is difficult for parents to attend bc the children’s activities are far away and auction is boring for them. Could the layout change? If catered meal was done away with, move silent auction into PAC cafeteria and have some children’s activities in the small area. Could have a children’s activity with check in during the auction so parents could more actively participate in the auction.

The committee is exploring moving the Live Auction to a separate event (nicer dinner and auction for adults), which will free up the parents to spend the entire AquinasFest day with their children.

More affordable auction items or allow vendors to come sell items and negotiate either a flat booth price or percentage donated back to us. We eat and leave because we cannot afford any auction items.

Typically, the higher price point items are in the Live Auction and lower price point items are in the Silent Auction. The parish leans against allowing outside vendors to sell items during AquinasFest.

Consolidate some live auction items as the auction last tooooo long There were fewer items this year in the Live Auction in an attempt to shorten the duration.

Too many auction items ! I would have stayed longer to bid on more items but it was getting too long and too hard to sit !

There were fewer items this year in the Live Auction in an attempt to shorten the duration.

Limit the live auction — no more than 90 items! There were 73 Live Auction items this year.

If a $ amount is hit you should always offer a second pew for Christmas or Easter. Church lost out on over $3,100 for refusing to offer a second pew.

The parish needs to balance the fund-raising and the impact to parishioners attending the most crowded Masses for the year.

Live auction was too long, people started leaving well before it was over. May need more diversity in price range of items but also may need to speed up the bidding process

The committee is exploring making significant changes to the Live Auction next year, including the possibility of removing it from the AquinasFest weekend and combining it with a nicer dinner for adults.

Silent Auction

Perhaps a higher priced silent auction grouping as was done a few years ago (maybe $50 and below and then $100-200 price ranges) to keep live auction from being so long?? Just a thought. Not sure where highest profits would come from. And that may be why it was discontinued after a few years ... don’t know.

The committee spends a lot of time determining how to bundle items for the Live Auction and whether to put items in the Silent Auction.

I think the silent auction could be improved with better items

The Silent Auction is made up primarily of items donated by the parish community. We are thankful for any items donated and we welcome parishioners to provide things they would be interested in bidding on.

Would love to know who won the car & silent auction items.

The name of the car raffle winner (Ms. Nancy Berry) was posted in the e-weekly parish-wide email. I do not believe the parish publicizes the names of all the winners of the Silent Auction items.

Tickets

I like the idea of a wrist band, but $20 per child is crazy on our budget. I would not purchase a catered meal for a child for $15.

The committee allowed a "wristband" option or "individual ticket purchase" option to provide flexibility for each family.

I liked all of the games being one ticket, or a little less for the bracelets. With 4 kids, $70 was a lot

The committee made a conscious decision to try to make AquinasFest more economical for families this year by keeping every game/ride to one ticket.

We have four children. We enjoy AquinasFest but it cost us $100 just for everyone to have food and drinks. And my husband and I split a BBQ plate. It’s a bit pricey for large families. And the ticket purchasing was a bit cumbersome. I like the idea of the wrist band but the wristband did not include all the things my children wanted so I had to purchase additional tickets. If the cost of the meal was $15, we would likely still buy one because we want to support the church. But that is expensive.

We acknowledge that it costs some money to attend AquinasFest, as it is a fundraiser for the parish. The committee is exploring ways to further reduce costs for families next year (such as possibly making all of the games free), but there will always be a cost for purchased food items. Families would be welcome to bring their own food (picnic lunch, for instance) and still come out to enjoy the festivities.

I think including a fast food meal with the wrist bands was a great idea. Also, we should have more packets of tickets prepared ahead of the event. It was difficult to handle sales while trying to count out tickets. This caused the line to slow significantly.

The large number of tickets were bundled before the event, but these ran out and then the rest had to be counted manually. We should have more ticket bundles available next year.

More places to sell tickets. Wristbands all the same price. 15 each is enough for families to pay. Everything should be covered by the band. It would be less confusing.

One problem with more ticket places is the need for volunteers to staff those additional places. We start with two locations for the first two hours, and then reduce it to the one main area in the Parish Activity Center. The wristband cannot cover everything, since individual food items (such as snow cones, drinks and snacks) have to be purchased separately. The wristband did cover all of the games and rides.

Definitely like the idea of pre-sale lunch tickets at a discount price. The pre-sale of the lunch tickets is being explored.

