I hate school fundraisers. Let me just start with that.
But my daughter and I were discussing weird ones we've had to do - my husband sold light bulbs back in the 70s. My in laws don't believe in children selling door to door, so they bought $75 worth of light bulbs from him.
My daughter's school sold trash and lawn bags. Plastic, not biodegradable lawn bags. None of these bags had drawstrings or flaps or anything to make them convenient to the buyer. They were thin and cheap and $10 a roll. A complete waste and totally weird.
I will also prefer to simply give the organization cash to cover whatever percentage my child would raise rather than sell. Even for Girl Scouts - they were $4 a box this year, the troop gets $.55 per box, and we don't even eat them in our family. She is too shy to go door to door and dad and I can't take it to work like other parents. I end up buying 25 boxes of unhealthy junk to give away to relatives just for her to get a ten cent patch. I'd rather just give a check to the troop for $25, which is far more than the boxes would earn.
So what are the craziest fundraisers you've had to participate in?
*snork*! Julie S, that's funny!
I literally had to participate in donkey basketball when I was teaching high school. I mean, ride the donkey and everything. For some reason, I had the most rebellious donkey. He ran out the open gym door and through the parking lot... with me on his back. It took two handlers to get this donkey back into the gym.
The kids thought it was hilarious and we raised good money. I guess that's all that counts. And I hate donkeys now, btw. :)
My kids have done all you have listed. Oddly until you mentioned them I forgot all about it. I guess the therapy is working. :p
Oh my god!! One erection condoms!! They stole it from One Direction! Sorry, watching the news while I wait to kick the kids to the curb and go to work. :-/
I know the best fundraisers was my older kid's eighth grade play. They put on this play that funded their eighth grade mystery trip.
My ex's mom loved those dang trash bags!! Crazy woman!
A couple of fundraisers that we have done.
Flocking. The band bought 4 dozen pink plastic flamingos. Each grade had their own "flock". You put them in a yard with a sign around the neck saying they have "flocked" and that they can for a donation have the birds sent to another home. In a couple of months, we made $10,000 dollars. It was very successful.
Dinner/silent auction. We had most of the dinner donated from one of the local restaurants as well as items to be auctioned. This was for marching band. I was able to get some signed photographs from country western singers (Keith Urban, Toby Keith, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw) and we auctioned them off. Made money.
Poinsettas at Christmas time. My company buys 50 poinsettas every holiday from the marching band at one of the local high schools. They are beautiful, large and goes to a good cause.
I don't like car washes!
I was mortified when, in the 10th grade, we were asked to simply go door to door and ask for monetary donations for our school fundraiser. I hated fundraising, and I remember breaking down in tears to my mother who took pity on me. It was a private Catholic school, there were plenty of wealthy families that would have donated money, just not in MY neighborhood. My goal was $20. My mother gave me $10 and sent me down the street to the home of an alumna and she gave me $10. So, although I agree that sending in that check is a lot easier (and something I tend to do for my own kids' schools), simply sending out a kid to collect money was a little short sighted, I thought.
We still have kids going door to door selling candy bars in our neighborhood, but we all know each other and a dollar here and a dollar there is no big deal.
One other time I bought frozen calzones. They were, no kidding, about 4" long and 3 inches wide. I had planned on serving them at a party and had to go to the grocery store at the last minute and buy more food to put out.
I'll never forget the dunk tank at our spring fair. Staff members volunteered, the day was cold, the water freezin', the kids enthusiastic about throwing balls at the target, and two staff members ended up getting very ill from something in the water!
That fundraiser was never repeated!
I have four kids in three different elementary schools this year. Two of tge schools are doing the usual-candy bars, overpriced home goods, pizza kits, cookie dough, etc. Etc, etc. The k-1st grade school PTA sent out a proposal at yhe beginning of the year to have a fundraiser free year-if every family donated $25-I quickly sent a check! Apparently not enough families sent a check so they have done a candy bar sale since then. But they had a whole month where they sold raffle tickets for prize baskets, had a reading night with activites and a celebrity book reading/signing, etc. If enough $ was raised the principal had to kiss a pig! That was cute/fun for all.
Our soccer club only does pictures as a fund raiser. The photographer gets creative and will take pics of friends together along with traditional pics. She also does a silly pic where all the kids pile on top of the coach. I'd rather have 10 kids pile on top of me then schlep a bunch of junk around and try to sell to neighbors/friends!
I have to talk about the Girl Scout cookies - like someone below mentioned, most troops have an option for a charitable donation of cookies for people who don't want them around. Our council partners up with Operation Shoebox, which sends care packages to military troops overseas. I guarantee you they are pretty happy to get a box of goodies that includes some Girl Scout cookies.
Also while the individual Girl Scout troops only receive a small portion of the cookie money (I think we get .75 a box), money from each box sold goes to fund activities and camps on both the council level and the national level. Most people don't think about that.
My kids have always had boring regular fund raisers. But I hated it when we quit selling wrapping paper - it was always high quality and I got spoiled. I hate buying paper from Target now - its like tissue paper!
We did the candy bars for Tae Kwon Do to help fund the kids and parents to Nationals. I got soooooo sick of those candy bars I still can't enter the store here.
We did the wrapping paper etc one year. I refused to participate again. I can get better quality at Dollar Tree for a lot less money.
I always feel bad for my grandchildren when they ask me to buy something. I feel as though I am being ripped off. In all the years since my oldest started school, 1980, I have never seen a good school fundraiser. The products are so cheap, the resale shops would be embarrased to stock them.
