One thing that the OP mentioned was involving students. As bad as the intimidation in fundraising at work is (hey, pay me a living wage before you ask me to donate to a multi-billion-dollar organization), involving students is 100X worse. Candy, wrapping paper, whatever. The return for the student/school vs. profit made by the company is on par with the worst sweatshops you can think of. I used to ask my principal (at whatever school I was at) every year how he slept at night knowing he was prostituting the very children that trusted him.
I never understood why when I was a kid why my school was always trying to make me sell wrapping paper outside of Christmas.
Who the fuck needs wrapping paper that much they’re going to buy it from strange kids knocking at their door?
That is horrifying.
I’m OK with companies encouraging their employees to donate to a cause by offering to match donations up to a certain amount. The cause should be something everyone can agree on, and there should be no pressure whatsoever. If you’re already in the habit of hiring utter doinks as managers, maybe just don’t go down that road at all. But I’ve seen it done in a way that didn’t bother me, so I’ll concede it’s possible.
Yeah, the OP’s example of university faculty being asked to encourage fundraising from their students, who are at least adults, is IMHO nowhere near as bad as primary/secondary schools pushing minor children into school sales drives.
Schools requiring students to do some kind of non-monetary community service is one thing. And voluntary-membership organizations like Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts doing sales activities is one thing. But schools expecting their students to get out there and sell stuff on the school’s behalf is something quite else. Going to school is not voluntary.
I am saying it is asinine to make the assumption she did. And your assumption that most of my sponsors don’t care about feeding people is backed by hard data? Rather than just projection on your part.
And I have no idea what you’re going on about with the “high overheads” compared to other types of fundraising. As far as I can tell, there are thousands of hours of VOLUNTEER labor involved in organizing the bike ride. The biggest line item by far is the police detail and that’s a few thousand on an event that nets hundreds of times that.
If thousands of riders went door to door or just starting shooting off emails to all and sundry to solicit support for a food bank for 10-12 hours maybe we’d pick up more than $1M in donations. But of course we’d never do that, so there’d be no money raised at all. And you’d be pissed off at us for sending emails or knocking on your door or whatever.
This does not apply to nearly all schools and certainly does not apply to public schools - but my kids parochial , tuition-charging grade school did that stuff because a fair amount of parents wanted it. Every year, when budget and tuition setting time came around, there was a group of parents who wanted to eliminate the mandatory fundraising - that was things like the candy sale where the school had to promise a minimum number of sales to the fundraising company ( typically either one box per family or per child). We weren’t necessarily opposed to fundraising events that were also social activities such as bingo nights where the prizes were donated groceries or the flea markets where the money was raised by vendors buying tables etc. Just the “every (family or child) must sell one box or candy or buy it themselves” type of event. In ten years, we couldn’t get rid of them - because too many parents preferred to sell the candy rather than pay perhaps an extra $50 in tuition.
Would there be more money, or less money raised if those hours were spent at their jobs and the money earned was then donated?
No one would do this. And I think you know this. We deal with the world and people as they exist. Not in some optimized world where people are machines.
Almost certainly. However, this would never happen.
Take my real life example. When my son was in Cub Scouts, I spent 3 weekends a year selling Christmas Trees as a fundraiser for the Pack. 9 days and nights outside in the cold, rain, snow, ice, selling trees to people. Mrs. Cheesesteak joined in, as did Kid Cheesesteak. It was a lot of hard dirty work, but we were THRILLED to volunteer our time this way. Happily going home at 8:30pm on a Saturday, bone weary and worn down after a 10 hour day slinging pine.
Do you think I’d spend my weekends selling trees for the guy in the Pathmark parking lot, then donating all that money to the Scouts? Fat chance. Volunteering and participating in fundraising for charity is a community building event, a social event for the participants, people have FUN while doing it. Working and writing a check isn’t fun.
I can’t imagine that importuning strangers could be fun. This is probably part of my issue: every time I’m asked to donate, I feel bad for saying no, and bad for the person being forced to ask me. This is my issue, which I can manage. It’s only when it crosses into the workplace, which I naïvely think should be free from such things, it crosses a line and strikes me as wrong. I’m starting to see how common it is!
Glad you had fun, though: de gustibus!
