yet another fundraiser peeve

Hi snuggles, happy 2013, I can definately understand your deliemma,,,Its just another way scamming...flim flaming... and its terrible...

There seems to be a lot more fundraisers now then when I was younger, though we had a lot as well. It seemed my mother was never as ecstatic as me when I brought home the information. A lot of these places make a lot of money having kids selling candy or things out of a catalogue. In this case, saying it is for charity, and getting these kids excited to help out, just for most of it to go to overhead, is sad. A difficult concept to explain to a child. We recently had to try to explain to our child why we were no longer giving donations to a charity that many support. It was after learning that a lot of the money went to overhead as well as lobbiests that had nothing to do with the charity or its stated purpose. I was actually a little upset when I had heard about it and looked into it further only to find it was true. I worked for a charity years back, as a paid employee. The only reason was that I needed paid employment and they had jobs no one would volunteer to do. It was a horrible job, barely paying the bills in a nasty work enviroment. It paid min. wage, and was only part time. With nearly all paid people and very little cash donations, they still had a smaller percentage of admin costs than other ones with a lot of funding and many volunteers.

Yes, it is amazing sometimes when you research something and find out how little especially with charities, really goes to help someone. Makes you wonder how they can even claim they want to help them as well. I think personally this should not be allowed like this, but since no one really even investigates it, it continues to happen.

I hope you'll use this opportunity to educate your daughter about how to choose a charity. There's no reason not to give to the contest as at least 1% goes to the cause but you can show her that her money can be better spent by giving elsewhere for the same cause. I only give to two charities right now and only about 5% is used for administrative costs in these charities. I don't begrudge 5%-20% used for that purpose but anything over that is wasteful and I won't give to those. I remember my children doing something similar and that was before the internet. So we went to the library to look up the charity and found that it spent the money wisely. While there, we looked at others and they both asked me why it isn't against the law to collect money for something and not spend it that way because it means they are telling a lie. I think they were 7 and 8 back then. We had quite a good discussion!

hi 3SnuggleBunnies Yes its unfair to use small kids to get money for the charities that have such high overhead because then the kids thinks moms are the bad guys because they do not want to donate to that charity. I remember being asked for money to donate to some of those by our son over and over as he was in school and it was always the ones with the most high overheads too ,I got so I just refused and sent a note to the teacher telling exactl why I did not want to donate to those charities l

There is a lot of manipulation going on in public schools--soda companies sponsoring scoreboards, a national pizza chain "encouraging children to read," the company responsible for Agent Orange providing "educational materials" to classrooms... It's good that you are taking a stand against this. Tell your daughter that the two of you can donate to a local charity, and you will have a few of her friends over for a popcorn party at home. Bonus points if the popcorn was grown locally.

i won't donate to any organization with that high an overhead. usually means there's leeches at the top somewhere sucking it in.

I had a "dump it in the trash" rule when my kids were in school. If it was a sales pamphlet it went directly into the trash on the way out of the classroom. If it was boxes of candy-you walked out without a box.

I used to hate it when my kids would practically be forced in to the school fundraisers. It was like..Super Duper Mega Party...sell 300 bucks worth of overpriced junk and you get to go..if not..sit in class alone. I had three in school and it was really hard. Of course they wanted to participate but I didn't want them to go door to door either..in a group hitting up the neighbors all at once with big puppy dog eyes. I guess the biggest problem for me was that it was always for the school and not a cause that should have made them feel that way.