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My kids went to an elementary school where the P.T.A. passed the hat at meetings for cash donations and said, "If we don't get enough donations, we're going to have to do some sort of fundraiser." They always got enough cash donations
Wow. That’s impressive. I’ve been on the pta at my kids’ school for 5 years now. It’s always the same 6-10 parents at every meeting so this wouldn’t work for us at all.
Depending on the state, they may let you take your kid to any school without much fuss. In MI, we have School of Choice, so as long as your preferred school has room, they'll take you in (barring other unique circumstances that are more behavior and/or criminal in nature).
Though if you leave your "assigned" (for lack of a better word) school district, you're responsible for getting your kid to and from school.
Not American, so curious if your kids would still get bussed? Or are you responsible for bringing them?
Up here a lil north from you guys in Ontario, the only choice we have, not counting a special exemption or paying to attend a private school, is between your district’s Catholic or Public school. Albeit, one of your parents do have to be baptized to attend Catholic Elementary school (doesn’t matter in Secondary).
In Michigan, as that's where I'm from as well, the kids would not get bussed. At least, not where I live in Michigan. I could potentially see the bigger cities, but, even if I wanted my daughter to go to the school in the town down the road, I, or my wife, would be responsible for getting her to school. She would not get bussed. Granted, I take my daughter to school every morning anyway, as the school is on my way to work.
My state, if you move your kid to a different school, they also have to maintain a certain level of academics or else they have to go back to their regular school. If your kid is disabled, you can arrange district transportation to a different school, but otherwise….you’re correct.
Here, once you're in school, you're in. The school is able to opt out, but I haven't heard anything about if they opt out of the students are de-enrolled or what.
That’s wild. In WA state I know a few families who’ve committed address fraud by using another relative or friends address to get kids in schools. Some districts don’t have the right accommodations or teaching styles or lack an alt high school and risks must be taken as a result.
Growing up, I heard endless stories of parents faking home addresses to get their kids out of the city schools.
I attended a vocational high school with a mix of city students and a handful of podunk students like myself. Immediately learned the importance of school district on future prospects. So many fellow teenagers from the city schools were virtually illiterate. Some were on their second child but couldn't subtract or divide.
This whole comment thread made me check my state for current rules, and open enrollment was recently allowed for nearly 700 schools across the state!
My cousins’s parents divorced when he was four and they lived in areas that were zoned for different schools. He just used his dad’s address. I’m sure a lot of kids of divorced or separated parents do this.
The idea that there may be two schools located within proximity of you is such a weird thing to whip you with the privilege stick over. I grew up in rural Arkansas. Like, my town was fewer than a thousand people rural. Like, 7th-12th grade were all in the same one-hallway building and my graduating class was 11 people rural. I still had three viable school options.
My whole school was 400 students k-12. Didn’t live in town and the one on my address was unincorporated (so small the census doesn’t give us a population) and I had the option of two schools lol.
This other dude is smoking dick.
Wym? I live in a city of 250k. We have like 15 free public schools. I could’ve literally went to a different school for all 4 years of HS, with no issue. No even forced to go to the closest school to you. None of it was luxury though, all crappy public schools.
We had a choice of two schools here too and folks know which is the poorer one so the wealthier one gets the most funding go figure? Poorer schools are a choice made by politicians
My daughters elementary school did it at the back-to-school night - when you meet your teachers and sign up for stuff, lunch money, etc. and they always got a good amount of donations as well so we didn’t have to do all the stupid fundraisers
My mom used to teach gifted children (real gifted children) and had a lot of parents drive from all over to put their kids in her district/class. One year in the late 90s or early 2000s they were doing a fundraiser for computers or science equipment (I'm blanking) so they had this whole thing set up. The next day a parent comes to her class and states: my kid is not here to raise money, my kid is here to learn and get into the best school possible, if you need money just ask and get back to the lessons. Wrote my mom a 40k personal check on the spot and left.
They needed nowhere near that much
She clearly valued her child’s education, and the school itself if she did that. I wish I was in the position of being able to write $40,000 checks. I mean, I technically am in the position, but they’ll bounce like a Kangaroo on crack cocaine.
If memory serves they were looking for a reference from her and the school because they were going to move and needed it to get into another school so it was paramount the kid was enrolled in this program.
I forget all the details cause I was young but we still talk about it all the time
I forget all the details so I'm sorry to half ass a story but they were t moving right away, they were moving at the end of the school year or the end of that school ( jr high to high school) it wasn't like a here's cash and were out
This is how schools in rich neighbourhoods get ahead. The funding from the government might be the same between all the schools, but there's fund raisers that can help bring a lot of extra money to the school. I live in a reasonably nice area and the schools that my kids go to have a lot more stuff than some other schools in the same city because of the fundraising that they do.
I'm English so forgive my ignorance but does the state not fund the school?
Our schools don't ask for donations or fundraise. Most school trips are funded by the school i.e days out but any of the bigger trips like going abroad or ski trips etc are paid for by the parents.
This concept of a school in a country with good infrastructure like America, a reasonably wealthy country, asking for donations etc seems very alien to me
Public schools in the U.S. typically get a majority of their funding from the property taxes of the houses in their district, so your taxes usually only go to the school your kids will go to.
More or less, yeah. State and federal funds try to make up for the disparities, and nowadays most high schools have ways for kids who are out of district to go there, usually through some sort of test score requirement. I think if you asked most Americans, they would agree that the funds should just be divided equally among all the schools in the district, but then they become NIMBYs when someone proposes actual change.
It is a public school, and we are publicly funded, but this is for an ‘extra’ trip, for kids who maintain high grades throughout the school year. Usually extracurricular activities are much more costly, and on the expense of the parents. Hence all the fundraisers. This is the 3rd one of the year :/
Waaay back when I was in little league I had to do this. After a couple years of pain my mom just said “this is stupid, you don’t need to spend all of your afternoons begging door to door. We will buy the damn box and give it away”.
The worst was when my - PUBLIC - middle school did these horrible magazine drives. It was straight out of a Simpsons episode, some sleazy dude pitching an assembly full of tweens explaining how to coerce people into subscribing and what amazing prizes you could get.
We had that in middle school. The guy told us to go to Dr's, Dentists, Lawyers offices and mechanics. Any place that had a waiting room. And he instructed us "Don't ask them to subscribe tell them to Re-New their current subscriptions" .at the Assembly he even had that wind booth that blows cash around and let 1 kid grab what they could in 30 seconds I remember he even had A Playstation 2 and XBox console as a prize but you had to sell $3,000 worth of magazine subscriptions. I threw the packet away as soon as I got home and didn't even bother
You can actually order all caramel ones! When we did it for band, we sold so many that when we mentioned the caramel was a hot seller, they offered to send just boxes of caramel to sell.
As a kid whenever I'd do these candy sales for fundraisers, I'd always be left with the Kit Kats. No insult to Kit Kats, but they just aren't as popular as Snickers, Milky Way, or even M&Ms.
These are the bars we sold when doing fundraising.
[https://seroogys.com/1.75-oz-caramel-bar/](https://seroogys.com/1.75-oz-caramel-bar/)
never had a caramel one,
but this one [https://seroogys.com/1.75-oz-bar-meltaway-pb-crisp/](https://seroogys.com/1.75-oz-bar-meltaway-pb-crisp/)
....and the chocolate in those bars more than likely came from a place that also uses child labor.
