Why Are School Catalog Fundraisers a Thing?

there are a lot of weird Parts about American public schools that are usually just overlooked and accepted as something normal the quality of the school lunches the obsession with Banning tank tops Johnny Appleseed day if you went to a school like I and many others did that participated in a school catalog fundraiser then this also probably never seemed all that strange and school fundraisers in general aren't the different programs and activities of a school need to be funded by something of course and fundraisers like PTA bake sales and selling chocolate bars aren't anything out of the norm but the more I think about the school catalog fundraisers from the premise of them to the items they sell to the prizes they award to children for becoming blossoming door-to-door salesmen the more I realized that they were actually really weird for anyone unfamiliar with catalog fundraisers they essentially work like this a company is contracted by a school to provide catalogs full of items usually things like gifts decorations and homewares the catalog provider will then give the kids at the school a big informational lesson on the new program they tell them during some type of assembly that all they have to do is sell items from the catalogs to their friends and families and then they'll be able to win toys and prizes for free the kids then take their catalogs show them to everyone they know and take down their orders and collect their payments at the end of the fundraiser prizes are given out with more prizes and better ones at that being given to whoever sold the most items from their catalogs on the surface it seems pretty simple and harmless enough the kids interact with their communities and the school gets some money towards its funding I mean when I was involved in these things numerous times throughout my years in public school I also thought nothing of it and just participated to try and win as many cool prizes as I could but the thing is that's what they wanted me to do I was just a child that saw something colorful and was told that I could have it within my reach there's a reason that I never encountered these fundraisers when I was in high school only young kids would one see these cheap toys as something desirable two be okay with begging in their free time to get them and three not be able to see the whole thing as the Shady scam that it really was I used the term scam in a loose sense of the word because technically these fundraisers and the companies behind them did deliver on what they promised prizes were given out to anyone who met certain sales numbers and everything they offered in the catalogs was real and was also sent out to the buyers but there's a lot of underhanded tactics they use to portray the whole program in a better light disguising it as something easy fun and rewarding when it's actually none of those things if you've ever heard someone say hey babe do you want to be a girl boss then you might have a good idea of what I'm getting at at these informational assemblies where the company tells the school how the fundraising program works the kids aren't just lectured for an hour and then sent on their way there's a speaker who comes prepared with a slideshow or video and fun music setting up the ideal presentation to Target children with the main focus being the exciting prizes that are offered and how easy it is to get them for free there's a variety of toys and gadgets shown that will only get cooler as the slideshow goes on and in my experience this buildup worked really well on all of the kids at my school we were all immediately wowed at the idea of getting our hands on all of these cool toys and we're drawn in more and more as the light up yoyos and sticky hands turned into RC cars and CD players it didn't dawn on us at all that all of these prizes came with a cost and effort to actually reach them when a middle-aged man showcases plastic Treasures while Dynamite by Taio Cruz plays in the background it really seems like anything is possible the presentation ends after eventually showcasing the highest tier prizes that of course Garner the best reactions they might be a turn in a money blowing machine for a chance to win some cash or even a ride to go grab some lunch in a limousine I remember at one of these assemblies they actually brought the money blower in and let a random student have a try and everyone that was watching was loving it and now obsessed with selling enough catalog items to get their own chance to go in so all you have to do to get to that money blower or limo is sell a few items out of a catalog that sounds easy enough right well it's never really as easy as it seems of course and for a few reasons to start the whole business of trying to sell items from a catalog is kind of like taking up a part-time job any Gathering of people like a church service or a neighborhood cookout has now become the perfect place to try and drive up sales and every free moment outside of school that wasn't utilized to shove a catalog in someone's face was basically wasted some people would even go the extra mile and go door to door to ask around and hopefully get a couple more sales not unlike Girl Scouts selling cookies just more annoying and without anything actually worth buying like Thin Mints I'm not sure how long the fundraising period typically lasts for but I do know that it really did feel like you had to pretty much constantly be asking around to end up making any considerable amount of sales as much as these kids and their parents could be compared to salesmen they were actually a lot closer to Beggars the companies Behind These fundraisers make the sales goals and the selling itself seem simple but if you're selling stuff and every other kid in your school is selling stuff and potentially kids at other schools are also selling stuff then every person within a certain radius is probably being targeted by not just their friends and family but by every other school-aged child around them too the phrase sorry I already bought something from someone else was very common to hear during the fundraising season and whether they were actually telling the truth or just lying to get away from all of the hordes of child solicitors the likelihood of getting anyone to actually buy something because of the this was a lot Slimmer