They're data-mining the kids.
Oh no. Sweet merciful pancakes. Make it stop.
I know school budgets are thin but PTAs and such should be gate keeping these companies from using children as temporary downlines. I wonder if there is a correlation between MLM participants and adults who sold this crap as children. Maybe hard to track but it's a type of grooming behavior to me. Normalizes MLMs from the jump.
I never was a guide but the other issue I have with parents just dropping the boxes and an envelope in the lunchroom the smaller lessons get lost like numeracy, talking to people, etc.
I get that going door to door is different now, esp with folks not knowing their neighbours anymore but we still get clusters of guides with tables in front of transit stations and small shops and that's a great way to do some of the lessons that come w the cookie selling.
Yeah my youngest was a Girl Scout for years. When she went to go work retail these last 2 summers between school, the experience she had from selling cookies gave her a leg up. She adjusted to both jobs fast despite being on the spectrum.
It really is a leg up! I volunteered as a kid and it was really helpful when I started working. It's the extra lessons I didn't realize I was getting. I was painfully shy with strangers when it came to asking questions or for donations (poppy sales, daffodils for cancer, etc). By the time I was working I could talk to a stranger, make a bit of small talk, count change quickly and it all helped me tremendously.
My mom refused to do this. At the time I was mad but now I completely understand. She didn't want to obligate her coworkers and she also never bought from people who did bring that stuff to the office.
Girl scout cookies are good and a limited time thing, of course they're going to be happy
I just got one of these emails today. Everything is so pricey! And the kids only get one point for items up to $30.
Hear me out, I know of a few companies that sell $20 gift cards for $20.
That's what I did. I'm not about to spam my loved ones. I used all my bogus shopping emails. I will say though the company SchoolStore is very nice, the customer service that is. They were very southern and cute over the phone. My school didn't know the first level prize was for emails ONLY and no money. My kids school fought me about it so I had to call the schoolstore customer service. My kids school didn't even read their own packets and the schoolstore peeps let me know I was indeed right it was a free gift.
Sweet Merciful Pancakes 🥞❤️❤️❤️
That fundraiser is a terrible one. They are asking kids to give out their friends and family’s personal information so someone can harass them. If they don’t do it they don’t get the prizes but have to watch other kids get them. I always tell my kids I will just buy them the crap the kids are getting for doing this horrible task.
My daughter wanted ms to take her selling chocolate bars. 2 bucks each, and its actually kinda decent.
But it was RIGHT when the girl scouts are selling their cookies. Told her no, and she was super but hurt about it. She wanted the LED beach ball. 8 dollars on amazonater and bam.
Yep exactly just chores around the house or good grades I will buy you something no need to work for these big mlm companies as a kid. Good job parent👍
Even better , her birthday was like 6 days later
Duuuuuude seriously thats how they are getting these kids the ol FOMO into the mlm
A few well placed Python scripts will get you first place and them a bunch of fake emails
Yopmail for the win.
I was so pissed when they did this at my daughters school. And the “kids” aka parents who submitted 15 email addresses got 3 toys at the end of the week. I will gladly write the school a check for $100, but I am not sending them my whole families contact information.
My best friends daughters school did a fundraiser at an arcade place. We paid $20 each and they got mini golf, bowling, and an indoor water park. The kids had a blast. Why can’t they all do something like that??
I just gave some bogus emails I had and labeled them grandma grandpa ect. They got one FREE toy for emails. I give supplies when asked
you know what this reminds me of? last year i was looking for a job and apparently there's offices here in Brazil that just specialize in calling high school students in financial hardship to "offer them a job interview", but they ask you to "bring a parent with you to sign up documentation". thing is, there's no job interview and they want your parents there so they can legally try to guilt you into buying Office/IT courses and get you/your parents to sign documents pertaining to that. they also ask you for a few of your friend's names, emails and phone numbers, so they can call them and bother them too. thankfully i didn't have any friends at the time and didn't fall for the stuff they said
It’s gross, but data mining has been a thing in nonprofit fundraising for a while. Ever use Amazon Smile? How about the grocery rewards cards where you can designate a portion to your kid’s school? Even Box Tops for Schools now requires you to scan a copy of your receipt.
I’m familiar with School Store. You don’t even need volunteers to run it. Just send home a flyer with every student. It’s like Rakuten but the proceeds go to the school instead of your PayPal.