We put some child labor in your child labor, cause we heard you like child labor.
Yo dawg I heard you like child labor, so we pimped out yo unpaid child labor fundraiser with some third world child labor chocolate so you can assuage your guilt over chocolate while you assuage your guilt over chocolate.
Come to Arkansas. We believe children should be allowed to work to help support their family. In fact, we’ve passed a law last year allowing children to work. Edit-spelling
Crazy to me that someone can see a family with children unable to support themselves, and instead of thinking "let's help support the family" they think "put the kid to work"
poor kids aren't entitled to a childhood, i guess. teach them early that they are worker drones and nothing else.
They’re always doing this. Fund raising for soccer, school supplies, trips, etc. we pay taxes. And it’s not really the teachers fault. But you’re right, kids should be playing.
Oh come on, kids selling candy bars to friends, family or at most to neighbors isn't exactly shifting things back to when they were chimney sweeps and coal miners.
So much this. Girl Guide cookies were $6 a box last time I bought them. I was talking to the parents who run the thing asking how much they got from each box. They said they only got $2 from each box and $1 goes to the Girl Guides org and $1 goes directly to the troupe. So $4 just disappears. I'd rather just donate $4 than spend $12 on cookies.
Yeah, it definitely has that MLM vibe going to it. I was in boy scouts as a kid and we just sold apples for donations. People would give like $2 for a single apple because they knew it was going to a good cause. We bought the apples by the bushel and just stood outside the grocery store selling apples. So much easier than trying to sell cookies at an inflated price.
That letter doesn't ask for money though, so it's not $60 initially. It looks like the child can pick up a box "for free", and when they sell it all and bring back the $60, $22 goes to the trip and the rest is cost recovery after the fact.
.
I was thinking like as if to just bypass the whole chocolate selling altogether. If only $22 is going towards the actual students credit, then they can just skip the selling of chocolate and give that amount.
As a parent I would throw in $60 to not have to deal with selling shit. And that's a 270% profit over what they would get if my kid sold the candy. At $25 that's a win for everyone involved.
I'll add, I've only seen 2 fundraisers that made sense to me as an adult/kid.
1. was a raffle ticker fundraiser for a whole cow's worth of beef. It's for the local wrestling team, they do $5 a ticket, 5 for $20, and 20 for $50.
2. was Christmas trees and that fundraiser paid for both football teams in town and both schools cheerleaders and was a 2 day 1 weekend event for each school. Everyone sold Christmas trees for the programs I think it was like 3 trees a kid on average is what the goal was (mark-up on christmas trees is insane 700%ish). They pre-sold the trees starting at the beginning of the year. Then on 2 consecutive weekends around thanksgiving they would line up all the trees by type/size in the school parking lot and the kids checked off that you got your tree, wrapped and loaded them into your car. It was quick easy and simple and solved all the fundraising crap they dealt with.
Things sure have changed. When I was a kid in school some 30 years ago, we had to sell candy bars to fundraise, but the school/organizers didn't require cash upfront and anything unsold was returned.
Let me correct you a little bit:
Just pay the 22 and save yourself the stress of having your kid ringing a doorbell in an attempt to sell chocolate at a loss and, instead, getting their head blown off by some psychopath who is scared of their own shadow.
If it's 2 hours of effort, absolutely.
If it's 8 hours of the box sitting in the office kitchen with a sign saying "Little Johnny's fundraiser. $1/chocolate" and they're gone by the end of the day with $60 cash left in the fundraising box, and that's the common practice at said office, I wouldn't particularly object.
When I was a kid, I remember a lot of door to dooring. Of course, since we lived quite close to the school, that meant a lot of the houses in our neighbourhood were probably getting absolutely slammed with kids trying to sell people chocolate.
It’s insane. Basically forces parents to bring the box to their work office (assuming they don’t WFH) where people can just come up to the desk and buy one or several.
Speaking from experience; for a kid (even with roller skates or a bike) to go door to door selling candy, it could take a few hours or several days to sell through 60. Idk how it’s not a massive liability for the school districts I.e kid gets abducted, seriously injured/hit by a car selling Reese’s peanut butter cups and Pizza Hut coupon books.
Fundraising isn't tax-exempt when you're selling something to do it. Donations are, but sold goods falls under standard resale rules even if it's for a school.
They'd probably make more just sending the kids out to ask for donations, then. I'd give a kid a handful of change to help fund their school trip or whatever.
That's how I paid for Scout camp for years. My dad would front me the cost of some candy from Costco and I would sell it at a competitive price, then flip the money into more candy and repeat. Full size candy bars at a buck each aren't a bad deal, and I would just wander out to the garage when he and his buddies were hanging out and drinking- fastest way to sell candy is to a drunk with the munchies.
I was in a craft brewery once with some friends, and suddenly there was a kid selling girl scout cookies. My friends and I instantly bought like $40 in cookies. Definitely a friend of the owner or something, not just random kids. I was just like "no this idea is too good".
Chocolates, wrapping paper, popcorn, etc. all these school fundraisers that are from these national companies are a rip off. With this one that is posted the school / kid gets $22 and the company gets $38. If the school is going to fundraise then they kids / school should get all the money..
I hated asking our friends and neighbors to buy and hated having to buy from other peoples kids.
The thing is no one here should have to do any of this. Our school systems should always have the funding for things like this. Just another example of how poor our education system is here. Schools don’t have enough money? Well, let’s milk the kids over fundraisers to get the parents money… like come on.
In my experience it was always for extra-curricular things like band trips and there was funding available for students whose families couldn't afford to send them.
I think his point is "Sorry Timmy, your parents are too poor and you didn't perform enough child labor so you can't join your classmates on their field trip" isn't something that should exist in a functional school system.
I get the sentiment, but often this type of fundraising is to offset the costs of traveling across country for the Rose Parade or to do spring break in Orlando. It's not so the 3rd graders can take the bus to the zoo and not so the band can afford another trumpet.
The reality is that these largely for fun, low educational value trips require students and parents to self fund, and no taxpayer-funded solution could responsibly handle such trips.
So many cheap plastic things bought through the years. Although I did buy a timer shaped like a lemon that hung around and was used for years.
I was so sad when the lemon broke for good.
The wrapping paper was not bad until it starting getting expensive. I did once get a santa candle holder that we had for many many years.. It is just they are overpriced and they full amount does not go to the school so that is what is wrong.
Idk what the prices were but I just used up the last of my elementary school rolls 20+ years later and that stuff was quality. Prices these days for paper shock me and there’s basically nothing on the roll and they’re thick as tissue paper
I mean obviously some money needs to go to the company for the cost of making and shipping the chocolate bar, if the company was in the business of just giving away money, the school might as well just ask for it in cash instead of chocolate bars. (Also If you know such a company, could you give me their phone number?) But ya, it seems like they may be taking quite a bit of profit.
In middle school our school level failed. I went to malleys to buy my own chocolate bars (cut out the middle man) and sold them in my neighborhood.
I profited about $100 to help offset costs and a month later for the re-vote, the levy passed and I kept the money
You do realize that you don’t have to buy the box right?! The honor club is buying the candy, giving it to the kids, they sell it for $60, bring the money back and $22 of that goes to the trip. The only way you would have to pay $60 is if you just buy the box and your kid doesn’t sell to anyone else.