Games

More supervision/organization of kids games. Rather than multiple prizes, bigger prize options as well

The supervision for the games is dependent on the number of volunteers available. Larger prize options were decided against due to the cost of these prizes.

We missed the cake walk. Zurek hall was hot. Activities not geared to older kids.

The committee is looking into bringing back the cake walk or perhaps a "cupcake" walk, but there are issues with the number of cakes or cupcakes available to win, how much it should cost for a chance to win and how to coordinate that with the wristbands which allowed for unlimited playing of the games. Those that wanted cakes were able to purchase them in the Country Store. Hopefully the AC issues will get fixed with the new system being installed. We welcome ideas for games for older kids.

There is nothing for the teen/pre-teen crowd. Last year at least the dunk booth amused them.

We encourage suggestions for games for teens/pre-teens. The dunking booth is difficult to staff because people have to take tickets and people have to volunteer to sit in the booth. Also, there is a large cost to rent the dunking booth (hundreds of dollars).

Great fest. Loved the maze!!! New and fun!!! Thanks!

We didn't have a cake walk this year, which was dearly missed by many. It did not seem as inviting as years past. ,It feels as though the church doesn't want people around too much or too late in the day. Just my opinion.

The cake walk was missed by lots of attendees and we're exploring how to bring it back in some form next year. I'm not sure how to make the event more "inviting", but the goal was to create a fun and welcoming event for the parish community. You are encouraged to share ideas next year to improve the event.

i missed the horse rides, dunking booth and some of the wheel games that are normally there.

The horse ride providers had been doing it for more than a decade and were ready for a break. We tried to find other options, but there was a significant cost for it, plus potential liability issues. We were able to bring in the petting zoo to allow people to interact with the animals. The dunking booth is expensive and difficult to find people willing to staff it (get dunked!). The wheel games add a level of complexity due to the need for a significant number of large prizes to award. We encourage more people to help plan the event next year to work through some of these challenges.

Very organized this year! We miss the horse rides though.

We would love to have the pony rides back.

Cake walk

The committee is looking into bringing back the cake walk or perhaps a "cupcake" walk, but there are issues with the number of cakes or cupcakes available to win, how much it should cost for a chance to win and how to coordinate that with the wristbands which allowed for unlimited playing of the games. Those that wanted cakes were able to purchase them in the Country Store.

I have a cakewalk

We missed the cake/cupcake wheel. We understand the complex nature of the cake wheel but at least bring back the cupcake wheel, please!

Ask where is the cake walk?!?!

Please bring back the cake wheel - like it was 2+ years ago. Last year it was not organized but the years before it was. It was fun for the adults.

I didn’t see games this year but the kids had fun at the bounce house and train. Would love to see a list of what is offered and where or times for the shows painted on a big board. Not sure if there were games/where they were but my answers for the games and not participating in them is because we didn’t see them by the bounce houses out front.

Thanks for the suggestion for a map and a list for activities for next year!

Prizes for games be things other than candy. There were numerous small, plastic toys as prizes.

I’m glad the games were changed up a bit. That was refreshing. Glad you enjoyed the changes.

I liked all of the games being one ticket, or a little less for the bracelets. With 4 kids, $70 was a lot We purposely tried to keep the costs low.

Yes, more games activities for tweens and teens. Our kids missed cake wheel, prize games. Used d to have live music We welcome ideas for games for tweens and teens.

Though old favorites were missed (cake wheel, pop bottle toss), the new games were GREAT! I liked that they were all in one spot, inside, and fun for all ages. The Plinko board didn’t work too well but was still fun. I think cutting down the number of games was a smart move. For those with wrist bands, the prizes seemed excessive. I think stickers and candy and maybe one type of prize would suffice (coming from a parent who now has a Halloween non candy bowl full and ready with prizes). Thanks for the feedback.

More games for kids and there should be games for adults We welcome ideas for games for adults. Typically, the games do not have nice prizes (such as those mentioned) unless these items are provided in enough quantities to last multiple hours of playing the games.

I would like to see adult game booths. Examples: Plant, wine, fruit, cake, booth

I'm not sure which games my kids played this year because they are old enough to go on their own while I helped with the live auction. I know they missed the cake wheel and the doll wheel.

We're exploring bringing back some version of the cake wheel, but the doll wheel requires numerous prizes to be provided, which has been difficult in the past to obtain.