Jesus Christ, what?
I made a bunch of bogus emails for the schoolstore one. They got a free prize for emails 🤣
In high school football they had to sell coupon books and the boys that sold less than quota would have to run laps.
Still do, last fall selling Gold Cards that cost $25 and you might get a free blizzard out of it, or 15% off a car wash, one time use only and only good in our immediate areas too. And yeah everyone was supposed to sell 50 gold cards, or run laps, there were multiple quotas. Sell 5 in the first 24 hours or run laps. 10 by the weekend or more laps. If you don't have half of them sold by.... You guessed it, even more laps. Last kid will be a junior this year, new coach so I'm hoping they do something else next year. It's horrible
$25 bucks for coupons you get free in your mailbox every month.
Can’t believe they are still doing the same thing in 2023!
I’d report that to the school board or the state or the dept of labor or something. That isn’t right.
That's so ridiculous. In high school we had to sell "entertainment books." $25 for a book of coupons with savings worth over $100- that is, if you used all the products and services for which coupons were offered. Most people didn't use most of what was offered so we were basically asking them to spend $25 to save nothing. At least there were no consequences if we couldn't sell any.
50 cards!!! That’s nuts!
We're about to see a generation of kids with really swole leg muscles
That is fucking disgusting
It really is and I hadn't really thought about that shit this way until right now.
I was in marching band in high school, and we did this exact same thing. Wasn't coupon books, though iirc our school's football team sold those. We sold cookie dough that I'm pretty sure was from the same company. Didn't hit some arbitrary quota set by the band director? You came to practice 30 minutes early to run laps and stayed 15 minutes after to help clean up.
That was oh... about 16 years ago. Back then my parents hyped it up as "getting me ready for the real world." I still frequently think back to all the fundraisers I've been a part of. School marching band, Boy Scouts, helping my sister sell Girl Scout cookies, etc.
Those didn't prepare me for my job (ironically I'm a salesman now), but thankfully they did open my eyes to how predatory such models are. They also instilled in me an utter hatred for all the different ways companies force their employees into quota-based work.
This sub is about MLMs, but it's important to remember that the techniques MLMs use to exploit their workforce and pressure them into staying are not unique to them. MLMs just exaggerate those issues to the nth degree. Plenty of companies weaponize psychology and prey on desperation, set arbitrary unreachable goals to push their employees to their limit, and rely on shitty sales tactics to push products that aren't worth the asking price.
This is some top level comment post.
Back in 2000/2001, our band sold sweet onions as a fundraiser. I thought that was super weird and we never did it again. I take it there were limited options in SW Virginia at the time. We then went to selling jewelry to the cookie dough.
Eventually the band boosters started running the concessions at the basketball games and that's how we ended up paying for things. We never had to run laps or anything-I don't recall there being quota's. I'm sorry you and every one else got punished for not making sales. That's insane it happened.
They wouldn't let us graduate if we didn't sell those coupon books. I refused to harass people into spending $25 on a damn pile of coupons. Spending money to save money is ridiculous.
I ended up just giving them money after they threatened me.
What???!!!!! Crazy! If that was public school, there has got to be a law against that
In case you haven't been paying attention, they've been systematically destroying the public education system for a while now.
What the hell?
WTF
Wt actual F
The town over from where I grew up would hold a livestock raffle each year. I still remember going to their football game and they wanted us to buy tickets to win a goat. My school partnered with a landscaping business and would sell garden fertilizer in the spring.
I still remember going to their football game and they wanted us to buy tickets to win a goat.
That's not a sentence you see every day
I just wanna know what happens if I win but live in an apartment
New roommate?
When i was in high school, we had a fundraiser for my sports team where we sold tickets to a breakfast at Applebees or whatever restaurant, some place where theyre not usually open during breakfast. Those bitches ran out of food soooo quickly and we had no control over that. It was the restaurant managers fault for not having enough prepared. Id be pissed if i spent money paying for fundraiser-priced tickets to a breakfast that didnt have enough food.