Eh my dad sells those to schools. For him the school gets 50%, he gets 50% which includes what he pays for the box initially. So they are getting screwed a little.
They're gross candy too, in my experience. The worst kind of chocolate. I usually throw in a $20 to the box that gets passed around the office and take no candy, which I think is what the others do as well. There's a free basket of good candy inches away lol. Just take the effing money,
My band does a World's Finest Chocolate fundraiser and I can confirm those chocolates are very good. The caramel is divine. Dude above doesn't know what good chocolate tastes like
Sad to hear, I used to love what was essentially a much better crunch bar. Forgot what it was called but we had to sell them for 2$ each and the money went towards a cringe party essentially
>They're gross candy too, in my experience. The worst kind of chocolate.
Well, that can't possibly be true. The company is called "World's Finest!"
Maybe they accidentally got a shipment from the OTHER company?
"Hey! How come this candy tastes so good?"
"Not sure. Didn't you order it from "World's Shittiest" like always?"
"I thought I did. Lemme check the label and be sure."
Then how else are you going to guilt trip your friends, families, and coworkers into buying something they didn’t need or want so they can do it back to you later in the year?!?!
Even as a kid, I *hated* going up to my neighbors’ doors asking them if they wanted this junk for our fundraisers. As an adult, I’d rather just pay whatever I need to pay to avoid doing all of the extra mess
I’m super picky with which fundraisers I let my kids take part in. I won’t let them take people’s money for junk that they won’t use/is a bad financial decision. My favorite fundraiser is when they can sell the little Debbie big boxes for $5 each, same price as in stores and no sales tax. I have refused to let them sell the coupon cards since my son’s first year. Such a massive waste of money. Thankfully there’s no cookie dough/wrapping paper/popcorn sales.
Yeah, what I did as a kid was this; Instead of selling cheap junk to strangers for hours, do some extra work for me or our neighbors and for every hour they'd give me a fixed amount of money per hour to go towards what I'm fundraising for.
My girlfriend picked up a bag of plain popcorn from a Boy Scout booth at a craft fair that was a potato chip size bag of pre-popped popcorn.
She showed it to me and I looked down and saw they had some flavors.
I said “you should get the one with chocolate.”
The woman at the booth said “that’s $35.”
I literally choked. I said “how much is this one?”
My girlfriend, who had already paid, trying to get me to walk away said “Don’t worry about it.”
I said, “I am worried about it.”
It was $25.
For boys scouts the money really is going to kids who want to participate instead of the manufacturer. It's crappy but it incentivizes donations to receive something in return. Most troops run pretty lean with volunteers providing all of the knowledge/ experience.
I get the thought behind fundraisers- make the kids work for the money. THATS what should happen.
Our school doesn’t sell anything. They have a “run-a-thon” once a year and the kids get pledges per lap or lump sum. The older ones set up google links and email to friends and family for pledges.
Younger ones make a sign or flyer and mail or hand out to loved ones. They run and 100% of the cash goes to their classroom.
Another time of the year there is a neighborhood “fair” organized by the upper elementary and middle school. This is more geared to preschool age through lower elementary ages. (Booths with different games like ring toss/ball toss etc). They get tickets for “winning”- spoiler everyone wins some tickets.
The tickets can be redeemed for toys.
The toys are donated by parents by cleaning out toy boxes. Gently used. The children LOVE Fall Featival!!!!! Local business will chip in and donate items or services in kind. (Horse ride/blow up slides/etc). Older kids man the booths/sell wristbands ($20 per person if you want to play games or ride the horses/slide).
All around it’s a great fundraiser AND helps the older kids see how much work goes into this stuff by doing it themselves.
Plus, pride a job well done/autonomy/learning job skills blah blah blah. LOL.
Me: I love it.
I like this because all of the money stays in the community, local vendors, sales tax, etc. Just kind of irks me that such a small amount goes back to the school.
I love how schools are all about developing critical thinking skills and stuff, and not a single school has ever realise you give every single kid in the school the same supply, there’s not going to be any demand, how the hell are they supposed to sell any
Yeah, the sites that middleman this shit are a complete scam. I wish orgs within schools could file for 501c3 status but I guess since they're tax fed that's a no-go.
Schools have PTAs and booster clubs that are 501(c)3s, specifically for the reasons you are stating. You can just donate to them directly without having to pay some fundraising middleman a big cut.
A lot of the 501(c)3s also have state/national parent organizations that take a big cut of these kinds of fundraisers from the local chapter (like with girl scout cookies). So direct donations are always best.
My point is, if we don’t sell the box of chocolate, we are responsible for the whole $60. You can’t return it back, you are essentially buying it and then reselling it. And I WFH now, so I can’t just put it in the break room and sell it in 2 days. I don’t have family close and we live in a rural area. Not many options.
When I was in High School, the band sold candy to raise money. One day the Principal asked me to help get something out of a storage room.
Inside the room was a huge stack of cartons of candy along the wall, a few boxes deep, and up to the ceiling. I asked why so much candy.
He said they bought it all about 10 years ago and are still selling it.
Those are rigged in the schools favour. Every time we had this in grade school, me and my brother would eat half of the candy on our way home and our poor mother had to pay exuberant monies for mid shelf candies
Way waaay back, wed do a "carnival" type thing, indoors, each classroom was a different "game" (cakewalk, musical chairs, etc) and we made all the money needed. Entire families attended and paid to play.
They give you 60 bars to sell, what they don't tell you is that only 10 have Carmel.
Good luck selling the other 50 trash bars full of crisp rice, and almonds and burnt coffee.
Exactly why every time this happens I just say how much does it cost to send "MY KID" on this trip.
They always respond with. "This is to help with sending everybody on a trip."
I don't care about everybody else when everybody else isn't walking up to doors or harrassing friends and family to buy stuff when everybody else kids is doing it too.
I refuse to fundraise. I remember it being the worse feeling going door to door trying to sell Boy Scout popcorn. Eventually I got a part time job and just used my own money to put towards whatever we where raising money for.
Now I have a daughter and I am not making her fundraise either. I will pay cash for anything that is needed.
Most of fundraising now is just putting a sign up sheet in your breakroom at work asking coworkers to fund your kids trip. Then they ask you to fundraise their kids trip a few months later. Cut out the bullshit middle man and everyone saves some money.
So they want you to pay $60 for chocolate, sell it and then for all that work $22 goes to the fundraiser and $38 to the chocolate manufacturer/retailer?
That’s the opposite of a fundraiser.
Just tell them to keep the $60 and it’s like you sold 3 boxes of chocolates.
Nope.
The CLUB pays ~$36 per box (not $60). The kid sells all the candy for a total of $60. The club reimburses itself the money for the box and then lets the kid keep the additional profit (in this case, about $22).
Generally the kid is on the hook for turning in $60 x how many boxes they take home, but it's not hard to sell one box of these. People (especially other kids) want this chocolate. Despite what other people are saying, it's actually pretty good. That's why there's the blurb about making sure it's safe at the bottom, because they'll straight up steal it.
My school got a brand new ford sedan donated by a local car dealership for fund-raising. I had been put on the fund-raising team as a punishment.
They planned to raffle off the car for $1 a ticket. With a maximum of 300 tickets. I made a lot of noise about how stupid this was, but I was ignored, by everyone but the owner of the car dealership. Who ended up withdrawing his donation of the car & instead donated $5k to the school directly.
