No advice for you here, Elisa, but just allow me to vent about fund raising in Girl Scouts. I hate how they pressure the girls to sell, sell, sell ... cookies, of course, but also treats in the fall. I know the organization needs to raise money, and it's for a good cause, but it has somehow tied "being a good Girl Scout" to what I see as a very American ethic of marketing and selling. Like, "this is a really important skill for every American to possess, so let's start developing it in our girls starting at ages 6 or 7!" I really question this. But it seems I'm alone in my discomfort. As a result, my daughter is always the low seller in her troop each year.

I feel like there are many years ahead and many other opportunities for our kids to learn to become good salesmen and saleswomen, if that's what they want to do in life. I just hate the supposition that it should be part and parcel of an American childhood. Bah!

You really have to just keep saying no and hope they get the hint.  If not, and they ask, then you can explain that you simply can't buy from everyone who approaches you, especially for items you have no use for.

I feel like I practically funded my niece's first four years in Catholic school.  She was selling something nearly every month.  I didn't mind at first, because I was working, we didn't have kids, and I remember hating having to sell stuff when I was a kid.  But now we have two nieces and a nephew, neighbors who we know, & friends & co-workers with schoolage kids.  You just can't do it.  Plus my MIL frequently overbuys from my nieces and then passes the stuff to us.  Like an overweight person (me) & a diabetic (DH) need a bucket of cookie dough.

I've told my nieces that from now on it's GS cookies only (also helps to let the little ones who knock on the door that I've already bought all I need from my niece).  If it's a dollar candy bar, and I have a buck, I'll probably help out.  But a lot of this stuff costs up to $20!  Plus, we made a decision to not buy Boy Scout stuff as long as they discriminate against homosexuals.  Not something I'm going to explain to a 7-year-old trying to sell me a Christmas wreath, but I'm hoping we get known as "the house that doesn't buy."

What's sad is, the schools & organizations probably do need the money, and the kids don't understand economics.  They take it personally.  So how do we reconcile that?

I'm in academia. One of our staff has two girls in scouting. Since she often has stuff, her desk is the designated sales area. When one of us has something (and it drives me nuts that the $$$ daycare/preschool does fundraisers!), we just leave the sign-ups there. Anyone with anything to sell does it, and there's absolutely no pressure. If you want it, you buy it; if no one does, it's no big deal. (And it's usually decent stuff anyways...)

I like the no-pressure aspect, as well as it being not door-to-door. Several people look forward to various sales. We love when the boy scout troop does a spring plant sale -- we get a lot of our garden plants from them! (Of course, I just got my Thin Mints and Samoas yesterday...)

-Cheryl

So far, I've never turned down a kid offering to sell stuff.  However, I often wished I could just donate money directly to the organization rather than buying something I don't need.  I wonder how much money is actually profit in the end.

My son is in his first year in preschool and we just had our first fundraiser.  I sort of attempted to sell stuff to family, but they weren't too interested, so I just offered to donate money to the school instead, figuring that would make more sense than buying stuff myself.  They turned me down, though, and said we shouldn't feel pressured to fundraise, so I've just made an effort to support the school financially in other ways.

us from harassing anyone, didn't buy our stuff, and wouldn't uy from any kids at the door.  ::sigh::

Where I work, EVERYONE has kids, so there's an unspoken rule that no one does school fundraising!  It's nice, because then no one's feelings are hurt.

Our school does a reasonable amount of fundraising - really just the candy sale in the fall/winter.  We only go to one or two neighbors and family.  What I HATE is the contests for the kids - prizes based on how much you sell, prizes for selling the most - fortunately, Seth seems to not really care about this stuff.  Which is good, because it could get really competitive and intense.

The other big fundraiser for our school is an auction - lots of cool stuff and people are willing to write big checks!  It's a fun event and community building too.

As someone else said - you are always welcome to just donate money and skip the candy altogether!

My old town had a "Write a check" campaign, where the PTA would just come up with their budget for the year and then divide up the bill among the families in the school.  I forget what it funded, I guess a few parties and field trips and maybe an assembly or two.

