School fundraisers can be overwhelming for parents. Especially for parents with multiple kids in different schools, parents find themselves either buying or selling multiple products or tickets for events to support their child’s schools. All fundraisers are not created equal, especially for stay at home moms or dads who do not have a wide network to sell to. These days, it appears that schools have run out of ideas in having creative fundraisers. Every school, sports org., dance club, etc. always seems to have the stuff.
We recently did a survey across the country on what parents feel are the worst kind of fundraisers and what kind of fundraisers would they really support. The responses from parents were pretty consistent across the board.
Here are the fundraisers that received the lowest scores from the parents in our survey. Their reason for the low scores was either because they did not offer anything of value to their child or to them that would have a positive impact short term or long term for the value of their money.
- Weekly pizza lunch specials with sugar drinks (unhealthy)
- Candy bar / Cookie Dough (parents don’t need more chocolate for their kids!) (Unhealthy)
- Fish fry (Unhealthy)
- Bake sales (Unhealthy)
- Wrapping paper (Useless)
- Useless gadgets that never find a use at home and usually break the first time you try to use them. (Useless)
- Books, gift cards, candles etc. (Low value)
- Magazine subscriptions where most of the magazines end up directly in the trash! (Clutter)
- Collecting pledges (low value)
Several schools strongly discourage parents from sending sugary treats with their kid’s lunches. However, they don’t mind hawking sugary candy bars, greasy pizzas and drinks to the kids and the parents as fundraisers.
In our next post, we will share those fundraisers that the parents rated as high on their list. Stay tuned!