I just buy them whenever the kids show up. It's so irritating to me that they send kids door to door like that. I feel bad for them. They are like 20 bucks and there is never anything I'd actually use. Smh
Yep! My kids high school football team just wanted monitory donations for their fundraiser. In order for him not to get chastised or required to do extra up downs or running (or just not get singled out he didn’t raise any money in general) he found someone willing to pay him to do some work for them and he then cash app’ed it to the coach. He told the coach it wasn’t just given to him but that he worked for it hoping that would make it special and makeup for not having donations from friends and family but he said the coach didn’t seem to care much.
I really do wonder why there haven't been more investigations of these companies. They give an abysmally small percentage of the money to the children and the goods sold are almost always truly awful quality and/or overpriced. I still remember in high school one of the reps for a flower seed company that we were selling for got angry at me when I asked if it wouldn't be better for us to just ask for donations since we would only get like 12% of sales. It's honestly fucking weird that we have child labor laws in this country for good reason but also consider it normal to have some middle aged guy yelling at 11 year olds that it's so easy for them to go door to door and sell overpriced catalog junk and if they can't get at least $200 in sales they're not trying. Also our schools shouldn't be so damn underfunded that children have to sell shit so they can go to a museum, but I digress.
You can find fundraising companies that give 50% back. It’s a competitive market because there’s (unfortunately) a huge need.
Yeah, my kids school just does a fun run and the kids ask for donations and get prizes.
Hopefully your school has enough volunteer involvement to host that themselves. But there’s a good chance that a company does that for them-at least in part-in exchange for part of the proceeds.
I’ve organized plenty of fundraisers and nobody is signing an organization up for a 12% return. If they are they’re idiots.
This would have been in 2006-7 but our orchestra teacher was admittedly not that bright or maybe knew somebody who knew somebody. Either way I vividly remember asking about the very small return and getting chewed out for doing so. There's extremely shabby companies out there.
Ugh I remember this. Those of us who couldn't sell weren't allowed to go to the awesome party in the school gym where there were prizes, pizza, games, and even bouncy houses. We had an extended study period instead.
Definitely punishing the poor kids for being poor. Ridiculous.
What was this called? Market something…?
I can't even remember. We had two or three different companies do this in the 12 years I was in primary school.
I found it! “Market Day” wow- this seems so shady in hindsight
My parents hated fundraisers. They refused to bug their coworkers to buy that overpriced junk and we weren't allowed to go door-to-door for safety reasons. Needless to say, my siblings and I were never in the top tier sellers.
However, they didn't want us to feel completely left out, so they would each buy something, my grandparents would each buy something, and my siblings and I were each allowed to pick something as well. That way we at least got to choose from the bottom tier prizes. There was always a stuffed animal on that level, so I was happy, and the top prize was always a bike and I hated riding bikes, so it worked out fine!
Our favorite fundraiser was when our karate dojang was selling king-sized Reese's cups and our parents just bought the whole box. We got to have candy after school every day for weeks!
Edit format
I never put a lot of effort into these fundraisers. I have a certain amount I will donate and I will pick out items to hit that. I post it on Facebook so all the grandparents and aunts can go to town if they want to. And that's it.
Once in highschool they tried to have us sell candles to raise money for a trip to Europe. Every kid was supposed to shoot for $2000 with of sales. No one needs that many candles. My dad just laughed at it and gave me a check for $2000.
Putting it on FB is a good idea. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, so no social media but if there had been, I think my parents would have done that. So much easier!
$12 USD for 5 oz of cashews?
nah son
Seriously, with Boy/Girl Scouts the popcorn and cookies are overpriced but at least are actually good. Plus you know the kids are volunteering to do it and the money is funding stuff like camping trips.
Our public schools are already funded through taxes, what is the money even going to?
Public schools are partially funded by taxes. Live in a red state? Rural school district? Want extracurricular activities or art programs or playground equipment? Better fundraise! Ask a teacher sometime how much they spend out of pocket on supplies. I honestly thought this was all common knowledge.
Teaching kids to work for nothing at a young age. I remember this shit. I wish I had had the foresight to tell my son’s school off when this shit would come around…but bc I was on the PTO, I couldn’t. Lol.
I’m not a parent, so I don’t know, but…what’s the point of a PTO if the parents involved don’t get to object to this kind of bullshit?
The PTO is probably the group running the fundraiser. And they probably hate it too, but it raises a hell of a lot more than a bake sale. Source: am PTO. It’s depressing how much money public schools are expected to raise. We know you don’t want $18 pretzels, but the playground equipment isn’t going to repair itself.