Apparently, it was welcomed enthusiastically.

My poor parents -- 6 grandkids, all selling junk at one point or another.  How much wrapping paper does she need?

I would love to try and mount a real fundraising effort at Miles's school in which we ask people for, you know, MONEY.  Cut out the middleman indeed.  This is on my to do list for when I am no longer chained to a 9-5 job working for someone else.

We have 640 students in our school.  That means we probably have about 500 families, probably half of those families are capable of setting up an automatic monthly donation in the area of $50-75/month.  Take the low end of that and you have $150,000 a year in donations, which sounds to me a lot higher than what we probably net in pizza, Sally Rip-Off catalogues and freakin' Entertainment Book coupon sales.

If we asked people to do this auto withdrawal donation and told them we would cut back to one major fundraising sale per year, do you think they would jump at it?  I sure as hell would.

I find it odd that the person in question finds it okay to hit the relative up who has kids in school.  I would never do that.  They are probably dealing with their own fundraisers.  To me, relatives w/o kids are fair game.  But, I try to be mindful of asking too much.

That said, I know our school district needs the money.  They aren't doing the fundraisers for fun.  I hate the Kathryn Beich fundraiser we used to do... HATE IT.  It's just a bunch of cheap overpriced crap.  I have a friend in another district and they also do KB fundraisers.  One year, they gave parents the option of donating money instead of doing the fundraiser and guess what... they made more money selling the crap so they went back to that.  This year, Grant's school replaced the KB fundraiser with walk-a-thon.  It was wildly successful.  They made more w/the walk-a-thon and it taught the kids about fitness at the same time.  LOVE IT!

I was actually wondering how one goes about setting up a 5K as a fundraiser.  I wonder how much money those actually net.  I think I might mention it to the PTO president the next time I talk to her.  

I"m the "buy out" queen.   If the kids have to sell $100 worth of stuff or I can buy out by writing a cheque for $50 I'm writing the cheque.  

Curiously enough the job I had in the fall was working for a fundraising company - they did catalogues and cookie dough and coupon books and I drove around distributing that stuff.   Strange for the Buy Out Queen to work for them but I did get some wrapping paper and coupons out of it...

The worst was being on the committee for the preschool - they keep the tuition low and then hit families with fundraising where they all have to sell $35 worth of tickets to a raffle...I had to find stuff for the raffle..ugh  My thoughts at the time are here "the end of my rope"

As far as the Girl Scout cookie thing goes (and the popcorn for the Boy Scouts..) it's a hellish nightmare to have to sell that crap.  I mean, the cookies are good but for $3.50 a box when the troop gets $0.25 it's kind of scammy.   And with no family around I ended up buying all the stupid cookies rather than bother my neighbours.   What I most hate about it is having to go out and walk around with my kids since they can't do that alone so the whole fundraising thing becomes my responsibility...double ugh.  

I still have a crapload of cookies around the house though...which may be why I can't seem to lose weight.  

Our school has one fundraiser the kids participate in -- a jogathon.  DS gets pledges from us and from my parents, and that's it.  We give generously because I detest asking people to give.  With his theatre stuff, I usually buy lots of tickets and then give them to anyone who expresses an interest.  Paying to watch someone else's kid perform seems like a saintly act to me :)

There's a common table at work that people will leave fundraising sign-up sheets on.  I don't know if feelings get hurt or not.  If it's something I want and will use, I'll buy it.  Otherwise, usually not.  If it's a fundraiser to send one person's child to a special event, like music camp, I will pitch in.  And there's one neighbor kid I always buy from.  I don't say no to others, we just don't have a lot of kids where I live.

I read somewhere about a community that got fed up with walk-a-thons and the traffic problems that ensued, so one group sponsored a Don't-walk-a-thon.  Essentially, they said "If we raise enough money before June 1, there will be no walk a thon.  If we don't we'll walk."

Amazingly enough- they made the budget and no one put on a sneaker.