than the assembly man made it seem not to mention that these catalogs were filled with a seemingly random assortment of things like candles flower seeds Tupperware and wrapping paper this stuff was always marketed as sort of fancy or high quality reminiscent of all the products on QVC that are actually just overpriced and mostly useless if you did manage to find someone who hadn't already sold their soul to another 10 year old they likely still wouldn't end up buying anything because why would anyone want to get their wrapping paper or beef sticks from a random Elementary schooler when looking into these fundraisers for this video I saw that there are now online versions of these catalogs too which just seems like it presents an even worse opportunity for any kid to end up selling anything when a child is standing in front of their neighbor politely yet desperately asking if they'd please like to buy a steam and Sally Shaker and microwave cleaner they at least have the visual appeal of looking cute if someone's redirected to just an on online Home Goods store with more steps I feel like they're even less likely to give in so clearly there's a bit of nuance to the whole thing that these companies behind the fundraising don't bother to get into when pitching the program to an audience of children of course it wouldn't seem as appealing if the simple task of selling a few candles or tubs of cookie dough was shown as tedious taxing and largely disappointing I think that this appealed to unknowing kids is the major difference between catalog fundraisers and other popular school fundraisers these catalogs could easily just be given out to each kid in the school to take home with even a few copies to give to their friends and family and then the optional ordering could be done through the business like any regular catalog but instead there's the entire side of the incentive program that plays into the whole thing and that's what makes it all seem kind of shady these companies must know that having children beg for sales is more effective than just handing out the catalogs on their own but still these kids would wouldn't be nearly as excited to bother everyone in town about their fundraiser if they weren't in it for the rewards so these prizes that are built up from the beginning must really be worth it after everything right well I have to admit that as a kid the prizes did seem pretty sick but the older I got the less they seemed exciting and the more they seemed like what they actually were cheap junk for how hyped up these toys were they ended up being not nearly as cool as assembly man made them seem they remind me of ticket redemption prizes at arcades colorful and enticing beyond their barriers just to fall apart once you get them in your hands or offer a full five minutes of play time before becoming boring when I look up different prize examples I found that even on some more recent lists the same type of stuff from when I was in school is still being used for incentive school supplies keychains and collapsible plastic balls are some of the most common toys I saw across all of these lists there are more Emoji fidget and slime based things than I remember though so at least they're keeping up with the times the larger scale prizes do start to get a bit less terrible and more Tech based with things like Bluetooth speakers and ring lights showing up on some and of course what's more high-tech than crab lollipops there are even a few that list a Nintendo switch and apple airpods as prizes but given how much these fundraisers have already shown us that they're not to be fully trusted and how slightly wrong the airpods look I feel like these prizes might come with some fine print maybe you're thinking that I'm being overly cynical when looking at all of these toys because they're made for kids so of course keychains and fidget Spinners aren't going to appeal to me as much but this is where I'd like to bring up the arcade prize analogy again in the same way that arcade prizes seem really cool and easy to win just by playing games yet end up costing hours worth of tickets to get not only are these prizes generally harder to win compared to how easy the fundraising company made it seem team there are additional barriers Beyond just having to sell items to get to any of these rewards you might have noticed that on each of these prize lists the prizes are labeled and grouped into different sections that's because kids will have to sell either a certain number of items or make a specific dollar amount in sales to reach certain prize tiers while I don't think the idea of creating goals and adding tears is inherently bad the actual numbers that school children are meant to be reaching to meet these goals is kind of crazy especially when you take into account the Glamorous rewards they receive for each tier most lists start at either one or two items sold or five to twenty dollars made for the lowest tier prizes and these are usually the cheapest toys this one has not crayons but a single crayon as the prize for selling two to five items there are three of them in the picture but I don't see any s so what do you think things will move on from there in increments of usually about five to ten items or ten to twenty dollars the prizes may or may not be better than the ones listed before them but everyone knows that kids aren't in it for the bottom tier stuff but the Nintendo switch or limo ride well for every one of these prize lists once you get past the fifth tier or so the ranges that the prizes cover start to get wider so before when you could sell just five more items to get to the next reward you're suddenly having to sell 15 or 20 more items at least just to reach the next level and sure these fundraising companies are still around to make a profit themselves so they can't just be giving away something to any kid that sold Grandma some macaroons which I admittedly thought were tater tots when I first saw this picture they only want to give the best rewards to the kids that ring the doorbell of every single house not just on their street or even in their neighborhood but in the neighboring neighborhoods too but are even the highest tier prizes worth it maybe some of them seem to be from a kid's perspective sure but when you break down the amount of effort taken and money gathered to get to these prizes