Those are cute. We’ve run A-Thons in the past, but we don’t have enough volunteers for that these days. (A lot of schools in the area hire a local company to do it, but they’ll take a huge chunk.) We can run a catalog sale with 3-4 people and still make 10-15K. We supplement with restaurant nights and other small sales during the year, but there’s no replacing the dreaded catalog at this time. I’m sad they’re getting so much hate today because they make such a difference for so many schools.
The one my kids school did that raised a ton was those 50/50 groups on Facebook. A $500 gift card they sell 100 spots at $10 a spot, they would buy stuff like bbqs and such too and put those up. They made over 20k just with that fundraiser.
And this is why I am buying $32 worth of take n bake cookies even though I could get them from the store for less than ten. They are at least usually tasty.
Bless you!
My moms involvement with the PTA was why we didn’t do it. She saw how little the school got out of it.
I’ve also seen FOR profit daycare centers forcing their “students” to sell this stuff for new playground equipment, etc. If they need new playground equipment the FOR PROFIT center owners need to invest in their business!
If a for-profit daycare can't even afford playground equipment, they should not be in business. Full stop. They should not foist the responsibility on children.
Education is one of the most scammy industries. Something incredibly scummy about paying for something and then them asking for more.
I wouldn’t let me kids sell this shit. I just gave the school a donation. It cost less that the sales crap and the school got to keep all of it
I wish more parents would do this. We always fantasize about an “anti-fundraiser” where we promise you won’t have to sell anything in exchange for a donation. But our internal metrics suggest we’d be left with a massive deficit compared to “selling junk”.
I always do the buy out and I wish it then made them exempt from having to go to the assembly and get excited about the possibility of selling 1000000 rolls of wrapping paper to win a gaming system.
My son's school district sends out a letter stating that parents can make a donation instead of participating in fundraisers. They suggest a donation of $20-25. According to the math, that's the average money one child raises in a fundraiser. That seems so low for how much the stuff costs. We always go the donation route because the school still needs the money.
I was poor growing up so I let my kids go ham at the scholastic book fair. I’m sad they don’t sell Ferrari posters and goosebumps still.
The book fair was legitimately awesome. I wish there was an easy way for kids that came from a poor background to be given an “allowance” to get stuff.
Had a teacher that would let every student pick one low price item at the book fair to get added to the class store. Scratch and sniff book marks, cool light up pens, erasers shaped like panda bears, things of the like. So she’d spend $20 at the fair and then have a classroom of well behaved students the whole week leading up to conferences while we tried to earn enough fake money to buy the thing we picked out.
Awe! Teachers shouldn’t have to do these things out of their own pocket. But that was also smart of her, hahaha!
They shouldn’t have to, but growing up in a poorer community she knew how many of these kids didnt get real meals on the weekends because the only meals the kids got were school breakfast and lunch. She was a saint and never wanted any kid to be left out, even if all they got was a 50 cent pencil with kitties on it.
I loved that bookfair. It's how i got tons of Animorphs books and silly erasers...
The book fair holds fond memories for me for sure. Through that I discovered my first favorite book series, Hank the Cowdog.
Scholastic bookfairs still have both of those.
Source: PTA Bookfair chair at my sons school
I loved the book fair! It was like second Christmas. It was the only fundraiser my parents approved of.
Book fair day was always a sad one for me. We all went to the book fair even if we didn't have money just so the teachers could keep us all together. Kind of sucked looking at all the cool things I couldn't afford no matter how cheap they were because I couldn't even afford basic necessities like shampoo and clothes.
My kid is also going to go ham at the book fair whenever they come around. I want him to have all the things I couldn't when I was young. :)
Even as a kid I remember looking at it and being like, "I would feel bad selling people this stuff".
I remember having to do it and feeling really guilty. And annoyed.
I sold that stuff too but never felt victimized because of it.
My school's fundraiser was selling magazine subscriptions. I, too, felt guilty and awkward asking relatives to please sign up for a yearly subscription, all so I could try and win some mediocre prize.
Oh, and does anyone remember that event Jump Rope for Heart back in primary years? Wow, that brings back memories! I still can't jumprope to save my life, though. Hoola-hooping I'm decent at.