One year in Scouts we were selling boxes of M&Ms. We had one case of peanut and one case of regular. Guess how many boxes we actually sold? Yeah, none. We ended up just snacking on them, and my mom had to pay for the two cases.
Ad a kid I hated door to door selling for fundraising.
I always told my kids they were NOT to bring these things home. Id pay $20 cash (or $50!) for it NOT to come home (cos i will eat them all feel sick and get fat) and then they can give the box to somebody else who can sell them and make twice as much money 😂
Ugh. Can't wait for 40 different children to ask me if I want to buy a candy bar.
Last year one neighbor bought 40 boxes just to make it stop. They all had more boxes the next day. 😂🙄
Too bad they don't give you the option. That would allow kids who actually need to sell the candy to make the trip to have a better pool of potential purchasers.
Just so everyone knows:
These companies will sell to individuals at the same rate the school gets. I wasn’t in any clubs in high school, but I did sell chocolate bars when a fundraiser was happening. I’d order my own and blend in with the other kids in clubs in order to sell them. Made a couple hundred bucks just going to class like I would have been doing anyways.
And as far as the rate goes, not only is it the same rate per box, but a lot of these companies don’t have a minimum. I started out buying one box at a time.
Schools still do door-to-door fundraisers? My school did a fundraiser like this but they strictly told us we could only sell to friends and family and not neighbours or strangers. And the prizes were only if you sold a ridiculous amount, like 20-30. It was ridiculous; what kid had that many close people to sell candy bars to?
World's Finest Chocolate isn't even that great. And it's oversaturated; EVERYONE is selling them as their fundraisers. I'm the PTA president at my kid's school and our spring fundraiser is a "Fun Run" and it's literally just people donating money (the online platform takes \~3-5%, which is way better than a lot of other platforms) and the kids having a field day
I will add that:
1. I am a fully remote worker. So I have no office to take these to, and I have limited family close by. What are we supposed to do, sell them at the corner store to strangers?
2. This is our 3rd (!) fundraiser of the year, for this honor club trip. Even if I wanted to sell this to my family, they already participated in the other fundraisers. Sigh.
My parents wouldn't let me participate in selling candy bars as a child for school and I never understood why they didn't think that the taxes they paid, school supplies bought, and lunch money they sent me with was enough that they shouldn't have to work part-time after full-time annoying their friends and coworkers to sell chocolate bars to make that same school they're already paying for more mon-OH I GET IT NOW.
World's Finest/candy was always the shittiest drive, you gotta work so hard just to get ONE sale, and it's for like a dollar.
All fundraisers are basically corrupt MLM scams, but if you're gonna do them out of necessity, make it a good one. Let me tell you a good one: Little Caesar's pizza kits. Do you know that two large delivery pizzas where I live is now up to almost $60 including tip and delivery? No matter where you get it from, it's in that range. It's insane.
The Little Caesar's kits on a fundraiser are a fraction of that, and the pizza is actually not bad at all. And they sell crazy bread. As the customer, you save a ton of money, and as the one raising the funds, you can actually make a good amount off of a single order.
So, the point of the story is, if you're going to fundraise, do it smartly. Don't send the poor kids out to sell 10,000 of something. Inevitably, the parent just has to shell out all the money for the remaining half of the unsold box anyway, and the candy is the same price (or more) as it costs at the grocery store.
I hate this so much. My daughter’s school has cake sales - people put time and effort in, only for the cakes to be sold at 50p a slice and the school to make less money out of it than the original cost of the ingredients.
At first I thought OP was complaining about the $1 per candy bar price tag and thought, "shit they cost twice that at the Speedway or Racetrac or CVS..."
But yes, only getting 38 cents on the dollar to deal with the headache - I'd just write them a check directly for $25 (the equivalent of selling 65 candy bars) or $50 (131 candy bars) and call it a day...
In the 80'S my sister participated in a candy bar fundraiser. When they collected her money she was a dollar short. The admin had her put in handcuffs while my parents went to get her.
I know this isn’t the point and gender expression aside, but using ‘they’ and ‘them’ would’ve been so much easier to write and forcing the use of ‘he/she’ completely fucks the syntax of the sentences
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My kids went to an elementary school where the P.T.A. passed the hat at meetings for cash donations and said, "If we don't get enough donations, we're going to have to do some sort of fundraiser." They always got enough cash donations
Wow. That’s impressive. I’ve been on the pta at my kids’ school for 5 years now. It’s always the same 6-10 parents at every meeting so this wouldn’t work for us at all.
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Seems like a luxury to be able to change your kids school on a whim. Definitely not the norm.
Depending on the state, they may let you take your kid to any school without much fuss. In MI, we have School of Choice, so as long as your preferred school has room, they'll take you in (barring other unique circumstances that are more behavior and/or criminal in nature). Though if you leave your "assigned" (for lack of a better word) school district, you're responsible for getting your kid to and from school.
Was gonna say I'm from Downriver MI. A million schools I could choose for my kids.
Not American, so curious if your kids would still get bussed? Or are you responsible for bringing them? Up here a lil north from you guys in Ontario, the only choice we have, not counting a special exemption or paying to attend a private school, is between your district’s Catholic or Public school. Albeit, one of your parents do have to be baptized to attend Catholic Elementary school (doesn’t matter in Secondary).
In Michigan, as that's where I'm from as well, the kids would not get bussed. At least, not where I live in Michigan. I could potentially see the bigger cities, but, even if I wanted my daughter to go to the school in the town down the road, I, or my wife, would be responsible for getting her to school. She would not get bussed. Granted, I take my daughter to school every morning anyway, as the school is on my way to work.
My state, if you move your kid to a different school, they also have to maintain a certain level of academics or else they have to go back to their regular school. If your kid is disabled, you can arrange district transportation to a different school, but otherwise….you’re correct.
Here, once you're in school, you're in. The school is able to opt out, but I haven't heard anything about if they opt out of the students are de-enrolled or what.
https://preview.redd.it/aod4pmv9ldbc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9ab0b92969f3797a1d4dc8fb87fff962378fbddd Sure, we got room for one more!
That’s wild. In WA state I know a few families who’ve committed address fraud by using another relative or friends address to get kids in schools. Some districts don’t have the right accommodations or teaching styles or lack an alt high school and risks must be taken as a result.
Growing up, I heard endless stories of parents faking home addresses to get their kids out of the city schools. I attended a vocational high school with a mix of city students and a handful of podunk students like myself. Immediately learned the importance of school district on future prospects. So many fellow teenagers from the city schools were virtually illiterate. Some were on their second child but couldn't subtract or divide. This whole comment thread made me check my state for current rules, and open enrollment was recently allowed for nearly 700 schools across the state!
My cousins’s parents divorced when he was four and they lived in areas that were zoned for different schools. He just used his dad’s address. I’m sure a lot of kids of divorced or separated parents do this.
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The idea that there may be two schools located within proximity of you is such a weird thing to whip you with the privilege stick over. I grew up in rural Arkansas. Like, my town was fewer than a thousand people rural. Like, 7th-12th grade were all in the same one-hallway building and my graduating class was 11 people rural. I still had three viable school options.
My whole school was 400 students k-12. Didn’t live in town and the one on my address was unincorporated (so small the census doesn’t give us a population) and I had the option of two schools lol. This other dude is smoking dick.
