Laura on Life

Fundraising mania

By Laura Snyder

[December 02, 2008]  I hate to be a party-pooper, but I have come to really dislike fundraising. Not necessarily the fundraising that involves charitable organizations, though. Those are tolerable.

Charitable organizations usually raise money by sending me a sheet of self-stick address labels along with a letter telling me how badly the money is needed. Enclosed with their plea are pictures of sad-looking children because adults cannot abide sad children.

Those fundraising techniques are tolerable except for the fact that they always come during holiday season. They think that people are more willing to give their hard-earned cash to total strangers during the holiday season when, in fact, we could probably give more money at a time when we weren't up to our eyeballs in credit card payments. Like, say, July.

Maybe they could send the sad-children pictures during the Fourth of July celebrations and make it our patriotic duty to give to the sad-children fund. Instead of address labels, send a static-cling American flag for my minivan. The motto could be something like: "Be a good American. Save the sad children in Third World countries."

Anyway, charitable organizations are, in general, worthy of my money even if their timing leaves something to be desired.

What drives me nuts is the incessant fundraising that my own children have to do for the extracurricular clubs they belong to and for the schools that they attend.

First, they tell the kids to go out and sell as much product as they can, but don't go door-to-door because that's dangerous. If they can't go door-to-door, who's left? Mom, Dad and Grandma. Mom and Dad are treated as two separate customers even though the money for the two orders is coming out of the same checking account.

Grandma is on a fixed income but buys the cheapest thing being offered because she feels guilty if she doesn't buy something to support her grandchild's efforts. She doesn't really need another wall calendar with the flower of the month on it, but that's all she can afford.

In the last two months, I have been hit up for cookie dough for the band trip, T-shirts to save the rain forests, canned nuts and magazines for Girl Scouts, two cases of oranges for the seventh-grade trip (if my child sells two, he gets a plastic whistle), a case of Diet Coke and a car magnet for the PTA, and, most recently, a custom-made garden flag with my son's drawing of some orange daisies superimposed on it ... for ... I'm not sure what that was for.

For each fundraiser, these kids are expected to add the orders, collect the checks and keep the forms organized. Sometimes they are juggling two or three fundraisers at a time. These are kids who still lose their lunch money. So, who needs to oversee all of these fundraisers? Mom, Dad and Grandma. In effect, we are the sellers, the buyers and the organizers of these inspiring events.

Most of the items being sold are not even things I would normally buy either. At what social occasion would a black T-shirt with yellow poison dart frogs be acceptable attire? An Amazonian barn-raising perhaps? How many cases of oranges can a family eat before they rot? Maybe I can send some to the sad children.

I have so many magazine subscriptions that I've taken to burning them and using the ash to fertilize my garden. And who, in their right mind, buys three tubs of cookie dough and a case of Diet Coke?

I wonder ... Instead of all this fundraising, couldn't I simply write a check? That's all the sad children are asking for.

[By LAURA SNYDER]

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