Petting Zoo

Magic Show

We enjoyed the magic show—it was a little long (we left after a half hour) and a couple of the performers weren’t loud enough. Also, one of the performers said "oh my G*d" a couple of times. The show was entertaining and our kids loved it.

Glad the show was enjoyable. We'll visit next year with the college performers next year to remind them to keep their comments respectable and to try to project their voices better.

Volunteers

i appreciate all volunteers that help put this on. I think that I did not realize that some activities would not happen. if it was due to lack of volunteers that would be good to know. It is a challenge every year to obtain enough volunteers.

Please try to involve the teens. My child is involved with STAY and I’d like to see them volunteering at the event.

There were numerous opportunities to sign up to volunteer, including after every Mass for four weeks and even a special announcement during the STAY/Cornerstone dinner.

My family teaches RE and volunteer to help at AquinasFest. It really is a shame that we can’t get volunteers from our parish. People would rather have their kids skip RE than stay in the room as a second adult. I wish their was a way to require family service. We will continue to pray for our parish. Thanks for a great AquinasFest! Thanks for all you do for our parish!

Catered Meal

More fast food and no catered meal. As you can read all of the comments, some people liked the catered meal and others did not. There continue to be difficulties in hiring great caterers at an affordable price. The committee is considering all options next year, including possibly skipping the catered meal and just offering simple food items prepared by our parish volunteers. We will explore food trucks (and it was discussed briefly this year), but there are unique challenges that come along with food trucks that need to be understood. We appreciate all of the comments, and we welcome participation on the planning committee next year to help improve this next year.

Great job. Perhaps incorporate “kid friendly” food into the catered meal so everyone can eat in AC!

I would suggest food trucks! It would give a variety of food and different price points of food. (Knights of Columbus could still do hamburgers and hot dogs and utilize the PAC kitchen.) Depending on City of College Station food truck policies we may/may not be able to charge them a flat fee to park on our property. OR we would negotiate a percentage of sales donated back to us. OR we don't charge them anything as it would not affect our bottom line since we don't usually make a profit on the food.

FYI...The food was the best it has been in years!

Provide a better meal. This year's caterer was not good!

More health food options.

The catered BarBQ was stopped early but I understand there was food left. I didn't understand that. Maybe preselling tickets would let the caterer know how much to have.

The BarBQ was delicious and well worth the amount paid. Lots of volunteers to help.

The food this year was not good. While in general I would pay 15 a meal for donation to the parish I would not buy the food at all if the same place caters in the future.

The catered meal is overpriced and repeated every year. Change things up!!!

The BBQ plate was delicious but I would recommend at least one green vegetable and/or salad. It would be nice as a healthier option.

Get rid of the catered meal. Not good and not a good value.

Need to ensure the vendor catering the meal has the ability to do it well. There are many local caterers that could do a much better job.

The main meal needs to be prepared by the parish

If the meal is going to be catered and loose money don't do it. No one benefitted from this loss. This is supposed to be a money making event for the parish! From what I understand the caterer was contracted for a certain amount of time and the parish paid for 600 plates and there were alot of tickets left and people were still wanting to eat after the food was gone! Major fail!! I would absolutely NOT pay $15 for a meal!!

The quality of the food for the catered lunch was very poor - dry and fatty. I would gladly pay more for food I know will be good.

The catered meal ( bbq) was not very good. For $12 a plate, I want good bbq. Please find a different caterer.

Maybe have a dessert booth with homemade cookies, cupcakes etc. The catered meal only had tiny piece of cake.

The meal should not be catered. It cost too much money with no guarantee that all of the meals will be sold just to break even. Look at a place like Westphalia that can serve 6000-8000 plates and ALL of it is homemade. The majority of it is profit. We have trouble selling 600 just to break even.

There were problems with the food--the sliced bread was hard to the point of being inedible, and the skin on the sausage was the toughest I have ever encountered. The chicken and beef were good.

I’d like to see US actually prepare the meal.

Food was excellent!

If we stay on the BBQ route, then cater good quality BBQ restaurant with solid reputation. (aka C&J's) I would rather pay $10-12 and get two meat plate than get three meat BAD food. I will even eat a chopped beef or pulled pork sandwich with 1-2 sides for $8-10.

