Disney princesses and Mickey and Minnie took over the Murrysville area Saturday morning for “A Royal Pancake Feast,” a fundraiser benefitting the Franklin Regional Marching Band.
Members are set to travel to Walt Disney World in Florida in March, a trip the band takes once every four years.
Nick Nutter, the marching band’s director, said the pancake breakfast was Disney-themed to match its upcoming march in the Magic Kingdom.
“We can do a pancake breakfast any time, but making it Disney-themed brings in a different set of people that can have fun with a fundraiser like this,” he said.
Band front members donning princess costumes were there to greet kids who arrived as mini princesses, as well as participate in photo-ops, according to Ashley Brett, band front coordinator. Honor guard students were dressed as Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
“For this specific one, we wanted to do something a little bit different than our generic pancake breakfast — something to bring the upcoming generation to get involved,” she said.
The servers and cleanup crew for the pancake breakfast were all band musicians, with parents and volunteers cooking breakfast staples behind the scenes in the kitchen, Brett said.
Hair and face painting and crafts were also available for attendees, she said, which was a way for the students to be more involved.
Brett said at least 100 tickets were sold prior to the breakfast, with numerous walk-ins.
“This one, specifically, is going to go to the general fund,” she said, as well as helping to feed the students at Disney World, as the theme park is becoming more expensive.
During the big trips, there are aspects that the students don’t pay for with their trip fee, according to Nutter, so having the support of these kinds of general fundraisers helps defray extra costs.
The cost is now up to almost $2,000 per student to attend, according to Toni Mitro, Franklin Regional Band Booster co-treasurer for 2025-26, and they have to raise their own funds to go.
“We want (the students) to have a community presence,” Mitro said of the fundraiser, which took place in the First Presbyterian Church’s Laird Hall. “We’re trying to make this more community-focused instead of door to door because everyone’s selling something.”
This will be the marching band’s first trip since flying to Hawaii in December 2023, which Nutter said cost around $2,750 per student.
“It’s significantly less because a lot more things of this trip are included in the overall student cost,” he said of Disney.
For example, the band won’t have to rent larger instruments like drums at Disney World, which it had to do in Hawaii for checked baggage purposes, Nutter said.
Usually, the band travels to a notable destination once every two years. In the past, the band has marched in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the Tournament of Roses Parade among others.
“We continually fund-raise,” Mitro said, citing the band’s annual fruit and hoagie sales, football season concessions and other, smaller, fundraisers like fudge and coffee.
Finding volunteers
Over the past few years following the covid-19 pandemic, the Franklin Regional Marching Band was having a hard time getting students to volunteer to help with fundraising.
“We have a really strong group now — it takes a lot of hands,” Nutter said. “We’re very fortunate to have a lot of people who want to be involved.”
Now, students are seeing “how much fun” fundraising can be, he said.
“It was the signs of the time,” Nutter said. “We didn’t do a lot of fundraising during covid because we couldn’t.”
In the past, Mitro said the band was seeing about only a 30% student participation rate in fundraising, and that the money raised was being split among all students in the band.
Now, the marching band has switched to a “fair share dues” approach, which is also used by numerous other local marching bands, according to Nutter.
“We allow the parents to choose. Some people don’t want to fund-raise,” Mitro said. “It’s all personal preference, and that way the kids who do fund-raise don’t carry the band.”
This year’s fair share dues were $190 per student, she said, which Nutter explained is used for operating expenses for the year.
Seasonal operating expenses can include the football season, halftime show supplies and equipment, snacks, water, annual band banquet and more, he said.
Any extra money left over stays in students’ individual accounts for future trips. Once students graduate, they have the choice to pass along any outstanding funds to siblings, other band members or anonymously donate it to band students in need, according to Nutter.
“That’s kind of a good life lesson for them now,” Mitro said. “Fundraising money, legally for the band, we can’t give it as cash.”
The biggest challenge in fundraising, Nutter said, is trying not to pick fundraisers that people don’t want to participate in or buy from.
“It’s a lot of the same things over and over, so (we’re) trying to keep things fresh,” he said. “The staff couldn’t do it without the help of the parents. … We’re fortunate to have the awesome parents that we do.”