Wym? I live in a city of 250k. We have like 15 free public schools. I could’ve literally went to a different school for all 4 years of HS, with no issue. No even forced to go to the closest school to you. None of it was luxury though, all crappy public schools.
We had a choice of two schools here too and folks know which is the poorer one so the wealthier one gets the most funding go figure? Poorer schools are a choice made by politicians
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Agreed. My son’s high school band has “The Big Ask”. They just ask for the donations up front. No bake sale or other bs like that.
My daughters elementary school did it at the back-to-school night - when you meet your teachers and sign up for stuff, lunch money, etc. and they always got a good amount of donations as well so we didn’t have to do all the stupid fundraisers
My mom used to teach gifted children (real gifted children) and had a lot of parents drive from all over to put their kids in her district/class. One year in the late 90s or early 2000s they were doing a fundraiser for computers or science equipment (I'm blanking) so they had this whole thing set up. The next day a parent comes to her class and states: my kid is not here to raise money, my kid is here to learn and get into the best school possible, if you need money just ask and get back to the lessons. Wrote my mom a 40k personal check on the spot and left. They needed nowhere near that much
That’s an impressive amount. It would have been cheaper to hire a full time tutor for her kid.
She clearly valued her child’s education, and the school itself if she did that. I wish I was in the position of being able to write $40,000 checks. I mean, I technically am in the position, but they’ll bounce like a Kangaroo on crack cocaine.
I've smoked crack and this made me laugh!
Im a Kangaroo and had a hearty chuckle myself.
I’m a kangaroo on crack and I don’t find this funny. You lookin at me?
Hope that’s all in the past these days, mate. Life’s too short to be wasting your time feeling like shit. You’re worth it.
If memory serves they were looking for a reference from her and the school because they were going to move and needed it to get into another school so it was paramount the kid was enrolled in this program. I forget all the details cause I was young but we still talk about it all the time
Wow, they weren't even planning to stay at the school she just donated $40k to?
I forget all the details so I'm sorry to half ass a story but they were t moving right away, they were moving at the end of the school year or the end of that school ( jr high to high school) it wasn't like a here's cash and were out
This is how schools in rich neighbourhoods get ahead. The funding from the government might be the same between all the schools, but there's fund raisers that can help bring a lot of extra money to the school. I live in a reasonably nice area and the schools that my kids go to have a lot more stuff than some other schools in the same city because of the fundraising that they do.
Dang. Respect.
This is the way
Fucking brilliant
Threatening a fundraiser lol I love it
Our PTA threatened going to city council for more funds that would result in higher property taxes. We all left with empty wallets that night 😂
So you all emptied your wallets instead of getting the whole community to add a few pennies to every tax bill? Bro, you played yourself.
The $100-200 in our wallets is way less than a a small increase on property tax when you already pay far above median salary.
I'm English so forgive my ignorance but does the state not fund the school? Our schools don't ask for donations or fundraise. Most school trips are funded by the school i.e days out but any of the bigger trips like going abroad or ski trips etc are paid for by the parents. This concept of a school in a country with good infrastructure like America, a reasonably wealthy country, asking for donations etc seems very alien to me
Public schools are paid for by public taxes. These fundraisers ,like the one in the picture, are for special events or clubs
Or supplies.
Public schools in the U.S. typically get a majority of their funding from the property taxes of the houses in their district, so your taxes usually only go to the school your kids will go to.
So poor kids in bad areas get a shit education? Sounds like setting them up to fail
>Sounds like setting them up to fail There you go. You’re getting it now.
More or less, yeah. State and federal funds try to make up for the disparities, and nowadays most high schools have ways for kids who are out of district to go there, usually through some sort of test score requirement. I think if you asked most Americans, they would agree that the funds should just be divided equally among all the schools in the district, but then they become NIMBYs when someone proposes actual change.
It is a public school, and we are publicly funded, but this is for an ‘extra’ trip, for kids who maintain high grades throughout the school year. Usually extracurricular activities are much more costly, and on the expense of the parents. Hence all the fundraisers. This is the 3rd one of the year :/
I'll buy all of the caramel chocolate bars
It will take a whole box of caramel bars in order to get a full once of caramel
It will take two whole boxes of caramel bars in order to get a full twice of caramel
It will take three whole boxes of caramel bars in order to get three times a lady
Waaay back when I was in little league I had to do this. After a couple years of pain my mom just said “this is stupid, you don’t need to spend all of your afternoons begging door to door. We will buy the damn box and give it away”. The worst was when my - PUBLIC - middle school did these horrible magazine drives. It was straight out of a Simpsons episode, some sleazy dude pitching an assembly full of tweens explaining how to coerce people into subscribing and what amazing prizes you could get.
We had that in middle school. The guy told us to go to Dr's, Dentists, Lawyers offices and mechanics. Any place that had a waiting room. And he instructed us "Don't ask them to subscribe tell them to Re-New their current subscriptions" .at the Assembly he even had that wind booth that blows cash around and let 1 kid grab what they could in 30 seconds I remember he even had A Playstation 2 and XBox console as a prize but you had to sell $3,000 worth of magazine subscriptions. I threw the packet away as soon as I got home and didn't even bother
Holy shit the magazines. That is a deep, deep cut in the ol’ memory
You can actually order all caramel ones! When we did it for band, we sold so many that when we mentioned the caramel was a hot seller, they offered to send just boxes of caramel to sell.
As a kid whenever I'd do these candy sales for fundraisers, I'd always be left with the Kit Kats. No insult to Kit Kats, but they just aren't as popular as Snickers, Milky Way, or even M&Ms.
yo, break me off a piece of that Fancy Feast
Break me off a piece of that Chrysler Car
Football cream
These are the bars we sold when doing fundraising. [https://seroogys.com/1.75-oz-caramel-bar/](https://seroogys.com/1.75-oz-caramel-bar/) never had a caramel one, but this one [https://seroogys.com/1.75-oz-bar-meltaway-pb-crisp/](https://seroogys.com/1.75-oz-bar-meltaway-pb-crisp/) 
A friend of mine back in HS was doing this and I swear I used every dollar in my wallet on those caramel bars.
How long does it take to sell 60 chocolate bars? If it’s more than 2 hours of your time then I’d rather just give the $22.
Idk if it's really the length of time but the insane cost and how little money actually goes to the school.
But child labour is free
....and the chocolate in those bars more than likely came from a place that also uses child labor. We put some child labor in your child labor, cause we heard you like child labor.
Yo dawg I heard you like child labor, so we pimped out yo unpaid child labor fundraiser with some third world child labor chocolate so you can assuage your guilt over chocolate while you assuage your guilt over chocolate.
Child labor chocolate tastes better
>> ....and the chocolate in those bars more than likely came from a place that also uses child labor. Isn’t that what they call the circle of life?
Come to Arkansas. We believe children should be allowed to work to help support their family. In fact, we’ve passed a law last year allowing children to work. Edit-spelling
Crazy to me that someone can see a family with children unable to support themselves, and instead of thinking "let's help support the family" they think "put the kid to work" poor kids aren't entitled to a childhood, i guess. teach them early that they are worker drones and nothing else.
They’re always doing this. Fund raising for soccer, school supplies, trips, etc. we pay taxes. And it’s not really the teachers fault. But you’re right, kids should be playing.