I would argue it's really not worth all of the trouble take even the smallest prizes for example this catalog has a lot of items and the cheapest price I could find for a product was ten dollars if you went by the prize list that had a single crayon as a prize for selling two to five items you've just made sales totaling at least twenty dollars all for a crayon the cheapest pack of Crayola brand twistables that I could find was four dollars for 12 which is like 35 cents a crayon and yes I really searched for crayons online and did the math just to make the point that children are out here begging for someone to buy their tater tot macaroons just to get a 35 prize you can imagine it only gets worse as the tiers get bigger and the prizes for the most part don't I won't break out the calculator again but can you imagine driving up beef stick sales for a random business that still prints catalogs just to be given a screaming rubber chicken in return it seems kind of of degrading but hey at least it supports the school right I can't decide if the tier is based on the number of items sold or the amount of money earned or worse because I feel like they could both be just as deceptive but in different ways 30 items sold for the mid-tier prizes might not seem like too much of a feat at first glance Until you realize that only so many people will be willing to buy your beef sticks and a hundred fifty dollars worth of product might seem like it could add up pretty quickly Until you realize that the beef sticks are 15 each and you have to find at least 10 people willing to buy them if they're looking for one of the cheaper items in the catalog I don't know about you but last I checked the unbranded beef stick Market is not that hot right now regardless of the methods they use to essentially trick children into pushing for more sales almost everything on all of these lists could easily be bought at a Dollar Tree or a five below with a lot less effort I think one of the worst parts of the whole prize system is how discipline pointing it can be for the kids that weren't able to sell enough one year at my school one of the prizes was a kind of fun day that took place during a regular school day in the gym it had music games the infamous money blower and at least two different inflatable slides so as far as Elementary School standards go it was a total rager I can't remember exactly what the threshold for entry into it was but since I didn't have many people skills to help with sales and I still got in I'm gonna guess it wasn't a huge amount the good part is that after all of that selling the party was really fun and was one of the prizes that actually felt rewarding getting to spend time with your friends instead of doing long division but what I never even thought about until I was older was how much it must have sucked to not be able to go to the party there were probably a handful of kids that were stuck back in their classrooms feeling defeated and disappointed all because assembly guy made the whole thing seem easy yet they couldn't reach the prizes they wanted and maybe it was easy for someone who's parents had a big office at work or a lot of free time to go door to door or a good amount of disposable income to just Place orders themselves for their own kids but for the kids whose parents didn't have those kinds of resources or even for the kids that really tried their best to sell to everyone they knew but still came up short it wasn't easy and this whole ordeal That was supposed to be about benefiting the school and the children in it ended up leaving some of them just feeling disappointed or maybe even ashamed I get that the few kids who weren't able to sell anything or maybe weren't allowed by their parents to participate are likely the outliers in this situation but I don't think that that means they should get overlooked what I'm really trying to get at is that even the potential for children to be disappointed whether by missing out on having fun with their friends making 50 sales just to get a 10 Light Up Speaker or even getting a turn in the money blower only to walk away with like four crumpled dollar bills could all be avoided if these catalog fundraisers were scrapped in favor of something like a classic bake sale instead I think I think one of the weirdest Parts about these catalog fundraisers is how Universal the experience was so many people can relate to the Nostalgia of the prizes and the begging and it was apparently so popular that there are now tons of companies made for these catalog fundraisers specifically rather than the catalogs just being from any kind of local retailer and I was one of those people that didn't really think much of it all myself until I brought it up with my Australian partner and his reaction made me realize how normalized it was and how mostly American specific of inexperience it was considering how popular and widespread they are I assume the schools must make a decent amount during these programs and I'm all for funding education but funding it off the back of deceiving children just seems like maybe it might not be worth it for anyone watching that might encounter these fundraisers themselves at some point I feel like a donation to the school and a trip to the dollar store can get you most of the prizes on these lists for way less of a hassle and if the thrill of racking up points to reach the prizes seems like half of the fun arcades can offer both the prizes and the adventure of reaching them just an idea and lastly to Timmy who keeps knocking on my door day after day please take your overpriced beef sticks somewhere else a huge thank you to paper Sam and the rest of my patrons for supporting me it means a lot hopefully I got all of your orders right foreign

Channel: Dream Jelly

Views: 273,040

Keywords: catalog fundraiser, school catalog fundraiser, catalog fundraisers, catalog fundraiser prizes, fundraiser prizes, school catalog fundraisers prizes, catalog fundraisers prizes, school catalog, school fundraiser, school fundraisers, school catalogs, fundraiser limo, fundraiser money blower, money blowing machine, fundraiser money blowing machine, fundraiser school prizes, fundraiser catalog prizes, school catalog money blower, school catalog limo, catalog fundraiser limo

Id: 0X6tpPWxjJg

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 28 2023