I remember that! It was so much fun, my memories of it are really hazy by now though.
I always end up buying some of this overpriced shit when my niblings sell it just because they get so excited about it. I grew up poor AF so I know how it feels to not get any prize because nobody in my family could afford a $7 bag of gumdrops or 4' sheet of wrapping paper. Thankfully my youngest nibling's school started partnering with local businesses, around Xmas they had a screen printing fundraiser of an art project they made where you could buy all kinds of stickers or tshirts or tumblers. Slightly overpriced but much nicer quality.
what up my niblings
I'm glad someone else is trying to make this word happen!
At least they were a little better than that wrapping paper that was overpriced with rolls that had hardly any paper on them.
I was gonna say! A coworker was selling stuff on her kid’s behalf and it was literal square sheets of wrapping for $10 for like 4 sheets. RIDICULOUS.
SallyFoster.
For the prizes I looked up the cost of the prize my kids wanted with them. It's always cheap junk, like a glow bracelet. Then we figure out how much stuff they would have to sell (a lot) to get the prize and how much time it would take (also a lot). Then we talk about extra chores they can do around the house to earn the money for the prize, which would take way less time.
The never end up actually doing the chores because they don't actually want the prizes that badly. It's a good learning opportunity about how those companies take advantage.
Honestly, I think selling chocolate bars was more profitable than these weird catalogues.
Plus $1 for a chocolate bar seems fair enough, instead of spending $20 for gross “cheese” dip.
Or tacky holiday things that no one would actually want.
The money schools received from these sales was next to nothing. My mom would just give the PTA a check for $50, which is way more than they’d ever have seen if I sold to the few people I’d even ask.
We had a few exceptions but for the most part, it really didn’t help the school.
I had to temporarily attend this fancy school in a much nicer neighborhood when I was 6. They had bagel sales every week. Does this even make sense? The teacher would ask who wanted to order bagels on Monday and hand them out on Wednesday or whatever. And always with the "whoever ordered bagels line up in the special line!" Or whatever bullshit
I just buy my kid the prize if he wants it.
$12 for a 5 oz bag of plain salted cashew halves. What the fuck.
I never met anyone who won a prize
This was a big thing at my private Christian elementary school and I HAAAATED it. I asked a couple of neighbors and my parents ended up buying whatever the product was.
I went to Catholic school and same! We were so salty one year when the principal kept hinting if we met a certain goal we would get something to "keep us cool". We all thought she meant air conditioning but it was actually getting better water fountains! Definitely an improvement but it was baby's first bait-and-switch.
World’s Finest Chocolate Bars! They were so awesome! My dad would sell them at work like all his coworkers with school-aged kids did.
Wanna know the secret I learned when I grew up? My dad just gave me the $60 he’d get from selling the chocolate and kept the box in his locker at work. Man got to eat a bar of chocolate every day for weeks and never had a kid in his face asking him to share.
My middle school did this in 7th grade, and 12 year old me was wise enough to chuck the catalogs into the trash bin on my way out.
I did the same thing, concluded that people can buy this stuff at the store for 1/4 of the price and would have felt guilty if I tried to sell it. Not to mention the "prizes" could be purchased from a quarter machine.
God I hated these so much. Never sold enough to earn the sweet prizes. It got to the point where my parents just wrote checks to the school for fundraising instead of expecting me to sell the crap.
I saw a YouTube video about these recently. Here in Australia we had bake sales, or fundraising drives selling chocolate, but it was usually brand name because the brands do deals to help school fundraisers, but this catalogue bullshit looks weird as fuck.
I threw this crap directly in the trash when my kids brought it home.
People in this sub hate when you point out that Girl Scouts and other similar fundraisers are the exact same thing.
At least people actually want Girl Scout cookies. Overpriced candy they can get elsewhere and magazines, not so much
I seek out Girl Scout cookies. They taste good and are reasonably priced. But the Boy Scouts can fuck of with their nasty over priced popcorn.
They ARE! The stress on the kids and parents' end, the guilt towards the buyers. Like...nah, stop doing this to kids who can't know any better. Speak the truth.
Profits from the cookies fund troop activities. If you eliminate that then only wealthy families can participate in scouts. How do you allow kids across the economic spectrum to be involved without fundraising?