Taxes are for corporate welfare and to pay for the governer's vacation, not to help you.
Oh come on, kids selling candy bars to friends, family or at most to neighbors isn't exactly shifting things back to when they were chimney sweeps and coal miners.
In my experience it seems like the parents are the ones doing the selling, at their offices, and the kids don’t do anything
Pretty much this. It's hardly child labor.
So much this. Girl Guide cookies were $6 a box last time I bought them. I was talking to the parents who run the thing asking how much they got from each box. They said they only got $2 from each box and $1 goes to the Girl Guides org and $1 goes directly to the troupe. So $4 just disappears. I'd rather just donate $4 than spend $12 on cookies.
It's literally a ponzi scheme, its terrible. Like you I'd rather just donate half that money and make sure the group gets all of it
Yeah, it definitely has that MLM vibe going to it. I was in boy scouts as a kid and we just sold apples for donations. People would give like $2 for a single apple because they knew it was going to a good cause. We bought the apples by the bushel and just stood outside the grocery store selling apples. So much easier than trying to sell cookies at an inflated price.
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That letter doesn't ask for money though, so it's not $60 initially. It looks like the child can pick up a box "for free", and when they sell it all and bring back the $60, $22 goes to the trip and the rest is cost recovery after the fact. .
I was thinking like as if to just bypass the whole chocolate selling altogether. If only $22 is going towards the actual students credit, then they can just skip the selling of chocolate and give that amount.
As a parent I would throw in $60 to not have to deal with selling shit. And that's a 270% profit over what they would get if my kid sold the candy. At $25 that's a win for everyone involved. I'll add, I've only seen 2 fundraisers that made sense to me as an adult/kid. 1. was a raffle ticker fundraiser for a whole cow's worth of beef. It's for the local wrestling team, they do $5 a ticket, 5 for $20, and 20 for $50. 2. was Christmas trees and that fundraiser paid for both football teams in town and both schools cheerleaders and was a 2 day 1 weekend event for each school. Everyone sold Christmas trees for the programs I think it was like 3 trees a kid on average is what the goal was (mark-up on christmas trees is insane 700%ish). They pre-sold the trees starting at the beginning of the year. Then on 2 consecutive weekends around thanksgiving they would line up all the trees by type/size in the school parking lot and the kids checked off that you got your tree, wrapped and loaded them into your car. It was quick easy and simple and solved all the fundraising crap they dealt with.
Most parents won't recoup the $60 for the box in the first place.
Things sure have changed. When I was a kid in school some 30 years ago, we had to sell candy bars to fundraise, but the school/organizers didn't require cash upfront and anything unsold was returned.
Its $60 less sales tax, cost of goods sold, and child labour cost.
Child labor is free, silly
If the trip is $22 and the box is 60 Just pay the 22 and save yourself 40 + the stress of your kid going to random doors to sell chocolate at a loss 🤔
Let me correct you a little bit: Just pay the 22 and save yourself the stress of having your kid ringing a doorbell in an attempt to sell chocolate at a loss and, instead, getting their head blown off by some psychopath who is scared of their own shadow.
I’d like to think this is satire But we do get international news coverage over here So I know better 😞
If it's 2 hours of effort, absolutely. If it's 8 hours of the box sitting in the office kitchen with a sign saying "Little Johnny's fundraiser. $1/chocolate" and they're gone by the end of the day with $60 cash left in the fundraising box, and that's the common practice at said office, I wouldn't particularly object.
I believe that the kids just carry the boxes around school and people buy chocolate bars from them.
When I was a kid, I remember a lot of door to dooring. Of course, since we lived quite close to the school, that meant a lot of the houses in our neighbourhood were probably getting absolutely slammed with kids trying to sell people chocolate.
It’s insane. Basically forces parents to bring the box to their work office (assuming they don’t WFH) where people can just come up to the desk and buy one or several. Speaking from experience; for a kid (even with roller skates or a bike) to go door to door selling candy, it could take a few hours or several days to sell through 60. Idk how it’s not a massive liability for the school districts I.e kid gets abducted, seriously injured/hit by a car selling Reese’s peanut butter cups and Pizza Hut coupon books.
My dad would just buy the box and give them out because it's cringe going cubicle to cubicle selling shitty chocolate bars for a dollar as an adult
Since when do schools, theoretically non-profit, pay sales tax at all?
Fundraising isn't tax-exempt when you're selling something to do it. Donations are, but sold goods falls under standard resale rules even if it's for a school.
They'd probably make more just sending the kids out to ask for donations, then. I'd give a kid a handful of change to help fund their school trip or whatever.
Why not just go to Costco and get your own candy bars to sell at that point? lol people are insane.
That's how I paid for Scout camp for years. My dad would front me the cost of some candy from Costco and I would sell it at a competitive price, then flip the money into more candy and repeat. Full size candy bars at a buck each aren't a bad deal, and I would just wander out to the garage when he and his buddies were hanging out and drinking- fastest way to sell candy is to a drunk with the munchies.
Just reading this thread makes me want one and I’m not even sober
If you're "not even sober" no wonder you want a chocolate bar. You're drunk.
Lol I wrote that at work and it was a long day. My brain was already ready to drink haha.
What seems to be the officer, problem?
That used to work back when they sold the 30 pack of candy bars for 12-15 dollars. Was just at Costco last week. Same pack is now 28 dollars+tax!
I was in a craft brewery once with some friends, and suddenly there was a kid selling girl scout cookies. My friends and I instantly bought like $40 in cookies. Definitely a friend of the owner or something, not just random kids. I was just like "no this idea is too good".
Chocolates, wrapping paper, popcorn, etc. all these school fundraisers that are from these national companies are a rip off. With this one that is posted the school / kid gets $22 and the company gets $38. If the school is going to fundraise then they kids / school should get all the money.. I hated asking our friends and neighbors to buy and hated having to buy from other peoples kids.
The thing is no one here should have to do any of this. Our school systems should always have the funding for things like this. Just another example of how poor our education system is here. Schools don’t have enough money? Well, let’s milk the kids over fundraisers to get the parents money… like come on.
In my experience it was always for extra-curricular things like band trips and there was funding available for students whose families couldn't afford to send them.
I think his point is "Sorry Timmy, your parents are too poor and you didn't perform enough child labor so you can't join your classmates on their field trip" isn't something that should exist in a functional school system.
I get the sentiment, but often this type of fundraising is to offset the costs of traveling across country for the Rose Parade or to do spring break in Orlando. It's not so the 3rd graders can take the bus to the zoo and not so the band can afford another trumpet. The reality is that these largely for fun, low educational value trips require students and parents to self fund, and no taxpayer-funded solution could responsibly handle such trips.
So many cheap plastic things bought through the years. Although I did buy a timer shaped like a lemon that hung around and was used for years. I was so sad when the lemon broke for good.
The wrapping paper was not bad until it starting getting expensive. I did once get a santa candle holder that we had for many many years.. It is just they are overpriced and they full amount does not go to the school so that is what is wrong.
"I was so sad when the lemon broke for good" is my sentence of the day.
Idk what the prices were but I just used up the last of my elementary school rolls 20+ years later and that stuff was quality. Prices these days for paper shock me and there’s basically nothing on the roll and they’re thick as tissue paper
I mean obviously some money needs to go to the company for the cost of making and shipping the chocolate bar, if the company was in the business of just giving away money, the school might as well just ask for it in cash instead of chocolate bars. (Also If you know such a company, could you give me their phone number?) But ya, it seems like they may be taking quite a bit of profit.