Would not purchase in future, meal was not tasty and fast food seemed a better value

It was just more food than I could eat

Make it much cheaper; we have 4 kids and can't afford to pay $12/person to eat lunch

Need good BBQ — or how about fried chicken!! Mopsy’s from Taylor, TX!!

We need to find a way to make a profit on meals!

Cheaper price for large families

Something other than overpriced bbq. It’s time for a change.

Did not particularly like the catered meal. Also, eating utensils were not sturdy for cutting food.

The cost and adding a green vegetables.

I would not purchase the catered meal if the same vendor is used. The obviously know nothing about preparing brisket.

Not to have an outside caterer. From what I understand we did not make money on the meal in addition the food did not look great especially the chicken! Not my idea of barbeque! It would be great to have homemade food! What about having different types of food from different cultures. The fast food would also be a good way to go and add more items like sausage on a stick!

Buppy's Barbeque

We have a large family so need to go with the hamburgers/hotdogs - Catered is too expensive for us all

lower the cost or make the quality of the food better

Something other than bbq

Fast Food

Fast food that came with wrist band ran out by the time we went to eat that was the only reason I responded as no on #5. My daughter did not do many activities and the food ran out so was not really

We acknowledge that the fast food ran out, which is the first time this has happened. Obviously, the wristbands were more popular than we expected and it impacted the amount of fast food available.

worth it and I had to buy extra tickets for us to get drinks for me and my husband.

This will be taken into account next year and we'll have extra food on hand in an attempt not to run out. We'll also investigate having a "runner" to go get more if we start getting low on items.

More health food options.

Be more aware of the process to buy dogs and burgers to that we don't run out

I do appreciate the hamburger and hotdog option. Worked great for the kids.

KofC meal was great! Kids loved it. They should be provided more food though so they don’t run out of hamburgers.

More info on meal serving times. We missed the free fast food meal as it was closed when we breaked from the games.

Loved the wristband idea but we came at 1 and all the “fast food” had run out.

The Knights of Columbus food booth needs to stay open until 4.

There was not enough fast food for all who had bands!

Including a meal with the wrist bands was helpful to parents but there was not enough hamburgers and hot dogs. This also took away from the people that normally purchase the big meal tickets. We should never have run out because it is too cheap to buy hamburgers and hot dogs in bulk.

Country Store

There used to be little bags of candy in the country store for $0.25. This year we let our 5 and 3 year- olds bring their quarters to pick their own candy bag but they didn't have them this year. Very small but our kids would love to see that back!

We can explore bringing back small items for sale, not as a money-maker, but as an opportunity for little ones to purchase something. Thanks for the suggestion.

Parking

Parking was very good this year.. Did not have to walk alot. We failed to properly reserve the nearest parking spots for handicapped parking. This will be done next year. We apologize as we know some parishioners were inconvenienced. Handicapped parking

If you did not attend, what would entice you to go?

We don’t really enjoy the fair atmosphere. So, not sure what would entice us. We used to attend when our kids were little.

Thank you for your comments. It helps to have feedback. We do encourage more participation in the planning of the event next year so these kinds of issues can be addressed. More advertisement about the event offerings, and perhaps less

about the raffle / demand for volunteers.

Fellowship

We had scheduling conflicts nothing that we could have predicted

We were just out if town. Plan to come next year.

Having the children's games on Saturday. Sunday is a family day of rest. Taking 4 kids out into a crowd of strangers is not restful.

I'll do my best to attend next year, but more time of fest would be great.

fellowship

Activities geared for older teens and adults.

Bingo

Scheduling in October for cooler weather.

I usually attend but had bad allergy problems so didn't attend

In 2018, the amount of family activities went down a lot. We ran out of stuff to do. When we saw there were no horses for 2019, we knew there wouldn't be enough for us to do.

Other

It was a great event, and my family really enjoyed it! Thanks! Again, we thank you for your comments! Some of these comments contain great suggestions that we can incorporate. All of the I think it was well done this year...

Overall, thought it turned out well ... decided to eat lighter this year w/fast food vs catered meal bc we’d had a family reunion the day before. On survey, may need to add a few more options like “N/A”, “possibly” or rating from 1-5 on foods...or “not sure”... again, just a suggestion. Enjoyed it...but we’re older w:no kids or grans attending ... think everyone seemed to enjoy the day !!!

feedback is helpful so we can learn how to make the event even better next year. Anyone that is interested in planning next year's event is welcome to join the committee. It is a fair amount of work (numerous meetings before the event) and some responsibilities during the event itself, but it is fun planning the activities and you'll get to know some great parishioners better!