ETA: Organizations like the scouts do fundraising to keep members’ overall costs down. If they didn’t, then the troop would have to charge its members much more more money, thus making it inaccessible to low-income students.
People in this thread keep acting like schools and youth groups are predatory for raising money in a country that severely undervalues those things. Please write your congressmen and tell them you want public funding for the scouts. And schools. And middle school bands.
I have no idea what you're talking about. My family's only fights were about money, and I was still in Scouts, Band, and athletics. I was in it with a bunch of other poor people. It's not like going to private school where it's tens of thousands a year. We get it.
I'm sorry, i didn't realize having a problem with something meant I should have the solution or to not speak up. It's a scam. They could sell those cookies in store and subsidize via scholarships for applying kids if they wanted to, but they don't? It's not a goodness of their hearts thing. And poor kids like the ones in my neighborhood STILL get left out and ostracized if their neighborhood doesn't have money, isn't safe, or they don't have a car to prop up at Walmart with their parents who have free time or ask their parent's friend's at the job they have.
They literally do
At least people nominally want Girl Scout Cookies, even if they have gone down in quality and quantity drastically in recent years.
Eh, at least with Girl Scouts, those funds are going back to the troop directly (10%, which is too low, but whatever), and I think around 40% went to the council, which help fund things like camps and other activities.
People in this sub hate when you point out that Girl Scouts and other similar fundraisers are the exact same thing.
The one difference with Girl Scout cookies is I can pay for and receive the product in the same transaction. With these fundraisers, you have to pay for it and wait a couple weeks.
As an adult, this makes me very upset. But as someone who grew up with shit like this, I can totally understand school kids getting hyped for all the "prizes."
If you're a kid who grows up not having a whole lot, the opportunities that come with performing well in these events are quite attractive. Imagine being told that you could skip a day and go to Chuck E Cheese if you sold enough of X, or get an electric scooter, or huge toy set. Right off the bat, the "fundraiser" is going to benefit kids who grow up in a more wealthier household because they are more likely to know other adults eoth money to spend on frivolous things offered in these fundraising catalogues.
These should stop being pushed in schools.
But the purpose of those fundraisers is usually to raise money for the entire school. Everyone is focusing on the prizes, but the money raised benefits the school as a whole, even the kids who didn’t participate. I get that not getting prizes sucks (I never did as a kid), but isn’t it a lot sadder if your playground rusts into dust because there’s no money to fix it? I feel like everyone is missing the forest for the trees on this issue.
You make a good point. But do you think they don't get enough money from local government, grants, etc?
Honest question. Because how much impact can a group of kids have in a public school setting? I guess it depends on the size of school?
School funding varies by state and by district. We live in a red state that requires our district to share with rural areas, so yes, we’re underfunded. Our school has an enrollment of 800. Approx 200 participate in our catalog fundraiser. Of that 200, most sell 5 items. Maybe 15 kids sell enough for the “good” prizes. We make $11,000 on average. I hate that kids might feel bad for not earning prizes, but they are still the beneficiaries of the money we raise.
Now I have a honest question. Does Reddit really think schools use fundraisers to emotionally abuse children? What would be the motivation?
Abuse? No. But they’re predatory for the same reasons MLMs are. Sell overpriced shitty products to earn money that mainly goes to the company making the products. Have a tough time selling because so are 800 other kids? Too bad.
Yes. My nephew had this but for magazines. Gave the email and they got points just for us to sign in from the invite. I got one 2 year subscription and thankfully my sister gave up when her next two got the same thing!
When my kids were in school a few years back they sent out a letter at the beginning of the year and it said we will be having several fundraising events this year and class parties. If you would like to sign up for these events, please do or if you would like to make a donation to the class for these. You can also do that. I've never been more grateful for that school ever... both of their classes got a nice donation from us that year just so I wouldn't have to go through the hassle of crap no one wanted to buy and remembering to send in something for school parties.
Not an MLM because we what we made for the school did not rely upon recruiting downlines to for whose work we would also be paid. But I hated these too and refused to do it.
My kid came home with a note for Spring pictures. Instead of doing shit photos once a year for $75, they decided to just double their income by doing it each semester. What the hell?
Oh yeah! This shit!! lol, I remember the first time I saw that too and I was like “ What?” The only upside is you can get sibling group photos. But yeah, I was like “There had their pic Six months ago!”
