<p>Lately Ive been running into people using social applications to raise money for their kids summer camps. I don’t have a problem with using Kick starter to get projects like a new book off the ground, because donor gets something in return. I also don’t have a problem with friends trying to raise money for charities that are bona fide. ( although I don’t donate if it isn’t already one of my causes). But I am put off by people asking for money so their kids can go on a sailing adventure, or spend the summer at Harvard. ( Especially when this particular family has more income/investments than ours & certainly more than average).</p>
<p>What do you think? Am I too sensitive? Should I use crowd funding to attempt to build a new deck or get my car up to safety standards? This is someone who IRL is very close, otherwise I would just roll my eyes & laugh it off.</p>
<p>Well, I completely agree with you and that was happening around here before crowd funding with these things they called “benefit concerts”. For example, a kid gets accepted to a summer music program (not that unusual or reachy btw) and suddenly we are inundated with requests to buy a ticket to come out and watch this kid sing or whatever and help him get to camp. First, these parents can afford camp if they really want to and second I have my own kids and don’t really care that much if your goes to camp or not. Sorry. I do try to laugh it off but …ugh.</p>
<p>I never even felt right doing fund raising for things like big Boy Scout trips or marching band fees. They have a ton of fundraisers so you don’t have to pay if you don’t want to, but I was never comfortable with that. If there is something that helps the whole troop or the whole band, that’s one thing, but if the sole purpose was to pay for my kids’ fee, I didn’t feel right doing it. “Oh? You’re selling pizza kits? What for?” Uhhhh, “To pay for my kids’ trip”. Nope. Not me. </p>
<p>My relatives dont have a good idea of what is tacky or not.
One couple had a money tree at a open house to show off their new custom built home and another felt it was important to announce on their wedding website that no one was " knocked up".
Perhaps we need to bring back etiquette classes. </p>
<p>I have seen this in the past couple years as well, and it bugs me. We got one from a kid/family who my kid has played a sport with for years. We have struggled to send our kid to lessons/programs/travel tournaments and it did stick in the craw to get a crowd funding request for a summer team from a family who makes more than we do and only has one kid. It would be different if the kid were raising money to go to the Olympic training facility for bobsled or something but for a summer baseball league I am not down with it. I have enough trouble paying for my own kids’ summer programs and have always been in a position of needing to really pick and choose based on economics.</p>
<p>It does seem to be the families that have custom built homes, investment accounts & vehicles and vacations a level above what others would consider as good enough.</p>
<p>But when they think this coat is required for winter in Seattle?
<a href=“http://m.bloomingdales.com/buy/canada-goose-jackets?channel=mobile&ppp=20”>http://m.bloomingdales.com/buy/canada-goose-jackets?channel=mobile&ppp=20</a>
Bwahaha. No.</p>
<p>That is just disturbing, emerald! Do you think you could get away with a hearty chuckle and a comment saying, “You want me to help pay for your kids camp? You are far wealthier than I am!” At least that might appeal to their sense of superiority, as opposed to insulting them, and maybe help them realize how tacky this is.</p>
<p>Nice jacket. That could pay for a camp or two!</p>
<p>Most of the crowd funding for camps or gap year funding that I’ve seen is via Facebook so I’ve been able to ignore it but I find it offensive as well. In particular, there was one family who I know make way more than we do. I just wouldn’t do that - I think it’s really tacky. As others have mentioned, I don’t have a problem at all doing this to get a film off the ground or even the local drive-in theater did it trying to raise money for a digital projector. I don’t get why asking other parents for stuff like this is okay at all.</p>
<p>EK, this bugs me, too. My kids went to what we could afford–without hitting up relatives and neighbors. (O.K., my D was the only Girl Scout in the 'hood for two years, and she was allowed to go to the people asked for cookies–but that was it.) I agree–I’ll support crowd funding for a non profit I like, or a book. But not a summer fun activity or sports team. ESPECIALLY when the parents can afford it. </p>
<p>Now, there’s a 13 year old kid in our area that’s put it out on Neighborhood site that he’s willing to do any task to fund an educational trip this summer…dog walk, party help, weed pulling, party help–you name it.</p>
<p>Sending him some $$…not that I have a task, but he’s the only one who seems to have a skin in the game. The others in his class have used their parent’s email contact list and sent me an email just asking for money. Nope.
Irritating and offending–especially since some of them wouldn’t know me if I walked past them…</p>
<p>My youngest worked two jobs to pay for her gap year. It would have never occurred to us to expect others to pay for it.</p>
<p>I expect I will have the last laugh when the parents realize that they shouldn’t have blown their money even before their kid enters college, let alone medical school, but it’s possible their kid believes that " the money will come".</p>
<p>However, I tried to help, so I told her about CC.</p>
<p>It’s no crime to smile and say “I’ll pass” to tacky requests. </p>
<p>If easy to ignore, that’s not too bad. There may been some eager grandparents and doting aunts/uncles that want to help. </p>
<p>I would find it annoying, too, but I think it’s just the new equivalent of parents who badger coworkers/friends to buy Girl Scout cookies/wrapping paper, etc. that their kids are selling, or the replacement for the bake sale set up outside the supermarket on a Saturday morning to raise funds. </p>
<p>Let me tell you another annoying new grab for donations. I’m standing outside the gate at Atlanta, waiting to board an airplane. A ticket agent makes this long announcement how she’s doing the “Walk for Life,” and walking every day for a month. Then she announces that she’s going to go by everyone at the gate and collection donations. I left until right before boarding. I know it’s a great cause, but we are hit up everywhere. Phone, letters, email, grocery stores, pet stores, sidewalks, everywhere. And now we were getting hit up for money before we boarded the airplane.</p>
<p>Though I was wondering if I gave a big donation, if I’d move up further on the upgrade list…</p>
<p>We really do get inundated. What I hate is how if you make a donation once, then you are bombarded with more requests. I made a one time donation to a cancer institute in another state when my employer’s mother passed away, we took up a collection to send it to the place that helped her, and now I get stuff from them incessantly and half the time I can’t even remember who they are or why they are contacting me. I organized a fundraiser for the local humane society almost 10 years ago, haven’t affiliated with them since, still getting mailers. I get that this is what they have to do to function but it drives me nuts and makes me think twice before I donate. </p>
<p>I ignore all the crowdfunding stuff even if I support the cause. A local rescue group was collecting money a while back for a dog who needed its leg amputated after being hit by a car. They were trying to raise something like $4,000. They were a group that was known to me and they were posting regular photo updates of the dog, and it seemed legit. I apparently wrongly assumed the dog was having her surgery and we were just contributing to help offset the cost to the rescue group, but apparently they were just keeping the dog and making her wait, it had been well over 2 months the last time I was able to access the page-- during which time she chewed off her own foot. I was disgusted, if she had to wait over a month then she should have been put down IMO. The icing on the cake? I never heard an update ever again about what happened to this dog, and the organization would not talk to me about it. I’d sent a $200 donation. I think they were still short a few hundred dollars, so did the dog ever get her surgery or did she just die from stress and pain while she waited? I don’t trust people with my money anymore. You never really know where it’s going.</p>
<p>ITA. How much time & paper do they waste sending " This is our last request ever!", pleas for more donations?
Ugh.
How many big envelopes have I gotten that promises its the last time!</p>