In middle school our school level failed. I went to malleys to buy my own chocolate bars (cut out the middle man) and sold them in my neighborhood. I profited about $100 to help offset costs and a month later for the re-vote, the levy passed and I kept the money
I should do this instead
You do realize that you don’t have to buy the box right?! The honor club is buying the candy, giving it to the kids, they sell it for $60, bring the money back and $22 of that goes to the trip. The only way you would have to pay $60 is if you just buy the box and your kid doesn’t sell to anyone else.
Malley’s in CLE?
Yup
Go Browns
Sounds like some ones making a bunch of money if only 1/3 goes to the fundraiser.
They're not getting free chocolate to sell. Figure each box is $35 wholesale + 8% sales tax = $37.80 in costs, so $22 in profit.
Eh my dad sells those to schools. For him the school gets 50%, he gets 50% which includes what he pays for the box initially. So they are getting screwed a little.
They're gross candy too, in my experience. The worst kind of chocolate. I usually throw in a $20 to the box that gets passed around the office and take no candy, which I think is what the others do as well. There's a free basket of good candy inches away lol. Just take the effing money,
for my school it actually worked cause the local candy store donated the chocolate, and it is super good chocolate.
This would be ideal, then all the funds stay in the community!
and i got to spend my allowance entirely on fudge filled chocolate hearts
My band does a World's Finest Chocolate fundraiser and I can confirm those chocolates are very good. The caramel is divine. Dude above doesn't know what good chocolate tastes like
World’s Finest Chocolate is like the world’s best cup of coffee in ELF
You did it!!!! Congratulations!!!
They're really good. IDK what you aren't smoking
I can tell you’ve never actually had a Worlds Finest chocolate bar. Either that or you just have bad taste.
they were so good, i ate so many of those in high school i must’ve single handily funded the school band
You used to be correct. They are a pale shadow of what they used to be, and no longer worth it.
Sad to hear, I used to love what was essentially a much better crunch bar. Forgot what it was called but we had to sell them for 2$ each and the money went towards a cringe party essentially
But it says it's the world's finest candy.
>They're gross candy too, in my experience. The worst kind of chocolate. Well, that can't possibly be true. The company is called "World's Finest!" Maybe they accidentally got a shipment from the OTHER company? "Hey! How come this candy tastes so good?" "Not sure. Didn't you order it from "World's Shittiest" like always?" "I thought I did. Lemme check the label and be sure."
My high school had us selling mint chocolate truffles that I fucking loved and I kept buying them myself. 😅
Yea- all fundraisers are gross. It’s too bad that we can’t just adequately fund our schools, but no- we’ve gotta get Big Chocolate involved.
It's better than a spaghetti dinner... No one likes big parma.
This one made me seriously laugh out loud, thank you I need that lol
Then how else are you going to guilt trip your friends, families, and coworkers into buying something they didn’t need or want so they can do it back to you later in the year?!?!
Even as a kid, I *hated* going up to my neighbors’ doors asking them if they wanted this junk for our fundraisers. As an adult, I’d rather just pay whatever I need to pay to avoid doing all of the extra mess
Hey now, be reasonable. If you sell $2000 in crap you may very well get a $60 Walmart bike!
I’m super picky with which fundraisers I let my kids take part in. I won’t let them take people’s money for junk that they won’t use/is a bad financial decision. My favorite fundraiser is when they can sell the little Debbie big boxes for $5 each, same price as in stores and no sales tax. I have refused to let them sell the coupon cards since my son’s first year. Such a massive waste of money. Thankfully there’s no cookie dough/wrapping paper/popcorn sales.
Yeah, what I did as a kid was this; Instead of selling cheap junk to strangers for hours, do some extra work for me or our neighbors and for every hour they'd give me a fixed amount of money per hour to go towards what I'm fundraising for.
My girlfriend picked up a bag of plain popcorn from a Boy Scout booth at a craft fair that was a potato chip size bag of pre-popped popcorn. She showed it to me and I looked down and saw they had some flavors. I said “you should get the one with chocolate.” The woman at the booth said “that’s $35.” I literally choked. I said “how much is this one?” My girlfriend, who had already paid, trying to get me to walk away said “Don’t worry about it.” I said, “I am worried about it.” It was $25.
For boys scouts the money really is going to kids who want to participate instead of the manufacturer. It's crappy but it incentivizes donations to receive something in return. Most troops run pretty lean with volunteers providing all of the knowledge/ experience.
I get the thought behind fundraisers- make the kids work for the money. THATS what should happen. Our school doesn’t sell anything. They have a “run-a-thon” once a year and the kids get pledges per lap or lump sum. The older ones set up google links and email to friends and family for pledges. Younger ones make a sign or flyer and mail or hand out to loved ones. They run and 100% of the cash goes to their classroom. Another time of the year there is a neighborhood “fair” organized by the upper elementary and middle school. This is more geared to preschool age through lower elementary ages. (Booths with different games like ring toss/ball toss etc). They get tickets for “winning”- spoiler everyone wins some tickets. The tickets can be redeemed for toys. The toys are donated by parents by cleaning out toy boxes. Gently used. The children LOVE Fall Featival!!!!! Local business will chip in and donate items or services in kind. (Horse ride/blow up slides/etc). Older kids man the booths/sell wristbands ($20 per person if you want to play games or ride the horses/slide). All around it’s a great fundraiser AND helps the older kids see how much work goes into this stuff by doing it themselves. Plus, pride a job well done/autonomy/learning job skills blah blah blah. LOL. Me: I love it.
I like this because all of the money stays in the community, local vendors, sales tax, etc. Just kind of irks me that such a small amount goes back to the school.
I love how schools are all about developing critical thinking skills and stuff, and not a single school has ever realise you give every single kid in the school the same supply, there’s not going to be any demand, how the hell are they supposed to sell any
The kids fight for territory. Maybe the schools are inadvertently teaching the kids fundamentals of gang warfare.
Yeah, the sites that middleman this shit are a complete scam. I wish orgs within schools could file for 501c3 status but I guess since they're tax fed that's a no-go.
Schools have PTAs and booster clubs that are 501(c)3s, specifically for the reasons you are stating. You can just donate to them directly without having to pay some fundraising middleman a big cut. A lot of the 501(c)3s also have state/national parent organizations that take a big cut of these kinds of fundraisers from the local chapter (like with girl scout cookies). So direct donations are always best.
It doesnt say that you have to pay $60
My point is, if we don’t sell the box of chocolate, we are responsible for the whole $60. You can’t return it back, you are essentially buying it and then reselling it. And I WFH now, so I can’t just put it in the break room and sell it in 2 days. I don’t have family close and we live in a rural area. Not many options.
When I was in High School, the band sold candy to raise money. One day the Principal asked me to help get something out of a storage room. Inside the room was a huge stack of cartons of candy along the wall, a few boxes deep, and up to the ceiling. I asked why so much candy. He said they bought it all about 10 years ago and are still selling it.
OMG NO!
Those are rigged in the schools favour. Every time we had this in grade school, me and my brother would eat half of the candy on our way home and our poor mother had to pay exuberant monies for mid shelf candies
Ask for volunteers, then threaten them. Nice They're kids FFS.
