Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Gotta give her points for resourceful thinking

OK, I admit it: I'm a fundraising curmudgeon. I HATE all those catalogs and flyers and so forth and so on.

So far, we've had Tupperwear, wrapping paper, walk-a-thon, read-a-thon, makeup, and cookie dough.

Now Tupperwear, I love. Couldn't afford right now, but love.

The Sally Foster gift wrap is good stuff, too. High quality. Thumbs up.

Anything-a-thon may get annoying when you're getting FOUR identical envelopes all at the same time, but I just do a flat pledge and there we are.

But the cookie dough...y'all know about my baked-goods snobbery, right? I admit it: I like almost NO cookie I didn't bake. Mrs Fields can get some of my money...coincidentally (not!), guess where I first learned to bake cookies?

Anyway, the tubs of plastic with semi-solid dough-like substance in it, which makes 36 cookies for twelve bucks?

Ahem. Tell you what, my darling school: How about I just write a check straight to the student fund instead? You get the whole twelve bucks, I get to deduct the whole twelve bucks (yes, it's tax deductible, at least for our school - YMMV), and I DO NOT have a tub of noxious waste waiting to defile my baking sheets. (Did I mention my baking snobbery?)

Which brings me to the one thing common to ALL these fundraisers that REALLY burns my turnovers, which is the "free" prizes.

Sell one, get this (yawn) whatever.

Sell four and get this AWESOME ZINGER-WHAMMER, WOW-WOW-WOW!!!

This, naturally, leads to begging, pleading, bribery, threats, tears and other skullduggery in an attempt to coerce their doting momma into buying hundreds of boxes of whatever.

Whiiiiiiiiiich leads me to Boo Bug, who wanted me to buy cookie dough.

Really, reeeeeeeally badly.

I said NO. I told her it was toxic waste squeezed from the bowels of Satan. I even gave her a check and told her that she should be proud. That was how much the school would get for TEN of those nasty tubs, and isn't that the whole point, sweetie?

She thought about it for a minute, then asked, "How much is bird seed?"

Uhhhhhhhh...I really don't...

"BECAUSE! MAYBE! You could make the cookies for the birds! They like anything, even store-bread!" Ah, bread snobbery! I'm passing it right along to the next generation.... "And it might be cheaper because I 'member YOU said bird seed was 'spensive, last year...!" (She starts dropping letters when she gets excited andalsoherwordsallruntogetherlikethis!!!

SEE, this is the danger you face, when your kids are smarter than you...still said no, but had to give her points for thinking outside the box, there...

(Bird seed is way less expensive, and cookies are bad for them. We discussed this at length. Along with the fact that she really didn't need another flam-whammer OR the didja-which.)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

My son's school had a "No Bake Sale" fund raiser. Everyone just sent in a check, no baking involved. Loved it.

(formerly) no-blog-rachel said...

I've always loved the fundraiser bake sale in which people contribute their own home-baked goods, others buy them and the money goes where ever. It probably doesn't make as much $$ as the $12 toxic waste though, so I'm sure that's why they don't do that kind of thing any more. Bummer though.

Elizabeth L in Apex, NC said...

I love your approach, and I think more folks should do that. We have two fundraisers at our elementary school: Sally Foster (no thanks, inherited all my MIL's wrap when she died - tons) and Citipass (like Entertainment books only way better). We participate in the Citipass fundraiser by purchasing two books, one for each of our cars. We use those coupons for dinners out and Home Depot (Hello? Need more of my cash? Okay!), and do end up saving money in the long run.

I really like the "no-bake sale" too, though; fun and easy.

Ms. Packrat said...

Co-worker's kid was flogging that stuff - perused the catalog and the one item with the purest ingredients? Was the dough for making - DOG biscuits. I was happy to buy that ...

Steph B said...

Another point for homeschooling! No fundraisers! :-)

Anonymous said...

i have had the same exact arguement with my kids. Id rather just send the money and skip the crap

Heidi said...

i'm with you. get rid of the middle man (or middle baked good as you will). let's just write the checks and skip the crap and all the work. really. shouldn't i be helping out in the classroom rather than trying to pawn off some cake that's probably going to send the buyer into a diabetic coma?