Trust me, there were kids who did just that!
Did they eat the candy bars too, by any chance :smack:
[Homer]Mmmm… candy[/Homer]
Our school band program got as little funding from the schools as they could get away with. So every fall, I had to go out with the cheese/sausage/candy catalog and do my little part so we could afford new sheet music. I never saw the football team do a damn thing to raise money for the new uniforms they had every year.
No, I’m not still bitter about it. What makes you think I’m fucking bitter about it?
:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
Classic.
These schools that let these “fundraising” companies into schools are being suckered. Some administrator bought a high-pressure sales pitch.
Schools need to raise money for luxuries (Uniforms for sports, band, drama costumes and equipment, etc.) This will not change. I think many parents gladly pay if their kids learn something in the process of raising this money.
Kids can walk/hike and take pledges per mile. (Most could use the exercise.) I have kids make small artworks/pottery and sell it inexpensively. Art and Math (Probability) carnivals make lots of money as well as tickets for drama productions. Parents can donate garage sale items and schools can hold auctions that the kids staff. Kids can cook and hold a banquet. The ideas are endless; all it takes is some creativity.
This also benefits schools in getting parents more involved and talking to their kids’ teachers, not just getting a phone call when a problem arises.
Damn. When I think back to the insane lengths to which I used to go to prevent my parents from seeing my report card… Sprint home to check mail, burn report card in fireplace, bury ashes in backyard if the fireplace had been cleaned recently. Shit, I wish I’d gone to your high school.
Guin, please tell me that you went to a private school.
Please. I’m begging you.
Nope, it was a public high school.
altoid I can bet that those fundraising ideas you suggested aren’t done mainly because it takes extra work on the part of the teachers (not that there aren’t teachers who are willing to do it but you need permission from administration, student co-operation for set up and tear down (depending what your doing) etc etc…) and students. It’s much easier just to send them out with a magazine of cheap crap or chocolate bars than anything else.
They can call it fundraising all day long. I call it pan-handling for pennies.
I’ve sold enough crap in my days and it has left a very bitter aftertaste.
Yep, if you can afford it you can “pay” your kids way out - otherwise to say it’s BAD is very Un-American to not participate in this mandatory extortion racket.
What will the children do for e.c. activities?
They’ll need some kind of afterschool babysitting - I mean program.
Magickly Delicious, I was a Girl Scout for about eight years. I remember selling those damn cookies every year and it never seemed like we benefitted much. When I heard about this a few years ago, I learned why.
If you want to help out your local troops, do what I do. I don’t buy the cookies, but I make a donation to the troop itself of $10-20. That money goes directly to the troop - it never goes anywhere near the organization. What they receive in donations, they’re allowed to keep. I always find that the troop leaders are more grateful for that. And when I give them the money, I usually tell them that I was a Girl Scout and I loved my time in the Scouts, but I don’t eat cookies, so I find it’s easier to give a donation and not tempt myself with Tagalongs. That usually works.
Ava
As a former Guide leader I can agree… if you don’t want to buy the cookies but still want to help out the organization (or local troop) give the money directly to the girls when they come by and say it’s a donation. You can also give money directly at the local Guide/Scout shop (it gets spread out over the troops in the area but it’s still more than what they’d get from selling the cookies)
If I recall correctly we get slightly more from the cookies up here. Lately though they changed the cookies because whoever bought out Mr Christie (who used to make our cookies) decided that it was cutting into their profits and refused to renew our contract. The new cookies aren’t quite the same but are now made by a Canadian owned company (Dare) which also makes fantastic cookies. Mmmm Dare cafe mocha cookies…
This pisses me off too. 2 weeks ago on the first day of school, a little fella came to my door selling almonds to fianance a field trip.
THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. It’s not enough that the poor little ones have so much crap going through their heads, they’re pressured to sell.
I don’t even have kids and that pissed me off.
I have four kids. One is grown, the second is in high school, and doesn’t have to do this crap.
The younger two are supposed to, but I said to hell with it when my oldest was in second grade. I got tired of being the one selling, and they got tired of having to ask.
When my youngest comes in with his fund-raising crap, I don’t even glance at it. Straight in the trash it goes. I will donate money to the school, but I won’t sell their bullshit which won’t raise enough money to buy a tank of gas for my car.
My mother wouldn’t even let me sell that stuff when I was a kid, and back then it was only for “special” events…not a prerequisite for entering a new grade.
I hate it when parents bring that fundraising shit to work! I don’t want a plastic Charlie Brown-emblazoned serving tray! I don’t need a huge “collectible” tin of stale cheddar popcorn! And you can keep the kitten calendar, too!
And then I feel shitty for failing to “donate.” But when I was a kid I hated those kids whose parents worked in a busy office or something…those kids always won the prizes, because their parents had ten thousand coworkers. My mom didn’t work, and my dad was always on the road; I was the only person selling the crap, so I never stood a chance.
And I went door-to-door with my Girl Scout cookies, too, every year…and there were so many Girl Scouts on my street that most people said, “Oh, I’m sorry, we’ve already bought ours!” Or, even worse, “I bought mine at work!”
Man, I sucked at fundraising. 
