We’re all familiar with the usual ways schools, clubs, and other organizations use to bring in some cash - car washes, bake sales, wrapping paper and greeting card sales, BINGO, raffles… But there’s one upcoming at a local Catholic church and school - a mattress sale.
Yes, as in the thing on your bed. And they’re also going to be selling sheets.
Granted, everyone needs a mattress or 3 - our 3 are all under 4 years old. So even if I felt strongly about supporting this organization, there’s no way I would be buying a mattress. Seriously - whose idea was that???
I think they’re fairly common, but weird auctions for dates or “slave for a day” have always struck me as so creepy I’ve made a determined effort not to learn the rules, customs, and limitations of such things.
I wonder if that’s where they go when those unpacked online mattresses are returned (well, picked up by some guy). I guess the mattress company gets a charitable write off.
I had a friend in Japan who had an interesting job. He bought abandoned consignments at the piers when they were auctioned off. For some reason or another, the intended recipient/ordering retailer was not able to pick the thing up and thus my friend would end up having quite the interesting variety in his small shop near my apartment. One week he’d be selling toddler’s toys, the next week lingerie, and the next stationery. I can see how a mattress shipment could end up in this and an enterprising finance officer for the parish or diocese decided to go for it.
Another interesting fundraiser my ward in Monterey years ago engaged in was for each member of the elder’s quorum to drive rental cars back from the Monterey airport to either the San Jose or San Francisco airport. Sometimes we’d each drive one car from Monterey to San Jose and another from San Jose to San Francisco and yet another car for the return trip or trips. The rental car companies paid us a really small rate per mile driven, but it helped them by returning the vehicles to where they could be rented again. Our elders quorum was not the only outfit involved in this. Some civic organization, maybe the Rotarians (long time ago, so I don’t recall which one), signed up at the same time as we did. I’ve no idea if this is still a thing, but it was interesting to me at the time.
The mattress fundraisers started appearing sometime in the late 2000’s, and they’ve ramped up in the last 10 years or so. As someone who spent a lot of years trying to think of new and creative ways to raise money for teams and school activities, I’m always in awe of people who come up with something novel. It’s especially difficult to figure out how to raise money without selling food, and as soon as you do, other teams and schools try to get in on the action.
A few years ago I a letter in the mail that had “IMPORTANT PIANO INFORMATION” printed on the envelope. Upon reading the letter, I learned that the important piano information was that a local college’s music department had received a donation of new pianos, and they were selling their old ones as a fundraiser, and I had the opportunity to buy one. Or I think it was actually a third party running the sale, hence the junk mail with the important piano information. I guess it was worth a shot for them, but from what I gathered from this thread, old pianos are virtually impossible to even give away. Really, I was just amused by how the letter announced that it contained important piano information.
I started this reply to ask about the details of how that fundraiser would work, but then I realized that I would really prefer not knowing.
The weirdest fundraisers I’ve actually participated in were cleaning up after the dogs at the yearly AKC dog show and delivering flowers for a local florist on Mother’s Day. Both of these activities took place over Mother’s Day weekend, and required active adult participation, and I never managed to get to the sign-up sheets in time to get one of the delivery spots.
The “Funky Winkerbean” comic strip had a series a few years ago of kids selling mattresses door to door to raise money for the band. I realize it was satire, but yeah, I saw a “Band Mattress sale” at a local school a few years ago; they were going to load them into the school’s gym one Saturday, and the general public could buy them and a percentage of the sales would indeed go to the band. My guess is that a child in the band had a family member who owned a mattress store, and things went from there.
I’ve also seen “No Bake Sales” where people simply donate the money they would have spent on making baked goods, and buying the results, directly to the cause. One local charity also had a “No Dress Up Ball” even before COVID.
@Czarcasm, I think the “Masturbathon” idea is hilarious! I could totally see college students doing something like that, with varying levels of publicity.
The weirdest one I was ever hit with was the parents raising funds for their daughters to be in beauty pageants/modelling contests.
I saw them hanging on a bulletin board at a nail salon. Dozens of them. With a headshot of the kid.
Who do they think, besides the kids own grandparents, would give to this?
You had to pull off a number. On it was the phone number to call. Apparently you gave your card info and the ticket number for it to go to the girl to offset her costs for participating. You got nothing for your trouble.
I think it was a scam. A scam on the kid, a scam on the parent and a scam on a potential donor.
My mind is boggled. I can’t believe this is a thing…
When I was in high school and in the choir, we were fundraising our butts off to pay for a trip to a choral competition in Rome. We had bake sales, car washes, a spaghetti supper, a battle-of-the-bands dance, a candle sale, plus the choir would go anywhere to sing for a buck. There may have been other things - but never did anyone suggest mattresses…
(BTW, we raised $33K in 10 weeks and the entire choir got to make the trip for free. This was 1971)
I can contribute, however. When I was in junior high, our school had a fruit sale fundraiser. Sounds healthy and good, but the problem was that it was sold by the case. So, the smallest sale would be one entire case which, if you’ve never seen fruit lying around in cases in a supermarket, is a LOT of fruit. Even if you had 3 kids who actually like to eat fruit daily, it would take them a month to get through a case of oranges/tangerines/whatever. Besides that, it was a very large and heavy delivery. They needed to take their trucks out of the maintenance garage and fill the entire floor area with cases stacked six high. It also required a large number of volunteers to process the whole thing. In other words, NOT recommended.
You would be surprised - not at who would actually give , but at who people think will give. Each of my kids was once “selected”* for some student ambassador program involving international travel. My husband went to an informational meeting , which turned out to be a lesson in how to get friends/relatives/neighbors to just donate money to send your kid to another country for two or three weeks. I don’t think it was actually a scam though - the kids did go on the trips as far as I know and the kids you are talking about may have actually entered the pageants/contests.
* They made it sound like some big honor to be selected but it really wasn’t - for one kid, it turned out that someone we knew was a chaperone
For years, I wished my kids school would do this- I’d spend $2- $3 making 24 cupcakes which sold for a quarter each . Which means that the school got $6 max. But since the bake sale was only open to the school kids and parents, the only baked goods sold were sold to the same people who donated the baked goods and everyone would have been better off if I just donated the $6 to the school - it would cost me an extra dollar or two but save the time it took to bake and the volunteer time to run the sale.
I’d bet that the mattress sale is because some company donated them to the church. So it makes sense to sell what you got.
The only fundraising that seems to consistently make money are garage sales, where members of organizations donate their stuff, the stuff is priced at very low prices to move it out, and everyone goes away happy.
Surely the stupidist one is the soaped-up car rear window - “It’s my birthday - venmo me a drink @ ___”
Ooohhh, you’re sooo special, you have something that literally every other person has on this planet has. I don’t know you, I’ve never even met you, I’m just randomly near your car on a public roadway.
A close second is the GoFundMe’s to help pay for my dream wedding / honeymoon, or even better help me pay for my dream vacation, I’m not sick or dying or anything, I’m not recovering from any medical or natural disaster related financial hardship, I just chose a career with low pay & want to live like the famous celebrities if only for a few days; yanno fly first class, etc.
It’s called retail arbitrage, and quite a few people do it. Those outlet stores that pop up in storefronts, and often last about as long as restaurants (and for the same reasons)? This is a major way they get their stock.
The ones around here specialize in Amazon returns and overstocks, and they buy these random things by the gaylord or the pallet. For every one that contains really valuable stuff, there are several where the items are essentially worthless. Example: I got into a conversation with one owner, and he told us about a pallet of baby food that they got dirt-cheap, and it was so short-dated, they simply discarded it and didn’t even call up the food banks.
