Our PTO forbids door to door selling. Selling is voluntary. Chocolate bars are great. At my job people actually missed them for the couple of years that nobody’s child was fundraising. I brought in a box and was told I had to bring in another because not everybody got a chance to buy some. Not all fundraisers have to sell overpriced junk to help the profits of some nameless/godless corporation. We have had success with funfairs, with games like bean bag toss, lollypop tree and so on. The kids have a good time. The volunteers have to put in a lot of work, but they believe in what they’re working for so its not a problem. More schools who need fundraisers should try to make thier fundraisers educational and fun. The fact that by running it yourself you get to set the rules and keep all! the profit is an added bonus.
I had not really differentiated between the two kinds of fundraisers, until your post, figure9. The ones that involve data mining are contemptible beyond words. OTOH, there doesn’t seem to be any harm at all and usually a wholelotta good done by organizing a fund raising activity or sale that does truly benefit a given cause where budgetary constraints cannot be fulfilled.
Candy, cake sales, fun fair days, etc. I’m all behind that idea. How else do kids get to travel with a sports team, band, club, etc. ? Rarely are such events underwritten by a school district. Our local H.S. won the State Championship last year in Football. Big deal, they played in a huge stadium, etc. I don’t know if all of the funds needed to bus the team and accompanying personnel and cheerleaders came out of the school athletic dept. budget, but I suspect not.
It was a great experience for everyone involved. If that meant they did fundraisers, then more power to 'em. My vitriol is really focused towards the slickly produced fundraising companies which do data mining and require kids to sell fiddy billion dollars in gift wrap so that their club/team/band can get back a few dollars in “raised funds”.
Small tax increase? My property taxes went up $1,000 this year alone. I pay almost $10,000 a year in property taxes, about 65% of this going to schools.
Did I mention I don’t have any kids in school? Not that I’m not willing to support the public school system, but there is a limit to what people can afford.
I’m willing to buy some pencils or wrapping paper.
Reported.
Jinx!
Zombies don’t buy cookies!
<admin>And deleted. I’m gonna leave this thread open for now, it’ll probably fall off the front page soon enough.</admin>
Lynn
Those actually look pretty good.
Oh! I take it there was another post in there before “reported”? 
Yes, that’s generally why there is a “reported” post. Unless you think that I reported a five-year-old thread?
Spammer. The post gets wished into the cornfield.
Ya never know! 
I was confused because there was no hole in the post count.
Sometimes we do that. In this particular case, I just deleted the post. It looked like a hit and run spammer, who was searching for posts about fundraising. The post was just spam about a whole line of products that fund raisers could sell, and promised Big Bucks for Little Work. Some spammers are persistent, and will put a post in every single forum, from ATMB to the Pit. Some will just post a single spam, and do it in a thread that’s actually somewhat relevant to their product.
Now, had the thread been about “How can I find products to sell for fund raising?”, I might have sent the link around, and asked the other mods, because it would have been a legitimate (if self-serving) post that answered the question. But that wasn’t the case here.
Now I’m jonesing for some Tagalongs. Dammit.
You can get them at Safeway.
I don’t mind when parents bring to work boxes–crates–of something desirable, like Girl Scout cookies. I could probably move them all year 'round. Same with World’s Finest Chocolate. One year the M&M sales for the 4th of July fireworks started early and I believe my company deserved a credit in the program for all the boxes the guy sitting next to me sold.
I must be weird.
I like fundraisers. I donate to them. I actually even call up the schools to see if/when they have fundraisers for particular things.
That being said…if you are a kid and come to me with fundraising for sports - no. Sports is already too much the cherished thing. My donations go to more…geeky…things. Your cause must be clear, focused and geeky as hell. 
Oh, how I hated when fundraiser time came at school when I was kid. We would be given a box of chocolate bars and told to sell in our neighborhood. Problem was, there was about 95 kids from my school in the neighborhood. I don’t think I ever sold a bar that wasn’t to one of my parents or myself.
So one year I decide, no, I’m not going to bother. And I fully expected them to give me shit about it, even with my reasonable explanation. But it was no problem.
I was completely unaware of the “Chocolate War” book (which of course wasn’t one they had us read at that school).