My kids just started pre-k at a private school last month, and they are now coming home with fund-raising materials ie stuff I’m supposed to sell to family, friends and co-workers. I hate the idea of trying to push this stuff, almost as much as I hate being asked to buy it.
Has anyone here managed to avoid selling things for their kids school when asked? Was it difficult? How did you manage?
If it is a general school sale thing like magazines or wrapping paper, we just throw out the materials.
If it is for a club or extracurricular, I say, “What’s the buyout.”
Now that my kids are in high school I don’t even worry about trying to be proper about this crap. It is not worth my or my kids’ time to be shills for some business.
SInce the schools do rely on the funds raised for field trips, supplies etc etc I hate to not participate but I hate to have to buy useless totchkes, or sub par subs or overpriced fudge and all that silly junk. This year I wrote a check and it turns out the kids do get their “prize” for a cash donation, just like the other kids who sell 10, 15 or 20 items or more. The school gets the entire donation and not just a fraction of profits.
I dont feel I have to have something to show for my cash donation, I know it is supporting programs, that is good enough for me.
Wow. Used to be that kids would bring stuff home to sell and parents would try to help their kids out by pushing the stuff at the office. So, have the schools simply dispensed with that thinly-veiled method of guilting parents into taking on a second job and simply drafted them into the sales force?
Jeez, at least with the kids selling, you had an opportunity to give kids an education in salesmanship. I notice from the OP that the kids are in Pre-K, so that’s not even an option since the kids aren’t even old enough.
How scary. Personally, I’d do one of two things:
That’s just me, though.
Depends on what it is. I never minded posting the Girl Scouts Cookies form in the office, because lots of people need their GSC fix. OK, not strictly school, but ya know what I mean.
There are some school fundraisers here that sell good stuff, and we didn’t mind participating in those. (In fact, I’ve got a cooler full of Blue&Gold sausage sitting by my desk right this moment, purchased from a co-worker’s kid. Poor y’all everywhere else that don’t have the goodness of B&GS.)
The crap ones we just sent back the form with a check and a note that we didn’t want to participate in force-selling overpriced crap. The most entertaining one was for the Christmas CD, where the note pointed out that since our girl is Jewish, there was a limited market for that CD in her circles. I also feel free to ignore the OPC sales by co-workers.
Schools, unfortunately, do need the extra money, so I don’t mind donating. And as was already pointed out, the school actually gets more money that way. But I hate the crap they sell most of the time these days.
Pretty much our take as well. We then subject our kids (who want to sell, they’ve been to the ‘get stuff’ pep rally!) to the 'its unethical for a for profit business to use elementary school aged children as a sales force for the paltry amount of profit they pass on to the school" lecture. And we write a check.
(It sucks to be our kids).
I’ll sell chocolate bars, at a buck each they’re about the same as the vending machine and no one (except the ladies on a diet) seem to mind. And I work with one guy that’s addicted to those butterbraid things.
The rest of the crap sits in my car for a couple days, but I won’t try to push that junk on anyone. I’ve told my kids I’ll buy them the prize if they don’t bother anyone with their fundraisers. Oldest wanted to sell $700 worth of knickknacks and stale candy to win a $70 iPod Nano. Yeah, I’ll pick that up at Target and save everyone the hassle.
Yeah, I throw everything out the first time through. If they care enough to put the heat on, I pony up the cash myself.
But the year my goddaughters didn’t sell Girl Scout Cookies, they got an earful. Not from the Scouts, from all of us who had bought in the past! You don’t go gettin’ someone hooked on the good stuff and then cut off their supply nonchalant-like, you know what I’m sayin’?
This has been a sensitive issue with me since the first week of 7th grade, when I was already apprehensive about all the new stuff (and possibly having to fend off drug pushers), when in my homeroom class someone came in and gave a presentation about selling magazine subscriptions and telling us that we all had to sell at least three. I was a very shy kid and I hated talking to strangers. For the rest of the day, I could think about nothing but the terror of having to go door to door to peddle crap.
