Do they do this in your city? Occasionally here in L.A., we see kids wandering around with large boxes of candy bars that they try to sell for charity. I occasionally give them a buck or two, but, since the prospect of a Butterfinger or Baby Ruth that’s been carried around in the hot sun all day has zero or little appeal to me, I decline to actually take any of it. Occasionally, however, I say that I’m not much of a candy freak, in hopes that the message will trickle up to the charity organizers that many, many people simply don’t care for candy.
Considering that fact, couldn’t the charity organizers come up with a better thing to sell?
Well, having had kids in public school, I know what kind of stuff they are pedaling. Some of the stuff is more useful than candybars, but it’s mad expensive. For instance, 40 feet of wrapping paper for $6.00. Plus, with that kind of stuff, you have to hand out catalogs, take orders, collect money, take money to school to turn in, pick up products at school, and finally, deliver them to the person who ordered them. Whew! Candy bars, at only a buck each, sell well; and are delivered on the spot.
I went through the scouts so I had to wander door to door selling popcorn. I remember doing the candy thing when I was back in 2nd or 3rd grade… I’m amazed that nobody realizes hmmm… it might be a bad idea to send little Jack and Jill out wandering the streets going from stranger’s house to stranger’s house. I know I saw some weird people and there were a couple I was warned NEVER to go near. Yay, fundraising.
And do the kids get paid fairly for their work that they really shouldn’t be doing anyway because of the risks? NO. I remember selling junk when I was little for some fundraising crap… something about some school program, whatever it was I never saw a difference after it. Guess what our payment was?
There was a little book of toys. If we sold something like $100 of junk we could get a plastic football or (drumroll please) a cheap digital watch!
The scouts are just as bad. We sell popcorn and a portion (most of it) goes to council to keep the local camp working (I worked there for several years, it runs on popcorn and is held together by duct tape). The small percentage (20 or so) left went to us to help pay going to that camp… Though there was a problem, I learned after working there for a while. Most of the money going to the camp pays off the retirement for a couple of the most executive members of the council. So kids 8 and up are wandering randomly throughout the city knocking on stranger’s doors to help pay the retirement for some guy I’d only met after working for the council office for 2 years. I know its not like that everywhere, but kids are put at risk and (on the average, IMHO) the kids get F*CKED over bad. But they get a plastic football, so all’s well.
Every now and again we get door-to-door urchins selling chocolate bars. Usually they are from the local gradeschool and the bars come from a familiar fund-raising company, but every now and again it will be some bar of unfamiliar appearance and a kid with a photo badge saying something like “Hi, would you like to support the Kids Action Employment Initiative?”
The last time this happened, I asked the girl (11 or 12 years of age, I would guess) what organization the sales supported, to which she said, “Huh?”. So then I said, “Who organizes the sale?” and she said, “Well, this guy Nick? He gives us the candy bars out of the back of his van? And then we give him the money at the end of the day.”
“so, then Nick passes the money on to the Kids Action Employment Initiative?”
My son’s school just had a fairly good fundraiser (IMHO). It suppoted local business and the school. They sold “scratchy” cards. Top prizes were things like a trip, a car and a PS2 but every card won something.
The “something” was things like, a fitness assesment at a local gym, a free game of pool, a free lube, a free game of bowls, a free haircut…etc etc. The school raised money and local businesses were able to promote themselves.
As for kids doing the door to door thing, most kids can sell their allotment through family, friends and neighbours.
NZ has uniforms for most state schools after primary level, this is a golden opportunity for fund raising once a term (semester in the US?). Kids have a mufti day and bring a dollar for the privilege The kids love it and it is a regular fund raiser. My sons school sponsor 2 children in Bangladesh on mufti days alone.
Yeah, haardvark, I’d heard of similar things and so try to avoid this. In my area, it’s kids with big boxes of name-brand candy selling their wares outside a store, or going door-to-door. They claim it’s for some kind of “basketball camp” for underprivileged kids, and one of the times I said sorry, that I don’t eat candy, the kid asked for a donation then.
With some googling, I found some articles about candy charity scams in Florida and Houston, for instance.
What makes you think there are organizers? In New York, most of these kids bought big boxes of candy somewhere and are trying to make some money. You really think some “organizer” would send young kids out by themselves to raise money without any literature, ID badges, or anything aside from a big box of candy?
So, there are a lot of different candy-selling people, and some are legit, some aren’t, huh? I used to see those kids with the huge boxes of candy bars “for charity,” and wouldn’t buy from them since they were unsupervised and seemed kind of shady.
My neighbor kids, OTOH, show up all the time (with their mom or dad hovering 10 feet away), asking me to buy candy, coupons, cookie dough, all kinds of stuff for school or sports. Unless it’s something I really can’t use, I usually buy something. I’m either a sucker for a cute face, or a community-minded good neighbor. shrug
Yeah, the legit promotion/fundraiser candies will be packaged differently and come in special boxes with carry handles and a bunch of fundraising text on the outside. Anyone can go to Smart & Final or CostCo though and pick up a case of M&Ms and sell them for twice as much and hope to not get caught. Here in the SF area I’ve seen moms drop a couple kids off on the BART (commuter train) where they’d walk up and down the aisles trying to sell to their captive audience. Tacky!
Kids selling stuff…wow, what town do you live in? Here, parents do the selling. I’m constantly bombarded at work with parents selling Girl Scout cookies for their daughters, parents selling Boy Scout popcorn for their sons, parents selling wrapping paper, holiday cards, pizzas, you name it. I’ve yet to see a kid be the one asking me if I’d like to support the band/class trip/All American kids group.
I went to a small Catholic school growing up and we constantly sold raffle tickets (okay, so maybe it was twice a year) for a fundraiser. The prize was usually something the school got donated specifically for the raffle (one time it was a side of beef). I’ll tell you, in my day, the kids hustled from door to door, selling those raffle tickets. No parents took them to work to sell…
Well, part of the problem is this: because of the danger of just knocking on doors, the schools now say: sell only to friends and relatives. Well, guess what? We don’t have any relatives around here. We do have a few friends, but I’ll be damned if I’ll start being a huge pain in the butt by hitting up the same half-dozen friends for money 6 or so times a year! I will, however, consider buying stuff from local kids, depending on the deal. If someone is selling candy bars for band or some such, I might buy one for each of my kids; hell, I’m only out three bucks. And if anyone is selling Boy Scout popcorn, I will buy it! That’s some damned good pop corn!
:::makes mental note: call norinew in the Fall when son, newly minted as a Bear in the Cub Scouts, starts selling popcorn again ::: *
My kids have done all that, and I hate pushing it on my friends, especially the cheap gift wrap/candy ones.
The Boy Scout popcorn is pretty easy to sell because people like it, though. They (my kids) also sell pizza kits, which people love.
My son also sold candy bars for his school (to buy new playground equipment - the county would match whatever they raised). We had to buy the box of 50 candybars outright, and then just kept the money we made. My husband took them to work, and he could sell a box of 50 in 2 days, easily. People in his office bought them like crazy, and clients bought them, too. He said it was just unbelievable how quickly they disappeared. We ended up selling eight boxes total. My son’s only 7 - there’s no way I would have let him walk the streets hawking candybars.
The kids love it and it is a regular fund raiser. My sons school sponsor 2 children in Bangladesh on mufti days alone.