<p>Most popular fundraising activity around here seems to be car washes. I have no problem with fundrasers as long as the kids are actually doing something - bagging, washing cars, weeding, etc. to earn their buck. Our schools stopped doing the wrapping paper and candy sales and just simply do a “pass the hat” thing.</p>
<p>I have mixed feelings about this, my S did organize a “begging” table for his theater group at our grocery store and they did make alot of money, you usually don’t see alot of kids doing that around here, it’s usually selling something or car washes and the usual fundraisers at the HS. What used to burn me was I would try to buy something from most of the neighborhood kids when they came around, then when one of my kids was going around, many of the families who I would buy from wouldn’t buy from my kids, so I began to get more selective. But still I always felt bad about not buying, I know how hard that can be, going do to door.</p>
<p>In the elementary school faculty lounge, teachers would come in and put down the entire box of 40 chocolate bars for their kids’ sports team. By the end of the day, it had been replaced with 40 one-dollar bills. It was understood that this spared everyone from having to run around with their own kids door-to-door after school so there was a mutuality. Nobody directly asked anyone to buy anything, so no personal pressure. Only once did the entire box of money disappear.</p>
<p>Don’t a lot of people handle this stuff in the adult workplace? That avoids writing the check to cover your “responsiblity” although you end up spending just as much (and gaining pounds) through the academic year.</p>
<p>It is not allowed at my H’s workplace. The implication is that people feel unfair pressure if it is a boss or supervisor’s kid. So it is banned across the board.</p>
<p>I don’t think our school encouraged bucket drops, but it held fairly major fundraisers to fund trip from MA to D.C. every other year. This covered the costs for teachers and for students whose parents could not pay the cost of the field trip (bus, food, lodging for two nights, entrance fees). We always contributed above what it cost for our kids, but I appreciate that many families found it hard to come up with the cash or to contribute extra money and would rather participate in fund-raising activities.<br>
The school also held fund-raisers to pay for supplies for each classroom. Teachers used the funds to buy materials for classroom quilts, costumes and props for skits, etc… No begging, though.</p>
<p>I hate the fundraisers, too. If a kid comes to my door, I will buy one small item, just to show I appreciate the effort. I have no problem walking by any/all bucket drops at the grocery store. If someone speaks to me directly and says, “Would you like to give a donation to XYZ?” I just say, “No, thank you!” with a smile. I don’t feel guilty–I choose to support other charities. </p>
<p>My older kids are homeschooled, so they never did fundraisers, but now some of my younger kids are in public school and they constantly have fundraisers. I never let them go around the neighborhood, and would never send stuff to H’s workplace, even if they allowed it, which they don’t.
I never ask relatives (all out of state) to buy anything. But some of my relatives always send/email me their kids’ fundraising stuff. I never buy anything, but they keep on sending. I wonder if they’ll ever get the message (I don’t ask you, you don’t ask me. . .deal?) Recently, my sister called to ask if I would by something from her kid’s fundraiser–as a Christmas gift for her kid!! (She has unlimited nerve). A girl from a local high school dance team came by recently and I was thinking, “Oh no, what are they selling now?” I was actually happy to hear they were collecting cans for the local food bank. </p>
<p>The strangest thing I’ve seen in my neighborhood is a brother/sister from a nearby rural area going door to door–they said their dad was having an operation and was going to be out of work (construction work)
for a few weeks. They had 9 kids in the family and were trying to sell some crafts they’d made to help out their mom. I didn’t want the crafts, but after talking to them a bit to see if they were legit, I gave a donation. It could have been a carefully staged scam, but they were such poor backwoods types and didn’t seem “smooth” at all, so I figured they were honest. Otherwise, I paid them for putting on a good act.</p>
<p>I am not a fan of having kids “beg” for money to support their extracurricular activities, but whether thay are asking for money or selling girl scout cookies, I can always say, “No” when I walk out the grocery store. </p>
<p>What bothers me more is that some parents and/or coaches of our kids’ activities use the amount of money raised by particular kids as an indicator as to how dedicated that kid is. For example, “Tommy raised $521 for the team this year in the poinsettia sale. Some kids did not do their fair share.” Fortunately, our current soccer team has only 10 percent of the profits go to the general team find and 90 percent to the indivicual child’s account. In that manner, parents who do not want their kids to participate in these sorts of fundraising activities are not ostracized (or at least not as much). Our family was even going through some rough financial times a couple years ago, but I would still rather not have my kids learn to “beg,” so I just paid more than some other parents who had their kids concentrate effort on the fundraisers.</p>
<p>With my kids’ band activities, a certain threshold of participation (a couple fruit orders, a couple adbook ads, and shifts at the two events) bought you a significant discount on the band trip. If you didn’t particpate, you paid the higher amount. We woulda bought the fruit anyway, and the adbook ads were for our kids, so overall it was still cheaper than not participating. And the shifts on fruit delivery and helping run the band festival were actually good experiences for them. But yeah, no one ever announced who raised the most–yucchh.</p>
<p>Once when my S was in school, the band director realized that the trip price was going to be higher than had been told to the kids. S figured some kids would have to back out (75 dollar difference) when their families couldn’t pay. We told the director to let them know there was a “fund” to pay anyone’s difference if they felt they couldn’t meet it. He did, and we actually only had to cover for one kid–and glad we could do so!</p>
<p>There’s just a fine line between fundraising for charity and fundraising for private profit. I have no problem saying “no thanks” either, especially when it comes to begging for private sports teams, dance studios, etc.</p>
<p>We had a coach explain it to us this way about 10 years ago. He said that they’d tried selling stuff, car washes, etc. and never did make much of anything. One afternoon with buckets at two stoplights yielded more funds than everything else combined over the past year. So his reasoning was that bucket drops were justified simply because nothing else could touch them in terms of sheer profitability. My reasoning was, if profitability equals justification, why not robbery? </p>
<p>There’s more of a sense of entitlement nowadays with respect to what parents give to their children. When I was a child, to take horseback riding or dance lessons was considered a personal purchase decision. Now, people think of it as, “Hey, this is something my kids deserve and if I don’t pay for it, someone else should.” </p>
<p>Here’s a related topic- high school community service. I know kids who worked in their parent’s for profit businesses for free, then wrote it down as community service for the Bright Futures scholarship. In their world, anything you do for free is community service. If your parents own a restaurant, and you work 10 hours a week for free, it’s community service. If your mom runs a gymnastics studio, and you work for free, it’s community service. Again, where’s the line?</p>