Apparently only because we are idiots, apparently. If we were “economic rational actors” we’d be generating more billable hours at our law firms and then donate that money.
I agree with the OP, especially since they are adjunct faculty, which is a tough, ill-paid gig, unless it’s a side hustle from their main job, say a lawyer who teaches a course on their specialty once in a while. Adjuncts are often in need of charity to make ends meet and no one should be asking them to donate to anything. A department-wide email is a little different, it’s spam that can be junked, but anything more personal is just wrong, imho.
I also hate the faculty debates for the United Way, in part because someone always nominates me as a potential debater and I have no idea who this arch nemesis is, but also because I believe such services as provided by the UW charities should be funded through taxes. No one’s food, medical, and other needs should be dependent on the kindness of strangers who have a dumb debate that raises $1,000, $450,000 of which goes to the salary of the UW president. It is mostly an advertising show for the university, and the president of the university gets to bask in the glow of their fellow presidents.
The well-known high overheads associated with high-profile charity sporting events, as exemplified by this well-known charity event promoter, that involve a lot of logistical and material support for participants. This is not news to anybody who looks at such fundraising via charity evaluators like Charity Navigator or the BBB Foundation. And it’s not insulting the good intentions of organizers or participants in such events to make this observation.
There there, I didn’t say that your friends “don’t care about feeding people”. The point is that most sponsors of participants in charity sporting events don’t particularly care about the particular foundation organizing the event. What primarily motivates them to donate is the desire to support their friend or acquaintance in achieving a personal athletic goal.
Again, this is not news in fundraising circles; it’s a well-known phenomenon that organizers are consciously relying on.
Sure, I didn’t make any claims about the specific overheads of your charity ride in particular, about which I have no information. I already noted that some types of charity sporting events, like local short walks etc., have lower overheads than average, and the same might well be true of your charity ride too.
I still don’t see what you’re getting upset about here. Nobody AFAICT has expressed any sentiments of being in any way “pissed off” at you or any other charity sporting event participant for participating in a charity sporting event. Some of us have just mildly discussed why such events can be problematic in terms of cost-effectiveness compared to other types of charitable fundraising. Why so touchy?
Which is great! There’s nothing in the least wrong with participating in a fun social event that raises some money for charity, even if it’s not the most cost-effective form of charitable fundraising.
What’s being pointed out by the “other side” here is just the perspective of some potential donors/sponsors who are more interested in maximizing the cost-effectiveness of their donations than in contributing to the participants’ personal fun experience.
As an adjunct, you don’t owe anyone a damn thing. You’re not even getting properly paid for your services. Having you ask your students for donations is extremely inappropriate.
Even worse…my employer mandatorily garnishes money every two weeks from my paycheck. They send some of it to a local organization and even more of it to a national organization. I’ve enquired if I can be exempt from this garnishment as I don’t agree with how those organizations use those funds, but they flat out told me “no”, that it was for the greater good. What am I to do?
Surely this must be illegal. It also seems rather odd. What’s the employer’s motivation for doing this, rather than just paying you less and donating the money themselves, which would of course be perfectly legal (assuming you’re not earning minimum wage)? If there’s any tax advantage to doing it this way, it’s not obvious.
If you’re in the US … this one may very well be problematic for the employer:
United Way is problematic. So I never contribute to them. My old employer used to have a goal for 100% participation, and would push us to do at least a dollar. No thank you.
The thing with charitable donations, is they are personal. I tend to do a fair amount of research when I do give. And I don’t really want to toot my own horn by making it public. I give where I like the mission, and where I think it will do good. I don’t support shit that gets pushed to me at work.
I never buy the stuff that people bring for their kids to sell for school. Just no.
Not sure where you are- but surely there must be a Dept of Labor or some equivalent. Check with them - even in the US employers can usually only make certain payroll deductions ( such as garnishments or child support) without your written consent. While there might be states that allow companies to have a “mandatory” deduction for charitable contributions, as Riemann say, it makes no sense. They can’t take a tax deduction for your contributions and therefore they’d be better off paying you (and your coworkers) less and taking the deduction. Unless you’re talking about something slightly different , where perhaps someone in your chain of command ( not “the company” ) has pressured you into signing an authorization to deduct contributions to his/her favorite charity.