The start of another school year, and the start of glossy catalogs full of unnecessary shit being sent home for the fundraiser of the month. Schools are using our kids to raise money, sending them door to door or having them pick on relatives and parents friends/coworkers.
To make things worse, today my kid came home saying that I need to give the school the names and addresses of all family members that live outside the area. After some querying I discovered that the fundraising company (“Great American Opportunites”) wants the names and addresses to send catalogs.
What the fuck? There is no way in hell I’m ratting out my relatives to Great American Opportunites. And the school and teachers are encouraging this.
If they want donations for worthy causes I’ll give money, but damned if my kid is going door to door selling junk every few weeks and double-damned if I’m contributing my relative’s addresses to a junk mail list!
This is one step away from telemarketers and spam.
Good grief, it’s already starting. Had my first solicitation for funds for a co-workers child almost two weeks ago. I believe I’ll start a policy of not buying anything/donating money for any cause at work.
Given the ever-decreasing funding of co- and extra-curricular activities by our school districts, fundraising is the only chance some of these programs have of staying alive. We are lucky in that our district thinks highly of my Speech & Debate program, and funds us to a degree. But if I have good debaters that should be competing at Stanford, I need to find the money somewhere. It’s either leave the underclassmen twisting in the wind (something I refuse to do) or fund-raise. At least we pick on the student body of our school more than the parents. This year we are selling Carl’s Junior coupon books. They cost us $1, sell for $1 and contain over $70 in “Two-fer” and “Buy this, get that too” coupons. I figure to be sold out of them in less than a week. High school students love to eat!
But in general…yeah, I can see why people get leery of it sometimes.
I never did that crap when I was a kid. I did it once in high school to help with my Greece trip, but it was a jewerly catalog and my aunts went nuts for it. I never liked selling Girl Scout cookies either, but my mom took the form to work every year and sold some. I hate begging people to buy crap.
Amen! I haven’t been hit up yet, but most of my co-worker’s kids are either in college or pre-school and the rest are in private school, so minimal school fundraisers (Crappy chocolate! Junk jewelry! Strange smelling candles! Nice wrapping paper, though) but the Girl Scouts come through like little green locusts, just like clockwork. After those are delivered, they’re about as welcome as more zucchini in summer.
Math jokes out of the way now, I don’t mind buying stuff I actually want and would use (the case o’ little Twix and Mars bars leaps to mind) but 1) if I don’t want it, I’m not buying it and 2) do NOT frame your sales pitch as soliciting for a charitable organization if you’re raising funds for your/kids activities. Raising money for school supplies for Afghan kids is charity. Schilling for money so middle class first world kids have after school activities is not.
no one has ever offered to sell me something to support a sport/charity for which they or their kids was not involved.
See, those cookie pimping Brownies are welcome! to sell at Chez Annie. I’ve pulled U-ies across 3 lanes of traffic to get to the Girl Guide cookie table in front of the Safeway. Good product sells.
Ditto what silenus wrote; I don’t know any teacher, educator, or parent who likes that stuff, but given the choice between teaching kids to shill useless crud or have the school go without educational materials, it’s not much of a contest.
The next time someone tells you to vote against increasing school fundings, think about having to go through more of these fundraisers and then punch 'em in the face.
Yeah, the first box is tasty, and fought over, but by the time you get to the bottom of the 10th case, the thrill is gone. You don’t want to see another Thin Mint, Cocada, whatever again. Until next year. That’s why it works. Every. Time.
In Miami, you often see kids begging on street corners and busy intersections. Yes, BEGGING. One day it’s a kid holding out his baseball helmet. The next day it’s someone collected money in a deflated soccer ball. For all I know, they’re just some turkeys (yes, kids can be turkeys) trying to pull a fast one on me.
I have no problem with kids selling stuff. As a kid I peddled cookies and candy bars with the best of them. One summer, my orchestra camp had us raise money by playing our instruments outside of a Kroger’s. But never once did I beg. I did something. Begging under the hot sun isn’t exactly a cakewalk, especially in traffic, but it’s not really work. If you’re going to go begging, at least knock on people’s doors and have a planned spiel for them, so they can ask you questions and see how nice a young man or woman you are. The kids begging in traffic don’t talk to the people giving them money. They don’t introduce themselves or answer questions. They are just there with their upturned hats, begging like homeless waifs. I feel sorry for them because it probably wasn’t their idea in the first place, but I still refuse to give them money. I give money to the homeless men peddling their newspapers, but I won’t give money to the squeaky clean youths trying to raise money for soccer camp.
Fundraisers I like: Discount “cards” for area businesses I frequent; kinda like the ones Silenus is talking about, but around here, the cards that cost $5.00 have discounts for maybe 10 different stores and restaurants. Some of them I never use (10% off full-price shoes from The Finish Line? No thanks!), but has enough that I’ll use again and again to more than pay for the price of the card the first time or two I use it.
I don’t mind the door-to-door sales of the king size candy bars. They sell for $1.00, which is a small enough sum of money I can part with it without thinking about it. And the reward is immediate: we have candy!
The frozen pizza dough and cookie dough aren’t too bad. But the over-priced “gourmet” candy, and the gift wrapping and knick-knacks, I could do without, and never buy them.
Often when mudgirl’s school is having a fundraiser, I won’t buy anything, but will send a check into the school for $5.00 or $10.00.
10 cases? Ouch! I’m more like a half dozen or so boxes. Sometimes I chuck a few in the freezer, then in the depths of winter when I want to get in the good graces of my coworkers I bring a couple into the office. Joy, rapture! The locusts clean out that box in 2.5 minutes, including the time it takes to lick the crumbs off the bottom of the box.
Coupon books can be ok too if they have coupons for places I’d go anyhow.
We have a family rule about solicitations: 1) The kids themselves have to ask, and 2) we still reserve the right to say no. Which means that we’re immune from 99.9% of it since I work at home and Papa T. won’t buy anything from the adults. Of course, he’s also the sucker who buys about four magazine subscriptions every year from his niece; but she lives 3,000 miles away and goes to the trouble of personally writing him a letter to ask him. How can you say no ot that?
I buy a few boxes of Girl Scout cookies – I feel obligated to, I helped my daughter sell enough of them – I’m usually good for a $1 or $2 candy bar, and every few years I’ll buy some gift wrap. Other than that, forget it.
And I really, really hate the schools that let the kids go door to door unaccompanied by an adult. I explain to the kids that I don’t think it’s safe and that they should tell the school I refuse to buy because their policy could put the kids in danger.
