Knock Knock
Tonight the kiddies and I went to dinner at Arby’s, an establishment that I had never visited before. Magically, by doing nothing more than ordering dinner and eating it on a specified day, we were raising money for my child’s school. Several months ago, we went to a pizza place for dinner for the exact same reason. Every time I use my grocery card, my daughter’s school gets a kickback and every time I buy Cheerios, we get 10 cents for the school just by cutting out the coupon on the top. For every used printer cartridge we send in, the school can claim a dollar. These amazing innovations led me to wonder, what genius came up with these fundraising plans? The school fundraiser has come a long way from the days when I was knocking on doors with my Catholic school raffle tickets.
Fundraising at Blessed Sacrament School in the 70s and 80s depended upon a workforce of 6 to 13-year-olds pounding the pavement to scrounge up dollars. If motivation traditionally includes a carrot and a stick, Blessed Sacrament utilized one of those baby carrots (which had not actually been invented yet) and a huge battering ram. The elusive prize for the one homeroom out of sixteen that sold the most tickets was an ice cream party. As the kickoff for the fundraising season neared, the front hall of the school was adorned with drawings of 16 empty ice cream soda glasses. Throughout the fundraiser, each room’s progress was tracked by a volunteer who filled in the soda based upon homeroom raffle returns. Every morning the students from the front running classroom swaggered down the halls with a sense that the ice cream party was in the bag. The kids from the low-performing homerooms were left with a sense of helplessness – more tickets needed to be sold but how, and to whom? Now and then, the morning ice cream soda inspection would reveal a huge upheaval in the standings with a rogue classroom coming from nowhere to claim the top spot. Every morning the standings were announced and the rooms at the bottom of the standings were given a scolding for their sad display of school spirit.
My brothers and sisters and I had no hope of helping the cause of our homerooms, let along claiming a prize for individual achievement. Unlike many of our privileged classmates, our father was a government employee and could not take the tickets to work and foist them on all of his clients and coworkers. In fact, other than buying a few tickets in the name of my grandparents or aunts or uncles, my parents took no part in the fundraising game. Fortunately, we were the only kids in our neighborhood attending Blessed Sacrament, so we could count on our neighbors to spend a dollar or two on our tickets. But every year, one of us would chase the pipe dream of claiming individual glory and would set out to knock on doors for blocks and blocks. (The thought of any child doing this nowadays is rightly shocking, and I’m sure led to the recent innovations in fundraising). Our neighborhood was primarily populated by elderly people, who would look at us with puzzled expressions, either unable to hear what we were saying or unable to understand what we were asking, or both.
In one of my zealous years, I hit up every babysitting client, every neighbor, every friend of my parents that had ever asked me to pick up the mail or paper, every poor soul who rode the bus with my dad, and still I was far short of contention for the individual prizes. So every day after school I set out on foot and knocked on doors. While I never encountered anyone menacing or dangerous, I did encounter some people that came as quite a shock to a sheltered 12-year-old. One door was opened by a man who had a small yappy poodle, but no arms. I was so surprised that I launched right into my Catholic school spiel, and perhaps as a reward for not turning and running, the man bought 5 tickets from me. One door was opened by an elderly woman in her nightgown with disheveled hair. This may not seem shocking to some people, but my grandmother was always perfectly coiffed and never appeared in front of me in anything less than a dress, stockings, and heels. She would disappear into her room at bedtime fully dressed, and reappear that way in the morning. Several doors were opened by men and women who took one look at me and said “No” as they closed the doors in my face. Having been excessively schooled in proper manners, I was stunned to find grown ups behaving so rudely.
Sadly, even in my most productive year, I never came close to winning a prize, and I was never a member of a homeroom that won an ice cream party. The mighty efforts that students like me put forth on behalf of the school were never acknowledged, and instead praise was heaped upon students whose parents had sold hundreds of tickets. As the winning homeroom enjoyed its ice cream party, the other 15 homerooms could only wish that their efforts had produced more than a tsk-tsk from a disapproving teacher or principal.
I had hope that things would be different for my kids and I was encouraged by the advent of all the new painless ways to raise money. However, in addition to eating out and clipping box tops, and even though (at my daughter’s school anyway) door-to-door fundraising is prohibited, this year we have been the unfortunate recipients of three different glossy catalogues of fabulous wares that we are to try and unload on our friends and family. First it was wrapping paper, then it was candles, and this week it is cookie dough. Every child in our housing area attends the same school, so it is unclear which friends we should be soliciting. Since we are living where the Army tells us, we are not down the street from the family members that we could be hitting up. So guess who is the proud owner of new wrapping paper, new candles, and new cookie dough? What else can we do? Her school could not even find money for new basketball goals for the playground.
Fortunately for my daughter, the prizes for the kids have improved dramatically from the bad old days. If they manage to badger their parent into buying even one thing, they will get some token prize from the vast storehouse of “Made In China” goodies. During the fall fundraiser, kids who sold three things got to squirt the principal with ketchup and mustard while he was dressed up like a hot dog. For the first spring fundraiser my daughter got a bookmark with the school name on it (woohoo!), and for the next spring fundraiser she’ll get to see a BMX Bike Show if she sells even one thing, and if she sells three, she’ll get to sit up front (yippee!). I really wonder if the kids who don’t participate will be locked into a classroom with the windows blacked out to ensure they do not get a look at the prize they haven’t earned. The primary downside (or upside if you are a school administrator) of these irresistible prizes is that they motivate the kids to pester their parents incessantly so that they can win a pen that lights up or big balloon.
