A couple weeks ago, I briefly mentioned school fund raising drives. I didn’t go too deeply into the topic, instead focusing solely on the point that the fund raisers all seemed aimed directly at the parents of student athletes and children in extracurricular activities. In this post, I would like to delve into that cesspool a little deeper.
Recently, my daughter brought home a pamphlet and a sign-up sheet. It seems she had been asked to sell cookie dough to raise funds for the school band. The first thing she showed me was a page that listed a number of prizes that she could win if she sold enough of the items listed in the pamphlet. Apparently, if she sells ten tubs of cookie dough, she could win … wait for it … a free tub of cookie dough!
Since it is most likely that as the parents of the child, we will be purchasing most if not all of what she sells, this is basically telling me that if I buy 10 tubs, I get one free. But who the hell needs eleven tubs of cookie dough? If my daughter wants to win a bucket of cookie dough, why don’t we just buy one bucket and let her have it. It achieves the same goal.
I have to wonder if there was a meeting somewhere between all the executives of Cookie Dough Conglomerated, where they were discussing what prizes to give the kids that sold the most of their product. I can only assume that someone trying to be funny, said, “Hey, how about this: If they sell a lot of cookie dough, we should give them more cookie dough.” I’m sure they all had a good laugh about this until one person took it too far by actually writing the stupid suggestion down.
Okay, I realize that the prizes are not the point of the fund raisers. I shouldn’t focus on the silliness of giving a child a 5 dollar water bottle if they sell $200 worth of cookies (yes, that too is an actual prize listed on the flyer). The focus should be on helping the band raise money to pay for travel, uniforms, and other yearly expenses. However, I should point out that if I pay one hundred dollars for cookies, the band gets $25. Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply give the band $25 dollars and save myself the additional seventy-five? Seems like the cheaper deal for me, and the school gets exactly the same outcome.
I can hear what some of you are thinking right now. “But, if you donate twenty-five dollars, you don’t have anything to show for it. If you buy cookies, you have one hundred dollars-worth of yummy cookie dough in your freezer.” This is true, however, it is also true that if I wanted a hundred dollars-worth of cookie dough in my house, I would probably already have it. Because, here is the dirty little secret: you can find cookie dough literally everywhere, at any time. It does not just magically appear once a year when my daughter’s band needs to raise funds. California is not a cookie dough barren wasteland. I don’t need to stock up on the stuff.
Hell, if I were desperate, I could probably find the ingredients in my pantry to make my own dough. I’m not going to, because I’m lazy. But, I could. If I really wanted to. Which I don’t. Because of the aforementioned laziness.
So, am I going to buy cookie dough from my daughter? Yeah, I probably am. Am I going to suck friends and family members into this crappy deal? Yup. Probably going to do that too. I don’t want my child to be “that kid” that couldn’t even sell one tub of cookie dough.
But, I think I will make out the check for three cents less than the correct total, just to see what those greedy cookie moguls do about it. Power to the people!