Fund me! September 18, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs, Parenting 101 , 5 commentsI have a vision of Seymour from "Little Shop of Horrors", but instead of yelling "FEED ME", it’s yelling "FUND ME"
Soleil came home with a rather large packet in her backpack Friday. It had the catalogue for our PTA fund raiser. I tossed it right in the recycling. To be honest, I have never quite understood what to do in these cases, and now I am here. My child is coming home with fund raising materials.
I have 3 main objections to fund raising:
- It makes the kids work for something that they do not have a direct say in. A form of child labor, if you will. "oh please buy this so little Johnny can have the school supplies he needs. Look at Little Johnny’s big brown eyes, can you say No to this child?"
- There’s too much junk in this world anyway. Why do we need to produce the paperwork (which might not get recycled), the packaging, the products, the shipping (more pollution) for the PTA?
- I would rather just write a check. Ask for a damn donation. I’ll provide! Really.
Maybe I am too cynical. I did notice that the newsletter sent home with the fund raising package said "we will always take direct donations" which is exactly what I am going to do.
It’s not that I find that PTA/PTO don’t need money. I think I just take a very big objection to pushing kids to be sellers. I hated raising funds in school and I don’t want my kids to feel they need to. I also hate that we just don’t have the funding within the town to support the schools via taxes. The PTA/PTO has to have some operating expenses, and yes we, as parents, should help fund it, but I wish we could use some of our tax dollars towards this.
How do others deal with fund raising? I am curious, especially for those who have been there, done that with older kids…
BTW- Soleil will probably join the Girl Scouts. I will let her sell cookies. But I wish I could just write a check for that too.
