I have been in this position with my kids & have done the same. My wife actually likes the wrapping paper they sell, so we buy an annual supply of that ourselves. Sometimes we buy the candy ourselves, but mostly not.
I’m lucky. The year my oldest started kindergarten, the elementary school PTA said to hell with retail fundraisers and went to what they call Direct Donation. Just flat out ask the parents to write a check for whatever amount they feel comfortable with. It’s great. No unnecessary crap to buy, kids don’t have to sell stuff, the school gets 200% of the money (I also turn in an educational matching gift form from my employer), I get a tax write-off. Win-win all around.
My sister and I were allowed to buy books from the Scholastic book fairs, mostly because they weren’t that terribly overpriced, and hey, books!
Things that happened only at school were okay – the French club in my high school sold croissants about once a semester, and neither I nor my parents had any issues with extorting minimal amounts of money ($0.50-$1) from my fellow students, who actually wanted what I was selling.
Anything that was supposed to go home and be sold to relatives, neighbors, or door-to-door was summarily tossed. I suspect my mother would have burned it, had there been any safe place to do so. Given that I’m pretty sure the office staff at my grade and high schools drew short straws to see who had to answer the phone when my mother called in, nobody ever bugged me about it.
By getting fixed.
I don’t have kids, but I used to work for a company that provided shipping and warehousing services for one of these companies.
It was actually pretty cool for us - we’d get to buy whatever was left for the season at drastically reduced rates (like 80 to 90% off). Even then, I wouldn’t buy half that crap.
It’s drastically overpriced. The food items, especially chocolate, are of terrible quality. I picked up a few neat things but they were cheaply made.
Personally I think these companies are predatory - whatever happened to bake sales, and the school getting all the profits?
As for me, when I was on the high school basketball team we had the option of selling “_____ High Athletics” T-shirts for $10 or “______ High Athletics” T-shirts with the word “PRIDE” on the back for $15. We paid for the shirts ourselves and then tried to convince classmates, friends, parents’ friends, etc. to buy them from us. I made the mistake of only buying the “PRIDE” shirts. You can probably imagine the reason nobody wanted to buy those ETA: from me.
Oh wow, did the school make money off of those? The little flyers you got once a month or so, I mean. That never occured to me, I thought it was supposed to be just a way to get books.
I was a bit spoiled, my mom and dad just bought up all of what we needed to sell, usually chocolate. That’s how we filled our Easter baskets every year (for anyone who remembers the ‘chocolate crosses?’ thread last Easter, we had plenty of those).
I think they want the crap they get for selling “just 30 items!” We’ve never let them sell it, so they have no clue.
Well, they have a constant lemonade stand during the summer - perhaps I do have little capitalists. Last summer I started making them buy cups and lemonade from Mom and teaching them about cost of good sold - and the dangers to profitability of drinking their own inventory. And they painted sticks and sold them door to door to the neighbors - so maybe they really do want to sell.
In the entire history of all my kids, they have only ever sold ONE thing that had any value whatsoever. It was this kind of cinnamon bun thingy–maybe called a butter bun?–that you bought frozen. When you were ready to eat it, you let it thaw, then baked it. Mmm, fresh bread with cinnamony goodness. We sold a lot of those. Everybody wanted one. I wish I knew somebody selling them because I want one now.
But mostly the things they’ve sold have been useless things or very sleazy things. The strategy is
(1) Lay the sales pitch onto friends who have had kids who laid similar sales pitches on us.
(2) Buy a couple of things just so it doesn’t look like a total waste.
(3) Take it to work and ask if anybody wants to buy any totally useless shit to support the team. Our boss always does. I think he gets reimbursed.
They just fired the Spanish teacher at my kid’s school because they didn’t have enough in the budget (yes, 1/3 of the way through the semester, no Spanish), after doing a fundraiser last year to install a climbing wall in the gym. Priorities, people.
[Ex SBF employee checks in]
Depending on the size and type a fair, the schools make about 20%-30%. The book clubs programs I am not familiar with but there are incentives.
Scholastic Book Fairs is very much a for profit corporation. Predatory does not begin to describe most of the sales force. “Its all about putting books in the hands of children” :rolleyes: , yeah, sure, thats why you are playing games with what schools you service to maximize your bonus.
Those $3.99 books on the shelves cost us as little as 29 cents. In SBF’s defense shrinkage of 8% is about average, making for quite a bottom line hit. My branch was doing 2-3 million a year in sales with 15 employees most making less than $10/hr.
I’m disillusioned! I had so much fun with those books when I was a kid. Awww…predatory? I’m saddened.
Many years back I remember talking with a guy whose wife was the coordinator of the grade school’s Market Day. He was commenting that after donating a couple of hours every week distributing the orders, and who knows how many hours on administrative BS, they figured out that she had generated something like $50. He was commenting on how many family meals and evenings together they missed, for a paltry $50.