We have had a lot of fundraisers this year because of choir and band. Nothing weird. They have sold cheese, garlic sausage, veggie packs, bedding plants, coupon books, coffee and tea to name a few (all really good stuff). Our school division does not allow junk food for fundraising. I do love the coupon books. I usually buy four for myself. Our kids all have their own fundraising accounts, so anything they sell benefits them directly. They can apply the funds in their accounts towards camps and trips.
When I was in high school in Wyoming Cow Pie Bingo was a popular fundraiser. The football field was divided into a checkerboard. People bought raffle tickets and picked coordinates. A cow was led to roam on the field. Whoever had the square that the cow left a pie in, got a portion of the money earned.
Kiss a Pig/Cow was also popular. Jars were put out with people's names on them. Whoever got the most money in their jar had to kiss the chosen animal.
When I was in grad school we hosted an ice skating event on the brand new college hockey rink. We also hosted a Honduran meal. Both events brought in a huge amount of money for the mission trip we were going on.
A couple of schools in our district do silent auctions. Each class does a theme basket with items donated by families. Parents who is businesses or have a special talent will donate items: a cooking class with a chef, a landscape consultation, a dozen fresh baked cookies every month for a year, a guided fly fishing trip, a lake party on a pontoon boat, a personal lesson on scrap booking, a family portrait session, etc. They make thousands of dollars every year!
I agree about kids selling door to door to get 50 cents a box for cookies or 25 cents a roll for wrapping paper. The bulk of the proceeds goes to the company. And yes, too many parents don't let their kids go door to door anyway (plus many more families have two people working outside the home these days), and more parents have jobs where they can take the order forms and annoy their co-workers. So the kids aren't actually doing any work, they're just forcing their parents to do the work so they can get some garbage prizes the wrapping paper company gives away. It turns into a competition of who has the richest or pushiest parents.
My son was in Hebrew school, and a company came in to give the kids both a wrapping paper fundraiser (most of it was Christmas paper) - but the kids sold it because either they have some Christian family members (immediate or extended) or of course they have neighbors. There was something with food products - I think it was candy and nuts, but they also had some sausage product in there. Because it contained pork, the synagogue wouldn't allow the kids to sell it, so the kids walked around with catalogs with a big X through a couple of products. Dumb, if you ask me! I think this particularly company gave a pretty good commission to the Hebrew school so it wasn't the huge rip off that most of them are. And the wrapping paper was good quality, not the garbage that rips all the time. Still, I thought it was a little crazy!
As kids we Girls Scouts sold cookies and Cub Scouts sold light bulbs. My son's school had some thing where various people (e.g. the principal) were taken into custody by the cops (all in fun - no kids were scared apparently - cops were pleasant, principal was laughing and saying goodbye to the kids) and taken down to the police station, then a certain amount of "ransom" had to be paid to get them out. It was different but I had really mixed feelings about it - didn't like the kidnapping or arrest theme, and again, the parents had to do it all. But it did help the kids see the police as partners in the community and not as people to fear. So I suppose there were positives in it.
The high school music department had the kids out selling oranges and grapefruits from Florida. At least it was healthier than the candy bars. Lately I've seen the girl scouts set up cookie tables at the supermarkets and, in a stroke of brilliance, at the Red Cross Blood Donor Center. People go to buy cookies (and then give blood) or people go to give blood (and buy their own box of cookies on the way in). Good cross-marketing for both organizations.
The best fundraisers were shoebox raffles with an ice cream social night and a book fair. Everyone got something. You could put your raffle tickets only into the drawing for the things you wanted (vs. a random raffle), you could make your own sundae, and you could buy books either for yourself or for gifts. It's a ton of work for the organizers but a lot of people go home happy, it's a social/bonding night, there's a little junk (ice cream) and some positive messages (joy of reading).
When my son was in high school, he was part of a hiking/adventuring group. They had a great fundraiser - Christmas Tree pick-up! When people bought their trees from the local civic club, they could also buy a tag for the tree for something like $5 or $10 (they could pay more). The tag had pick-up dates (choice of 2) and all the homeowner had to do was put that special tag on the old tree and put the tree at the curb on certain dates. I think they could go on line and sign up for the pick-up, which let the club map out routes for the tree pick-ups. A few local landscapers who had trucks (not much in use in early January) drove around with the kids (each truck took a different part of town) and just picked up all the trees left out. Then they took them back to one landscaper's house where the trees went through a wood chipper to make bark mulch, which was then sold back to these and other landscapers. It was a great service for homeowners who didn't have to haul these trees with their dried out needles shedding all over the car, it saved the town money because the trees didn't go into the regular trash pickup, it helped the environment because something usable was mulched rather than burned with other trash, and it saved the landscapers money because they got cheap mulch for the spring. Oh yeah, and it got the kids the hell out of the house during that long winter break. It was awesome!
When my daughter was in private school they sold wrapping paper and Christmas cards, it was a Christian school.
In Girl Scouts (many troops in my area) they set up cookie booths in front of the local Publix's and sell them there, they also have a donation can for people who don't want cookies and that money goes directly to the troop selling the cookies. We do sell a lot being so close to Disney, the vacationers love getting them.
We were asked to sell fruitcakes for my high school band each holiday season. They actually handed each kid about 6 small pre-packaged "samples" to hand out to potential customers. Crazy thing is, the samples were actually delicious. Most of us kids just ate them ourselves and never offered them up to anyone to convince them to buy a band fruitcake. We also sold pizzas and pies at other times of the year, so I did not feel too bad about skipping the fruitcake sale.