I don’t think I ever met a single quota.
I never thought about just donating to the Girl Scouts, though, without actually buying the cookies. I’ll do that next year.
Former Girl Sprout here. I went door to door, and was always either the top or second-to-top seller in my troop, but then I was the only kid in my neighborhood :D.
It also helped that my mom would always order one box of each.
But because of that, I burned out on GS cookies very early on.
Now I see Scouts outside Albertsons with boxes of cookies on a table* and desperation in their eyes. I feel bad for them, but I never buy any. Not just because I can’t look another Tagalong in the face, but also because I would swear that they’ve decreased the amount of cookies in each box since I was a lass. I can’t justify paying $3 for a box of air.
*And it looks as if, rather than issuing order forms and letting the Scouts take orders and then deliver only what’s been paid for, the corporation is simply dumping cookies on the troops and leaving them to either sell or make up the difference themselves. That’s terrible.
But I still don’t want any.
If my kid is really that hot to try selling stuff, I’d let them do it. Fine. Learn a hard lesson about reality.
Or, if they don’t wanna, fine. I’LL buy the damn Jolly Rancher candies, and give 'em a prize for not falling for some stupid corporate rah-rah.
Selling band candy is one thing. Hell, I’ll spend a buck on candy or popcorn or whatever, to help the school. And if the school is dumb enough to take one of those idiotic sixty-forty split deals, they’re fools. There are any number of other fundraisers where they can make considerably more money.
…but I never have had much patience with outfits that supposedly represent “charities” that eat up most of the money collected in “administrative costs.” And that includes outfits that use schools to sell crap that no sane person would buy, UNLESS their own kid was trying to sell it to them.
The only fund-raising I was ever interested in doing was for my band. For every candy bar we ‘bought’ we put half the money into our personal account to help us pay for the huge trip we went on every year.
All the other fundraisers went into the trash, usually before I even got home. I am not a team player. 
*Originally posted by Guinastasia *
Think that’s bad? When I was in high school, every year the freshman class had to sell fifteen candy bars for a dollar each-the money going to that class’s senior prom.
Not too bad, except if you didn’t sell them, you didn’t get your report card.
My High School does something similar. Every year, the Junior class is in charge of Prom. To raise money, they have to sell “SuperChecks”, which are books of worthless buy-one-get-one-free coupons for local restaurants. and they’re 15 DOLLARS EACH! And that’s pretty much the only way money is brought in for Prom. Last year, when I was a Junior, I sold but one. Everyone else either sold one, or zero, and we ended up with only about $900 for prom instead of the $3,000 that we really needed.
Well this year, there’s a new rule. The Juniors have to sell 5, and if they don’t sell 5, then they either have to pay the difference, or NOT GO TO PROM. It’s complete and utter bullshit. It’s funny how the school just bought 30 new $1300 dollar laptops this summer, but can’t help the kids out when they need money for Prom or other events. This is a public High School of about 600 people, by the way.
Back when I was in high school (private, catholic, small, ~220 students… demographic was mostly catholic working families who wanted the private school, while all the truly rich kids went to the expensive prep school a couple towns away), the Student Council ran one of those magazine drives every year, the generic Reader’s Digest Corporation ones that every school seems to run. For such a small school, it always seemed like we did REALLY well in terms of what we bought/sold. My senior year, I was treasurer for the student council, so I got to see the numbers directly - despite a fairly exorbitant amount of magazines sold, the check we received was distressingly small for the amount of effort the SC put into running the thing. Basically the Reader’s Digest guy comes, gives a little speech about how great his fundraiser is and all of the amazing things we can win by whoring ourselves out… then leaves all the material in charge of people at the school (the SC in this case) and only really comes back to pick up money/subscriptions and drop off prizes, while the people at the school do the rest of the work for him.
Frankly, the SC did three to four times better selling school t-shirts and sweatshirts and stuff, and the printing company that did the logos and such for us gave us a MUCH better deal 
On the other hand, the individual classes in our school were in charge of raising money themselves for both prom and graduation ceremonies. Spaghetti dinners, pancake breakfasts, free car washes (where people generally donate fairly well, especially if it’s a sunny day and you have the cheerleaders there ), and other events were typical. However, one thing REALLY brought in the money. Every year, the senior class would run a little store during break, lunch, and for half an hour after school. Basically, the class would buy candy, drinks, and other small food items in bulk, and then sell it to all of the students at very reasonable prices (.50 for candy bars, .75 for can of soda, etc). My senior year, the senior class made somewhere around $1000 a month in pure profit from this alone, just by selling people snacks they wanted. Of course, the school lost out in soda and snack machine profits since everyone just bought cheaper/better stuff from the senior class, but they didn’t mind so much since the school didn’t have to cover graduation/prom at all. We ended up with quite a nice prom with very affordable tickets, further subsidized for the seniors by the extra money we had made over what we “expected”.
Of course, the downside of this was it took about half a dozen committed and honest people in the senior class to run the thing and keep it stocked… since whenever other people ran it for one reason or another, profits mysteriously went down even when we sold the same amount of stuff. /cheer people who steal from their own class’s prom fund :smack: