It’s time to update school booster fundraising efforts
By Andrew Harris,
You’ve likely been asked this year by your child, grandchild, student, or family member to support a fundraiser. Sports teams, music boosters, and extra-curricular programs depend on outside funding to thrive and avoid putting undue financial burdens on parents.
The kids are asked sell a product or prize, like beef sticks, to anyone who will make eye contact. Teachers are overwhelmed and guilted and end up giving everyone they know beef sticks for Christmas.
Many of them end up in the garbage because well, everyone is sick of fundraising beef sticks. Slim Jim makes money, the team gets new uniforms, but supporters of the fundraiser get the same beef sticks as they have been buying since I sold them in 1992. I’m not so sure they aren’t the same exact beef sticks, coming from some massive pile of food that never expires.
The finances of the fundraiser all follow the same formula: Total Sales less Total Costs equals Net receipts for the booster club. The beef stick company uses these fundraisers as a major profit center, the school program takes a healthy percentage, and supporters end up getting some very expensive beef sticks.
As a parent and supporter all student pursuits from softball to Odyssey of the Mind, I don’t want the beef sticks or the frozen pizza or the chance to win tickets to Darien Lake. Some might enjoy five-year-old beef sticks or the most expensive frozen pizza ever or the chance to win a prize, I just want to give the kids some financial help.
The finance of a pure donation is a better formula: Total donations equal Total receipts. A twenty-dollar bill goes toward the new uniforms, a twenty-dollar beef stick order only provides the fundraiser a percentage of the sale, often only half of the sales.
Supporters of our student athletes, musicians, thespians, or academic all-stars just want to help. Most of us don’t want the frozen pizza or the summer sausage. The teachers, the grandparents, and other victims need a more common-sense way to help out. Instead of asking Mr. Brown to spend twenty dollars which gives his student a ten-dollar boost, just ask him to give ten dollars. He saves ten dollars, or he can afford to support another student, and the program makes double the money.
Sure some people just love well-aged meat or think that a frozen Little Caesar’s pizza is better that a fresh Pizza King pie. These folks are going to be disappointed, and some will be curmudgeons who refuse to donate as an act of pure support. I’d wager this is a small percentage of potential supporters and those donations are only a percentage of the sale.
For efforts that aren’t ready to part with pepperoni sales, why not simply give students an easy way to accept pure donations using a QR code or web link. Send the generous soul a thank you email, thank them on social media, make it easy for them to donate again.
Streamline the school booster fundraising process to raise more funds, eliminate fundraising headaches for parents and coaches, and give the teachers a break !
Andrew Harris is a Wellsville parent of three students and obviously has selfish motives for his opinion. Feel free to email him anytime, WellsvilleSun@yahoo.com