However, even if my daughter didn’t care about the fundraisers and even if she couldn’t win prizes, I would buy at least one thing from her every time. My years of knocking on doors have turned me into everyone’s easy mark. Every time a kid knocks on my door, I’m going to buy something, because I feel so bad for them and I remember how much I hated the fundraising routine. I buy candy I don’t want, candles I don’t like, wrapping paper I don’t need. I buy two boxes of cookies from every girl scout that knocks on my door. I do it all in the name of lightening the load of some poor kid with the weight of his school’s approval on his shoulders.
Fundraising at Blessed Sacrament School in the 70s and 80s depended upon a workforce of 6 to 13-year-olds pounding the pavement to scrounge up dollars. If motivation traditionally includes a carrot and a stick, Blessed Sacrament utilized one of those baby carrots (which had not actually been invented yet) and a huge battering ram. The elusive prize for the one homeroom out of sixteen that sold the most tickets was an ice cream party. As the kickoff for the fundraising season neared, the front hall of the school was adorned with drawings of 16 empty ice cream soda glasses. Throughout the fundraiser, each room’s progress was tracked by a volunteer who filled in the soda based upon homeroom raffle returns. Every morning the students from the front running classroom swaggered down the halls with a sense that the ice cream party was in the bag. The kids from the low-performing homerooms were left with a sense of helplessness – more tickets needed to be sold but how, and to whom? Now and then, the morning ice cream soda inspection would reveal a huge upheaval in the standings with a rogue classroom coming from nowhere to claim the top spot. Every morning the standings were announced and the rooms at the bottom of the standings were given a scolding for their sad display of school spirit.
My brothers and sisters and I had no hope of helping the cause of our homerooms, let along claiming a prize for individual achievement. Unlike many of our privileged classmates, our father was a government employee and could not take the tickets to work and foist them on all of his clients and coworkers. In fact, other than buying a few tickets in the name of my grandparents or aunts or uncles, my parents took no part in the fundraising game. Fortunately, we were the only kids in our neighborhood attending Blessed Sacrament, so we could count on our neighbors to spend a dollar or two on our tickets. But every year, one of us would chase the pipe dream of claiming individual glory and would set out to knock on doors for blocks and blocks. (The thought of any child doing this nowadays is rightly shocking, and I’m sure led to the recent innovations in fundraising). Our neighborhood was primarily populated by elderly people, who would look at us with puzzled expressions, either unable to hear what we were saying or unable to understand what we were asking, or both.
In one of my zealous years, I hit up every babysitting client, every neighbor, every friend of my parents that had ever asked me to pick up the mail or paper, every poor soul who rode the bus with my dad, and still I was far short of contention for the individual prizes. So every day after school I set out on foot and knocked on doors. While I never encountered anyone menacing or dangerous, I did encounter some people that came as quite a shock to a sheltered 12-year-old. One door was opened by a man who had a small yappy poodle, but no arms. I was so surprised that I launched right into my Catholic school spiel, and perhaps as a reward for not turning and running, the man bought 5 tickets from me. One door was opened by an elderly woman in her nightgown with disheveled hair. This may not seem shocking to some people, but my grandmother was always perfectly coiffed and never appeared in front of me in anything less than a dress, stockings, and heels. She would disappear into her room at bedtime fully dressed, and reappear that way in the morning. Several doors were opened by men and women who took one look at me and said “No” as they closed the doors in my face. Having been excessively schooled in proper manners, I was stunned to find grown ups behaving so rudely.
Sadly, even in my most productive year, I never came close to winning a prize, and I was never a member of a homeroom that won an ice cream party. The mighty efforts that students like me put forth on behalf of the school were never acknowledged, and instead praise was heaped upon students whose parents had sold hundreds of tickets. As the winning homeroom enjoyed its ice cream party, the other 15 homerooms could only wish that their efforts had produced more than a tsk-tsk from a disapproving teacher or principal.
I had hope that things would be different for my kids and I was encouraged by the advent of all the new painless ways to raise money. However, in addition to eating out and clipping box tops, and even though (at my daughter’s school anyway) door-to-door fundraising is prohibited, this year we have been the unfortunate recipients of three different glossy catalogues of fabulous wares that we are to try and unload on our friends and family. First it was wrapping paper, then it was candles, and this week it is cookie dough. Every child in our housing area attends the same school, so it is unclear which friends we should be soliciting. Since we are living where the Army tells us, we are not down the street from the family members that we could be hitting up. So guess who is the proud owner of new wrapping paper, new candles, and new cookie dough? What else can we do? Her school could not even find money for new basketball goals for the playground.
Fortunately for my daughter, the prizes for the kids have improved dramatically from the bad old days. If they manage to badger their parent into buying even one thing, they will get some token prize from the vast storehouse of “Made In China” goodies. During the fall fundraiser, kids who sold three things got to squirt the principal with ketchup and mustard while he was dressed up like a hot dog. For the first spring fundraiser my daughter got a bookmark with the school name on it (woohoo!), and for the next spring fundraiser she’ll get to see a BMX Bike Show if she sells even one thing, and if she sells three, she’ll get to sit up front (yippee!). I really wonder if the kids who don’t participate will be locked into a classroom with the windows blacked out to ensure they do not get a look at the prize they haven’t earned. The primary downside (or upside if you are a school administrator) of these irresistible prizes is that they motivate the kids to pester their parents incessantly so that they can win a pen that lights up or big balloon.
However, even if my daughter didn’t care about the fundraisers and even if she couldn’t win prizes, I would buy at least one thing from her every time. My years of knocking on doors have turned me into everyone’s easy mark. Every time a kid knocks on my door, I’m going to buy something, because I feel so bad for them and I remember how much I hated the fundraising routine. I buy candy I don’t want, candles I don’t like, wrapping paper I don’t need. I buy two boxes of cookies from every girl scout that knocks on my door. I do it all in the name of lightening the load of some poor kid with the weight of his school’s approval on his shoulders.
posted by Shannon at 10:01 PM
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