For my son, I write the school a check, usually anwhere from $75 to $100. I never take the information to the office and pass it around.
At work, I make a (small) purchase from every fundraiser that comes across my desk. Unfortunately, however, it seems that every school uses the same three companies:
Innsbrook: Overpriced wrapping paper and stuff I could find in the Dollar Store. Inevitably, I’ll forget and order the same item twice (sometimes thrice!) from different people. Some Pizza Company: I don’t like their pizza but the kids will eat it. Some Cookie Dough Company: Again, the kids will eat the cookies whenever I get around to baking them.
So what’s your plan of attack during school-fundraising season?
My son’s day care is involved in fundraisers using these two companies (the same ones you see, I’ll wager. Does the pizza company sell purple, green, and orange “kids pizzas?”) and does really well with them. I don’t have a problem bringing stuff to work, since most of the staff either has children who are grown, or have no children at all, so I don’t have to worry about having to make many reciprocal purchases.
In our office, any fundraiser involving chocolate is a guaranteed success.
I’ve been spared this year… so far. My daughter knows I won’t buy the stuff she has to sell for chorus, but her ex-bf’s family bought a bunch, and a family friend bought one of the Entertainment books. She will be bringing home the pie order forms next week, and I’ll order a couple of them, but that’s it.
No one in the office brought anything in - I think they’re afraid that if they sell something to another parent, that parent will expect them to buy crap in return. But even if they did ask, I’d decline. I’ve gotten good at that.
We get stuck selling candy at $2 a bar. Often I’ll just put them in the work cafeteria at $1 and cut my losses. Quick and easy and it won’t be like when we got stuck with 30 candy bars.
When kids are selling, we’ll buy from the ones in the neighborhood, but not if it costs more than like $5. I always felt the more expensive stuff like the $10 wrapping paper was to exploit grandma and such.
Well, I’ll just point out this recent Pit thread in case you hadn’t seen it, and in case you had never considered the alternative of just not participating in the fund raisers.
Quoting myself in the above linked Pit thread:
Having said that, in order to sort-of answer the OP properly:
In all the years leading up to opting out of fund raising, we went through the gamut of physcially going door-to-door with the kids, then taking the stuff to the office and/or calling family and friends, to just buying whatever it was ourselves.
Buying it ourselves was of course a huge waste of money as you can only eat so much chocolate or use so much wrapping paper. Most of it got thrown out.
Yet it’s impossible to get rid of it all because all their friends and their friend’s friends are selling the stuff at exactly the same time. Argh.
=shudder= You’ve brought back memories of my daughter’s school fundraisers: Magazine sales, every year from Kindergarten through 8th grade. Ugh. For nine years, we bought every magazine subscription we had through that damn catalog. And gave magazine subscriptions as gifts a couple of times so we could meet the school’s quotas. I hated every second of fundraiser season.
Coworkers seem to have mostly chocolate bar sales. I usually buy one if asked, just to be a sport.
I once proposed that all the folks in the office get together and demand that the schools do their fundraising all at the same time so we could just take over the company cafeteria and have a huge fundraiser flea market/swap meet. No money changes hands, just exchange equal values of crap and write your own check to your own school. Would have been a lot easier.
Ugh, we got the Innsbrook gift wrap and candy crap one, too. It came home the very first freaking day of school. That’s what really annoys me. The *first freaking day of school, * the thing comes home!
His school did offer you the chance to be a “Rooster Booster” (the school mascot is a Rooster) for $15, rather than participate in the fund raiser. You got a school folder, pencils and water bottle. They don’t push the participation, which is nice. I really hate the “prize” the kids get for selling up different levels, though. It’s all just crap.
I pass it around to the grandparents, and I buy something, but I don’t take it to work. They kinda frown on that where I work.
My son is also shilling, err, I mean, selling popcorn for the Boyscouts so we’re hit with a double whammy. My husband took that one to work and has sold quite a bit. They claim that 75% of the money stays with the local troop. I guess since they’re Scouts, I have to believe them.
He’ll also take the Pizza one to work and sell a bunch. We get the Joe Corbi pizza kits, and they’re pretty good. I like the white pizzas.
I pretty much just say no, too. The neighbor kid usually comes around with the magazine subscription one, and since I get Smithsonian and Practical Horseman, I usually order those from her. I don’t have kids and don’t feel the need to buy from every numerous parent in my office. Sometimes I’ll buy a candy bar, though. It ends up being cheaper than the ones in the vending machine, because they’re double sized. I’ve never seen a pizza one.
Y’know, I bought that popcorn (the “light” variety) from a neighborhood kid a few years ago. IIRC, it wasn’t hideously expensive, and it was, I kid you not, the best light microwave popcorn I have ever had!!
As to the OP, all the school fundraisers suck, except for the $1.00 king-sized candy bars. I’ll buy one or two of them for the kids when kids come around selling them. The pizza sucks and the wrapping paper and candy from Innsbrook are so over priced, I’d never buy it again!
My kids, before they were home-schooled, had a particularly hard time of it; the school had issued an official edict that they didn’t want kids going door-to-door, just sell to friends and relatives. Well, our relatives don’t live in this area; and if I tried to sell all that crap to my friends, I’m afraid I wouldn’t have any more friends!