I decided when my first kid started school that we would not be doing any fundraiser sales. Our families aren't local, neither of us will sell at work and all our friends have kids doing the same damn fundraiser. Instead I just do a monetary donation to the PTA each year. I wind up spending less and they wind up getting more than they would if we were selling wrapping paper or cookie dough. The prizes are often shit, especially at the levels we would hit, so if my kids are bummed I will take them to the dollar store for something equivalent.
Maybe we should try voting for legislators that will actually fund education.
I hated these and hated that I had to do them. My mom would just take the order form to work and pester her coworkers to buy that crap. Except for World's Finest. The box stayed open on the kitchen counter and whoever took one had to put a dollar in the box. I never got above the second prize category for any fundraisers I was forced to do.
Taught me how to scam never looked back.
WFC Gang!
World's Finest Chocolate
Non-American here, can someone please explain what this is? I gather from the comments that it's some sort of for-profit company that facilitates fundraisers through school but I'm not 100% sure of the players
From the comments I gathered that it's pretty normal at US schools that companies or distributors use the children to sell stuff to their families. I assume that the children/families function like some sort of down line. It's horrifiying to me that these "fundraisers" (looks more like a typical grift to me) are apparently absolutely normal in the US. I mean one pays taxes to fund schools. At least here in my country.
At my kids school about half the families are Japanese citizens, here temporarily on work assignment.
We don’t do sales fundraisers but we do ask parents to donate $25 per kid to fund our activities and we try to get corporate sponsors for the fun run etc.
And every year I am looking out at a sea of confused faces and the Japanese moms are like “Why are we paying for things at a public school?” and I’m like “Right, yeah, welcome to America!”
Wanna know some wild shit? All of the kids who are Japanese citizens, REGARDLESS OF WHERE THEY ARE IN THE WORLD, can have mailed to them their Japanese school books for the year.
We work with the consulate general near us to be a drop off point but like…their government is so invested in their kids education that they MAIL their school books and we’re begging for dollars for a drinking fountain.
Also worlds finest chocolate. There's a bunch of shady shit in that too ngl
Eli5-and not from the US?
My daughter’s school (she’s almost 8 btw, 2nd grade) has shilled stuff NUMEROUS times. It seems like every time she comes home from school, they’re selling something. I went all out the first round and bought an ungodly amount of stuff and she literally got a cheap ass toy that wasn’t even worth $5. I know how this crap works. My Dad had a buddy who was a higher up at World’s Finest Chocolate. They loved the fact that kids were like free labor/money makers for them. F*ck that noise. I’ve tried to be nice and explain it to her, on her terms. I also get she’s a kid and deserve the normal kid experiences too but I really don’t like my kid and other people’s kids being used as free labor to shill out shitty items.
Edited. Can’t keep up with what grade she’s in haha and I just woke up.
My dad went to the school and specially told them we would never participate 🙃 probably a self-serving "I'm not taking them out for that" but a boon nonetheless
My daughters school is doing this now with popcorn.
In middle school it was always selling magazine subscriptions - it was so dumb but the prizes were pretty cool and the assembly was always hype af. I went door to door and most people didn't want shit but they'd occasionally just donate $20 cause they felt bad (considered as 1 magazine sub for prizes). I ended up getting to go to get pizza in a limo with some other kids for lunch 1 day. totally not worth the 25 subscriptions I had to get... should have just kept the cash 🤣
Magazines were the worst! We had to do that every year in elementary. My parents didn't have these big offices to take in order form to people like the rest of the kids. However, if you sold 1 subscription, they day you turned it in you got to but your hand in this dark box and grab as many Pogs as you could. The cool thing was that some of the Pogs had something taped on the back indicating you got a specific prize. My mom bought me a subscription to Highlights that year, and on my Pog-grab I got SO many prizes compare to what other kids got.
Highlights was the best!!! My dad and I used to get them for the iSpy page or whatever where you had to find all the objects. The memories!!
You can't forget Goofus and Gallant!
I was the poor kid growing up. I also didn’t have many friends or family to sell to. The day we had to turn them in and they’d have a huge assembly with all the grades the ones who sold the most got the top prize and honors and the rest of us well we had to applaud the winners. So unfair. And stupid.