We tend to be too blunt with our kids, and put a whole bunch of things in economic terms. I get paid decent coin at my job, and if someone were to take my leisure time, I’d charge them at least double my hourly wage - probably more. It simply does not make economic sense to me to spend time raising less money than I could simply donate. (I’ll acknowledge the possibility of certain “team-building” benefits from group efforts, but IME those are generally minor elements of fundraising activities.)
Heck, my kids have jobs that pay more than they would tend to raise in fundraising. If my kids want to donate to their group, they can use their own earnings.
We had a mildly awkward experience just recently. My son joined the choir this year for the first time. My wife and I attended what we thought was an informational meeting, but was in fact a planning meeting of the parent’s organization. They talked about various fundraising activities. We said neither we nor our kids had the time to spend on them, and would like the option of simply paying a fair share. Another woman jumped all over us saying how not everyone could afford to simply cut a check.
I’m sorry her family doesn’t make as much or manage their money as well as us, but I’m not sure why I or my family should wish to spend our time - and hassle our friends, relatives, and associates - for the benefit of some other kid.
I’ve often thought it would be best if youth groups could provide some services to raise money. Say raking leaves in the fall, or general chores for elderly. I can imagine there might be liability issues, tho. And I’m always a big fan of the HS Cheerleader car washes! Yep, always eager to do my civic duty… 
My son’s former (private) school didn’t do this. They do an auction every year and marketed attendance to it by reminding people that they didn’t make your kids sell any crap because the auction works. Support it!
His current (private) school also doesn’t do kid-based sales. In addition to the auction, they come up with various creative things, like completely closing down the Borders store and making it a private shopping event where Borders kicks back some to the school. This fundraiser is 100% for the library, but also allows teachers to make wish-lists that parents can buy for. Yes, Borders makes some good cash too, but I’m always in there spending my $$ anyway so it works well for me.
My kid is in Campfire USA and the troop was started with the promise that the boys would not have to do candy sales. As it turned out, the council overrode the leaders and REQUIRED it. Obnoxious. The leaders scrambled to figure out a way to “sell” them without the kids selling them. I would have gladly just written the council a check.
I have to confess that I kind of have this thing for wrapping paper and am a little disappointed I don’t know anyone selling Innisbrook. Sally Foster is too Christmas-heavy. I don’t mind the pizza kits or GS cookies, either. It does trouble me when public schools (or worthwhile extracurricular activities at public schools) have to rely on such things.
This is something that got so out-of-hand at work that we banned leaving the stuff at the front desk this year. If they want to sell the stuff they have to individually ask everyone to buy it. If anyone says “no” that’s it. No pressure.
Last year I got a box of four candle tins that smelled wonderful. I hope that person comes around with the same stuff this year.
Usually, I give the children $10 and tell them to buy themselves something.
My niece attended elementary school in a very well-to-do community. instead of selling cheap crap, once a year they had a school carnival/silent auction, and each classroom put together a basket of donated goods to be auctioned. Because of the affluence of the parents, these baskets often had relatively high-ticket items, which people were happy to buy. I understand that when that principal retired (and the parents chipped in and bought him a brand new Bass boat), the new principal tried to start the fund-raising selling. I don’t know how well that went over. These were generous people - see the boat above. When one of the kids had to be out of school for cancer treatment, the parents went together and bought him a lightweight laptop so he could play and study from his bed. They didn’t need or want cheap chocolate and cookie dough.
StG
You might be kidding about the taxes, but that would be my answer. We pay high taxes and, so, have no school fundraisers. Our primary school does have an Octoberfest which the kids love. One of the others has a Spring Fair and the other has, um, something. Even better, the Intermediate School has a craft fair where they sell tables and people come in droves to buy. The kids don’t even mind not going!
Ah, yes: the public radio model. Very effective.
Hell, where I am, we have what is actually called a School Tax and we still get that crap the first or second week of the year.
When I was a wee tot, back in the age of the dinosaurs and all, our school had a Chili Supper / Bingo night.
They hit up all the local merchants for prizes, which went for raffles and door prizes as well as the bingo games.
Did quite well from those. Unfortunately when my mom quit doing it, due to her children moving on to new schools, they dropped it. I believe it was just too much work.
Much easier to harass and taunt and bribe children into doing your dirty work.
I hate these things. At my son’s schools, they were more “prize based” - kids won prizes based on how much they sold. They’d get him all excited about the prize he really wanted to win, then he’d bring this crap home and I’d have to tell him we couldn’t do it. Much unhappiness, crying, “Mom why can’t we” ensued. Where we lived, it wasn’t logistically possible to sell this crap door to door, we didn’t have relatives who could buy it, I can’t take this kind of crap to work, and we didn’t have the money for ME to buy the stuff so he could win a prize. He’d tell me his teachers would compare in class who had sold what and he hated being last all the time…
God, it brings back horrible memories… 