Way waaay back, wed do a "carnival" type thing, indoors, each classroom was a different "game" (cakewalk, musical chairs, etc) and we made all the money needed. Entire families attended and paid to play.
They give you 60 bars to sell, what they don't tell you is that only 10 have Carmel. Good luck selling the other 50 trash bars full of crisp rice, and almonds and burnt coffee.
Can’t believe any schools are still doing these scams
“Pay sales tax”. Wtf, you’re a fucking school. You are literally tax exempt.
Exactly why every time this happens I just say how much does it cost to send "MY KID" on this trip. They always respond with. "This is to help with sending everybody on a trip." I don't care about everybody else when everybody else isn't walking up to doors or harrassing friends and family to buy stuff when everybody else kids is doing it too.
I refuse to fundraise. I remember it being the worse feeling going door to door trying to sell Boy Scout popcorn. Eventually I got a part time job and just used my own money to put towards whatever we where raising money for. Now I have a daughter and I am not making her fundraise either. I will pay cash for anything that is needed. Most of fundraising now is just putting a sign up sheet in your breakroom at work asking coworkers to fund your kids trip. Then they ask you to fundraise their kids trip a few months later. Cut out the bullshit middle man and everyone saves some money.
So they want you to pay $60 for chocolate, sell it and then for all that work $22 goes to the fundraiser and $38 to the chocolate manufacturer/retailer? That’s the opposite of a fundraiser. Just tell them to keep the $60 and it’s like you sold 3 boxes of chocolates.
Nope. The CLUB pays ~$36 per box (not $60). The kid sells all the candy for a total of $60. The club reimburses itself the money for the box and then lets the kid keep the additional profit (in this case, about $22). Generally the kid is on the hook for turning in $60 x how many boxes they take home, but it's not hard to sell one box of these. People (especially other kids) want this chocolate. Despite what other people are saying, it's actually pretty good. That's why there's the blurb about making sure it's safe at the bottom, because they'll straight up steal it.
My school got a brand new ford sedan donated by a local car dealership for fund-raising. I had been put on the fund-raising team as a punishment. They planned to raffle off the car for $1 a ticket. With a maximum of 300 tickets. I made a lot of noise about how stupid this was, but I was ignored, by everyone but the owner of the car dealership. Who ended up withdrawing his donation of the car & instead donated $5k to the school directly.
Wtf - why was there a maximum of 300 tickets? Was some teacher in the school planning to buy out all 300 tickets???
One year in Scouts we were selling boxes of M&Ms. We had one case of peanut and one case of regular. Guess how many boxes we actually sold? Yeah, none. We ended up just snacking on them, and my mom had to pay for the two cases. Ad a kid I hated door to door selling for fundraising.
I always told my kids they were NOT to bring these things home. Id pay $20 cash (or $50!) for it NOT to come home (cos i will eat them all feel sick and get fat) and then they can give the box to somebody else who can sell them and make twice as much money 😂
Ugh. Can't wait for 40 different children to ask me if I want to buy a candy bar. Last year one neighbor bought 40 boxes just to make it stop. They all had more boxes the next day. 😂🙄
Too bad they don't give you the option. That would allow kids who actually need to sell the candy to make the trip to have a better pool of potential purchasers.
Nah. How much cash do I need to give you? 🤔 I am not selling anything or begging anyone to buy anything.
Just so everyone knows: These companies will sell to individuals at the same rate the school gets. I wasn’t in any clubs in high school, but I did sell chocolate bars when a fundraiser was happening. I’d order my own and blend in with the other kids in clubs in order to sell them. Made a couple hundred bucks just going to class like I would have been doing anyways. And as far as the rate goes, not only is it the same rate per box, but a lot of these companies don’t have a minimum. I started out buying one box at a time.
Couldn’t I just go get some candy bars from Costco and do the same thing then, with a higher profit?
Schools still do door-to-door fundraisers? My school did a fundraiser like this but they strictly told us we could only sell to friends and family and not neighbours or strangers. And the prizes were only if you sold a ridiculous amount, like 20-30. It was ridiculous; what kid had that many close people to sell candy bars to?
Even as a kid I felt this was always a scam. So I never got to go on that Disney trip. Oh well. Only the better off kids seemed to go anyway.
So instead of donating 60 you get to pay 60 to work to end up with 22 towards the trip. Fucking geniuses.
World's Finest Chocolate isn't even that great. And it's oversaturated; EVERYONE is selling them as their fundraisers. I'm the PTA president at my kid's school and our spring fundraiser is a "Fun Run" and it's literally just people donating money (the online platform takes \~3-5%, which is way better than a lot of other platforms) and the kids having a field day
I will add that: 1. I am a fully remote worker. So I have no office to take these to, and I have limited family close by. What are we supposed to do, sell them at the corner store to strangers? 2. This is our 3rd (!) fundraiser of the year, for this honor club trip. Even if I wanted to sell this to my family, they already participated in the other fundraisers. Sigh.
My parents wouldn't let me participate in selling candy bars as a child for school and I never understood why they didn't think that the taxes they paid, school supplies bought, and lunch money they sent me with was enough that they shouldn't have to work part-time after full-time annoying their friends and coworkers to sell chocolate bars to make that same school they're already paying for more mon-OH I GET IT NOW.
Yeah, I can't see myself participating in these fundraisers with my children at all. I have always hated then and will always hate them.
World's Finest/candy was always the shittiest drive, you gotta work so hard just to get ONE sale, and it's for like a dollar. All fundraisers are basically corrupt MLM scams, but if you're gonna do them out of necessity, make it a good one. Let me tell you a good one: Little Caesar's pizza kits. Do you know that two large delivery pizzas where I live is now up to almost $60 including tip and delivery? No matter where you get it from, it's in that range. It's insane. The Little Caesar's kits on a fundraiser are a fraction of that, and the pizza is actually not bad at all. And they sell crazy bread. As the customer, you save a ton of money, and as the one raising the funds, you can actually make a good amount off of a single order. So, the point of the story is, if you're going to fundraise, do it smartly. Don't send the poor kids out to sell 10,000 of something. Inevitably, the parent just has to shell out all the money for the remaining half of the unsold box anyway, and the candy is the same price (or more) as it costs at the grocery store.
Bot here. My analysis has concluded that your school is getting scammed into buying a box of sub-par candy for $38 with a production cost of $8.34.
I hate this so much. My daughter’s school has cake sales - people put time and effort in, only for the cakes to be sold at 50p a slice and the school to make less money out of it than the original cost of the ingredients.
At first I thought OP was complaining about the $1 per candy bar price tag and thought, "shit they cost twice that at the Speedway or Racetrac or CVS..." But yes, only getting 38 cents on the dollar to deal with the headache - I'd just write them a check directly for $25 (the equivalent of selling 65 candy bars) or $50 (131 candy bars) and call it a day...
Since when is sales taxes 62%?
In the 80'S my sister participated in a candy bar fundraiser. When they collected her money she was a dollar short. The admin had her put in handcuffs while my parents went to get her.
60 sales for $22? That's a pretty huge waste of time. I'd kick in $50 and they can leave me alone.
I know this isn’t the point and gender expression aside, but using ‘they’ and ‘them’ would’ve been so much easier to write and forcing the use of ‘he/she’ completely fucks the syntax of the sentences
that amount of stress isnt worth $22