Years later, when I realized that they couldn’t make such sales mandatory, I was pissed. This kind of shit should really be banned in public schools.
The state of california won’t let me be within 500 feet of any children but I have a few suggestions for getting out of this kind of work if youre interested.
Another non-participant. I write a check, and invite my close relatives to make a lump sum donation to the school’s PTA rather than buy Christmas gifts for me or my husband.
I work alone so the school probably nets more this way than if I tried to sell the wrapping paper.
I don’t understand how PTAs (etc) are still dealing with those companies. I’d say only about 40% of the students (or their parents) at our school sell that stuff, and if the opportunity didn’t exist I don’t think any of them would miss it.
I don’t have kids, but I have boycotted buying anything school fundraiser related this year. Even if it’s something I would buy anyway. It’s not that I hate kids, I’m just sick of being guilted into participating for every co-worker and their offspring.
I love you and I want to have your babies. (Ok, I know I was probably beat there, considering you have three kids already.)
Even as a kid, I thought it was obnoxious. (Well, especially as a kid.) Especially at my school, where 99% of everyone was a spoiled rich WASP. The idea of selling things to reduce the price of a school trip when most people could already more than afford it was kind of nauseating. Send rich white kids to colonial Williamsburg! or Washington D.C.! Gah.
I have 25 employees which means I have 25 foster children with children of their own and every one of them brings their fund raising junk to the office. I feel it is nice of me to buy something little from each one but how much gift wrap and over priced chocolate does one need? Now I just write a check for a five dollar donation to their organization.
In regards to my daughter’s junk; it depends on the reward system. Usually if they sell enough stuff they get a “dress down day” which in private school is a day of street clothes rather than uniforms. Her grandparents, aunts and uncles combine together to buy fifty or so dollars worth but I certainly am not making my employees feel obligated to buy anything. Not with what I pay them.
I’ve never asked my neighbors or friends or relatives to buy stuff. (Interestingly, some don’t seem to realize it and routinely hoist their kids upon me.) One of my friends at work has no problems bringing in fundraiser after fundraiser to help finance her kid’s $1000/year select baseball team. :rolleyes:
In any event, I donate $75 a year to the PTO and then decline to participate in any of the fundraisers. My daughters are, thankfully, too old to fall prey to the cheap prizes (one prize that used to bring tears was brightly colored cottonballs with eyes glued on; I kid you not) they lure the kids with to get them to sell the shit.
By paying more taxes!
No, by making a donation to the school’s pencil/basketball/band instrument/whatever fund!
Oh, no, wait. That’s what happens after I avoid selling the chocolate bars. 
Your kids WANT to sell? I must have been even more of an apathetic freak than I thought I was.
I don’t have kids, but my Dad used to get out of this by simply refusing to take the order forms, etc. to work. His told me, “I’m a senior manager. I don’t want the people who work for me to think they have to buy stuff to make a good impression on me.”
We have a family policy of trying to only contribute to things where the school gets 100% of the profit. So no Sally Foster, no cookie dough. Once in a while we buy something from the Scholastic Book Fairs. We always go to the Halloween Carnival and the dinner dance and we write a check for the Jogathon and buy stuff at the bake sale.
The exception is Girl Scout cookies, because that is their only fundraiser. I get around the “pushy” factor by volunteering for site sales outside grocery stores, etc. My daughter gets credit for a cut of whatever we sell in a couple of hours. I would put the sheet out at work, but my workplace is about 90% women and there are several signups with more seniority than I have.
We haven’t done the Cub Scout popcorn thing yet, but we did participate in a Father/Son cake bake and auction that raised quite an astonishing amount of money.
My husband has also been on some fundraising committees and was pretty successful at getting parent to encourage local businesses to contribute. We just dedicated a new turf field with a bit of help from the San Diego Chargers, for example.
I’ve recently been told I have to sell stuff for my nursing school pinning ceremony. How crazy is that? However, we were flatly told that the buyout was $30 so that’s what I’m doing. Nobody I know wants overpriced chocolates.