I was always the top seller for my school... Gives me the ick now
My mom used to just write a $100 check the school and be fuckin done with it, so I was exempt from the selling
These fundraisers always had a way of making me feel like shit, especially as a socially anxious kid who didn't know how to talk to people, let alone sell shit to them. I never felt like I could ask my mom to ask around either since I always felt bad asking for help.
Brings back weird memories of scrounging around our apartment for loose change to try and place an order for myself so I could at least get something.
When I was in school, we sold raffle tickets, with a coupon on the back.
They school convinced the children to have the adults gamble on their behalf.
me too
Anyone here old enough to remember the Tom-Wat cases of stupid trinkets? Never realized how scummy that shit is.
I begged my neighbors to buy the tub of popcorn which was like $9 but half the price at the store, all so I could get some reward points to get something like a bottle opener.
Shit is a scam.
Still, I’d ‘bout sell my soul for a full sized “World’s Finest Chocolate” bar.
You can buy boxes of WFC on Amazon now. Crazy, right?
I’m on it! Thanks for the tip!
Peak America.
What even is this?
My nephews school still does this, but to be fair their chocolate covered raisins are THE BEST and I’ll be so sad when my nephew ages out of selling these for school.
I don’t know who makes them but they are raisinettes on steroids
These comments are crazy to me growing up in Australia. I do remember a few parents selling entertainment books, but otherwise our fundraisers were $1 Cadbury chocolate bar boxes or $2 donation to not wear school uniform for the day,
Most of things sold via fundraisers are crap.
Ugh we had a flowering bulbs mlm and one that sold easter eggs. They were the worst - cheap imitation chocolate that was loaded with sugar and the marshmallows always tasted like they were years past the expiry date.
Those are 2023 prices
2nd grade I went around to all the neighbor's we knew trying to get as much as possible, my dad took the catalogue to work.
I just wanted the teir 4 land line phone thing they had. To a stupid kid it had all these crazy functions like a hold music button and a calendar function.
Anyways. It came in one day and was so shit you couldn't understand what people where saying. Fuckin actually trash
My parents absolutely refused, they would just ask if they could make a donation directly to whatever program was doing it. There was no mechanism to do so.
Also, I've eaten literal leftover humanitarian aid rations on combat exercises that were better quality than what were in those catalogs.
I loved the candy fundraisers, but only because it allowed me to sneak in my own candy supply from Sam's Club.
At an early age, I used to hustle and sell candy for my high school aged brothers when I was in middle school. Since it was for fundraising, the teachers let it slide. Eventually I ran out and my customers wanted more candy, so I used that glorious brown box to peddle other brands and sizes that normally weren't offered.
I made a ton of spare cash since I brought in a better variety to school.
If you want a humorous take on this search for "boondocks fundraiser".
For us it was magazine subscriptions, which are even harder to sell. I always thought it was super weird and culty.
Could someone explain this picture for the non-americans?
My daughter just brought home a cookie dough fundraiser sheet. They had an assembly where they hyped the kids up and told then if they sell "just 30 items" (at $22 each for cookie dough and other expensive junk on the website) they get a limo ride with a friend and pizza. She came home so excited about this limo ride she is going to earn. On the paper it says no door to door sales but have your parents email friends and family and bring the order sheet to their work. What is she going to learn from me trying to scam my friends and family?? I guess I am also still bitter from being the girl scout who would walk miles going door to door selling cookies and the top spots would go to girls who had parents who worked downtown in high paying jobs in skyscrapers!
Those sales are such a huge scam! You know who benefits? The companies that are behind this. The items are sold at hugely inflated prices and the schools get next to nothing while the supplier makes out like a bandit. I really don't understand how school boards/teachers can be so dumb as to allow this.
The issue is it’s the model that works the best. They’re terrible but if you have a 12 year old knock on your door and ask for money for the school library most people aren’t gonna give them cash. However, with a fundraiser like this you know they’re not pocketing your $20. The best thing parents can do when they have a kid come home with these shitty flyers is just make a donation in the amount they can afford directly to the school or to the teacher. That way if they can afford to donate $100 the school gets $100, the bullshit company doesn’t get their 40%, you don’t have to bug your friends and family, and you can get a receipt that you can claim on your taxes.
OMG YES!!! These weren't "fundraisers" at all!!! WTH!?!