Can someone explain why teen kids need to fundraise $1,000 for a public school sport?

[Anonymous]

One of our school teams fundraises to fund their spring break trip to SC every year. These are all UMC families. I am embarrassed for them when they start harassing everyone they know to pay for their vacation.

[Anonymous]

Some families really don’t have 20 contacts to provide, and our fundraising chair pretends not to hear us when we say as much. I have 3 good contacts and everyone on that list will donate good money every time because I follow up with them and they have the resources to donate. It more than covers our proportional share. I do my part, but as an adult I expect to be permitted to do it in a way that doesn’t reflect poorly on me, as would be the case if I hit up friends and family I’m not really in touch with or who don’t have the financial resources to fund my kids’ activities. Our fundraising chair rejected my short-but-meaningful list and told me to come back once I had completed my list of 20. I’m not accustomed to being treated like a child, especially when I’m directing a big chunk of resources to this program, and it has caused me to tell my relatives to not worry about donating in the future given that the program doesn’t seem to trust my judgment or distinguish between genuine supporters of the program and some random contact I still have on my Rolodex whom I haven’t seen or heard from in a decade and will scoff at getting a fundraising pitch from us.