This was my first time attending and while we really enjoyed our time it seemed only the wealthy could participate.

Enjoyable for the whole family but definitely need to budget as everything was more expensive than expected but for a great cause.

I would like to see the events carry more throughout the weekend. I really enjoyed the Saturday evening dance we used to do.

It did not seem as inviting as years past. It feels as though the church doesn't want people around too much or too late in the day. Just my opinion.

It is a very nice community event.

Jeff did a great job of organizing things!!

Live music or music outside would be fun.

I thought it was nicely organized and a lot of fun! We loved the food package with the bands for our kids and that we got a discount with three wristbands.

Have the festival on Saturday.

In previous years, we went. There was no space for me to comfortably breastfeed my baby without men wandering by me. I ended up on the floor of an empty RE classroom. I find it to be very crowded. It is hard for me to supervise my children in an environment where other parents are letting their children run around by themselves. I guess if you are fundraising, you can ignore this. Like with most events at St. Thomas, we either can't afford them or we go and are basically ignored by our fellow parishioners.

Great job coordinating everything! From what I saw, things appeared to go smoothly, which is always a great sign for this type of event.

It could have been cooler, out of our hands though. :)

Great job by committee.

Tell parishioners where the income is going. Promoting a goal for a specific purpose engages the audience and gives them a sense of contributing to a specific cause! Smoke and mirrors ... regarding our parish financials

Help moms with younger children to do their chatting outside so that their younger children could experience the lovely outside games.

Add a plant sale.

Need accounting of income, expenses, raffle winners in bulletin. Need to be transparent. Not sure the model of "small town picnics" works in BCS. Saw only a few young families participation in the "work areas" Sunday, saw plenty participating in social Bingo Event on Friday night based on website pictures.

It was well ran and we had a lot of fun.

Everything else was great!

Everything. It’s thing [time?] for a change.

Thank you to all the volunteers!!!! Lots of work goes into the festival and it’s so appreciated!!!!

Cooler weather

Thanks to all the dedicated workers from STA.

Need a beer garden and an old school big band ( nice instrumental group). This is a great event and I believe this could be even greater event.

Fun family time!!!

This year AquinasFest was very enjoyable.

I think you should publish how much the festival raised for the parish and what the money was used for.

I worked over 5 hours and did not have a chance to see any thing but the fast foods and the ticket table. Where are the other thousands of parishioners. There is more to Aquinas fest than the auction. I think the fest needs extend after mass and close with a dance til 9 or so Live music during the day. Advertise, Advertise, ADVERTISE!!!

Apparently STA is not doing something right. Small rural parishes can make 20K to 30K on a meal. 50+ on an auction that has home made and canned goodies, plants, quilts. At High Hill, Church of the nativity, families. Baked 13 - 15 cakes for the cake walk, as well as for the desserts for the meal. Just some thoughts

Have music! It seemed that some things started shutting down at 3. Have activities last longer. People wanted to stay longer but ran out of things to do aside from sit and watch the auction with no intention of bidding!

Great job to the Heyes!

Noticed that many people didn’t know where things were. I didn’t as I have gone for many years but not sure if there is a way to better communicate where writhing is going on

All the families were having such a good time.

1. This event does not attract anyone from outside of our church. This feels like a festival that is put on by our people for our people. There needs to be more outside marketing and a bigger push to bring others in to help out our church community. Having the smaller raffle discussed above would also help with attracting money from outside of our church and help with stimulating the interest of other people to our festival. 2. There should be better signage on the frontage road to attract others for weeks in advance. Large letters to be easily seen by passing cars. It should say raffles, food, games, auctions, etc. or maybe even use the thin vertical flags that people are using these days. Each one could say something different and be spaced out

along the road. And...the main sign should NOT be draped over the church sign to cover up the name of our parish!

Very organized this year! We miss the horse rides though.

We had a great time! Stayed more inside because of the heat.

I'm not sure this is feasible, but I have seen other churches allow vendors to rent a table and sell their items, i.e. Pampered Chef, Scentsy, etc.... They invite their customers and they pay a fee.

This was another great year for AquinasFest! A big thanks to all those who volunteered in whatever way to make this another great year! Looking forward to next year!

Offer beer for sale. Fried Chicken.