Using Schoolfundr is a better way to raise money for your school, club, team. It's free and the schools keep 100% of what they collect.
Apparently they're able to provide free fundraising services thanks to tips they receive from donors.

Anonymous wrote:My daughter brought home a popcorn fundraiser for her club, we found out the vendor takes 50 percent. Scholastic book fair takes about 65% of the profits. It's a dirty business all in the name of helping schols

I don’t know about the popcorn, but I run scholastic book fairs. They don’t take profits per say.

Scholastic provide their own stock to school, many are newly released titles like dogman and wimpy kids, they also have a broad variety of books like non fiction war biography, who was, I survived, etc. Most titles you find at local libraries that kids like to read. So kinda like if you go to target and browse their popular young reader section. Also Disney channel popular shows. Books are reasonably priced, from early reader 3.99-4.99. to some hardcover 28.99ish and anything in between. Most popular are the $12.99 range books and journals. They also send stationary items. All books are sold at sticker price, kinda like if you go to B&N, if the books doesn’t have a 25%off sticker or Buy one 50% off, you pay the sticker price.

At the end of the sale, if your sale is in different range, you can take different percent of profit. Here is a breakdown.

https://bookfairsfiles.scholastic.com/email/dynamics/2019/fall/8_week/sd_profit_and_rewards_case.pdf

It’s still pretty similar this year as I was told.

Scholastic is really labor intensive. It’s a full week of parent volunteering, but the financial support side is really easy. You don’t have to make any financial commitment like prepaying books, just sign up and negotiate with your school for a space. Teachers bring the class for a visit and the student writes down titles they like and price. Sometimes our school fifth grader classes come to help K classes to browse and write down titles and prices, it’s a good way to teach responsibility. Parents can sign up eWallet online so the checkout is cashless and they don’t have to come to the school and shop with the kids. Teachers can create wishlists, the PTA purchase for them or parents will donate. I can go on and on about how fun the event is for the kids, and teachers like them too.

That’s why we dropped boosterthon during pandemic. However, we are not a W school feeder, but whenever there is a competition, parents seem to contribute more. When we had the boosterthon, we raised 10k, when we did a straight up school donation, we get 2k maybe. Same as jump rope for hearts, which is a donation to American Heart Association, that doesn’t benefit school, but our PE teacher likes to run it, they also give out toys and rewards. I think this is all about consumerism.

OP. I’m shocked at the cut that the company takes. I had no idea.

But would like to get people’s views on my original question - how the prizes are distributed to kids according to their parents’ contribution. Not sure that can also be blamed on the company, there should’ve been ways to avoid that. From what I could see for our school, some classes almost raised nothing while others raised thousands $.

The primary purpose of Boosterthon is making money for Boosterthon.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter brought home a popcorn fundraiser for her club, we found out the vendor takes 50 percent. Scholastic book fair takes about 65% of the profits. It's a dirty business all in the name of helping schols

I don’t know that Scholastic is the same. That’s a book fair. It actually sells a beneficial product and then gives you a portion of the proceeds for hosting.

Look I've been running book fairs for years. I know how the profit structure works. And I know that a lot of what they're sending is not very good quality. But I'm stuck because the school needs the money and the community loves it.

Just make a contribution to the PTA directly. My kids ES did a Buy Nothing "sale" every year. It was great. Just send a check. Skip the over priced sales. Much less effort. Even if only half as many people participate the school is way ahead.

Anonymous wrote:My daughter brought home a popcorn fundraiser for her club, we found out the vendor takes 50 percent. Scholastic book fair takes about 65% of the profits. It's a dirty business all in the name of helping schols

I don’t know that Scholastic is the same. That’s a book fair. It actually sells a beneficial product and then gives you a portion of the proceeds for hosting.

Invite PTA and Boosterthon to f* off

My daughter brought home a popcorn fundraiser for her club, we found out the vendor takes 50 percent. Scholastic book fair takes about 65% of the profits. It's a dirty business all in the name of helping schols

Boosterthon is awful, and PTAs usually don't share with parents that the company can take up to a 60% cut of donations! Some PTAs have negotiated that down, but Nana and Pop-Pop still have no idea that, say, $40 of their $100 donation is going to a scammy company that interrupts classes daily to push students to give money so they can get a cheap new toy as an individual reward. So gross.

Anonymous wrote:This is our first year at MCPS so we’re new to this. The school (well the PTA to be precise) recently organized a boosterthon to raise funds for the school, which is of course fine. What really surprised me was that after saying that this is to benefit the school community, everyone contributes what they can, etc, it appears that kids got rewards based on what their own parents contributed.

Am i the only one that thinks this isn’t right? Yes it seems all kids get at least a small little something. But I heard some kids talked about how much their parents paid per lap, complaining (crying even) why their parents didn’t pay more, and got very upset when they saw their friends take home much larger gifts. Just really baffled that something like this happens in what’s perceived as one of the wealthiest areas. What are we teaching the kids with this - you’re as good as what your parents can pay???

People from multiple school districts complain about it a lot here on DCUM.

Submit your complaint to the principal, supt and MD BOE. Create an online petition to ban this company.

Anonymous wrote:This is our first year at MCPS so we’re new to this. The school (well the PTA to be precise) recently organized a boosterthon to raise funds for the school, which is of course fine. What really surprised me was that after saying that this is to benefit the school community, everyone contributes what they can, etc, it appears that kids got rewards based on what their own parents contributed.

Am i the only one that thinks this isn’t right? Yes it seems all kids get at least a small little something. But I heard some kids talked about how much their parents paid per lap, complaining (crying even) why their parents didn’t pay more, and got very upset when they saw their friends take home much larger gifts. Just really baffled that something like this happens in what’s perceived as one of the wealthiest areas. What are we teaching the kids with this - you’re as good as what your parents can pay???

https://www.newburyportnews.com/news/local_news/newburyport-pto-school-officials-address-fun-run-concerns/article_281dc05d-b35f-5e50-976f-6556048f0a7f.html

Anonymous wrote:This is our first year at MCPS so we’re new to this. The school (well the PTA to be precise) recently organized a boosterthon to raise funds for the school, which is of course fine. What really surprised me was that after saying that this is to benefit the school community, everyone contributes what they can, etc, it appears that kids got rewards based on what their own parents contributed.

Am i the only one that thinks this isn’t right? Yes it seems all kids get at least a small little something. But I heard some kids talked about how much their parents paid per lap, complaining (crying even) why their parents didn’t pay more, and got very upset when they saw their friends take home much larger gifts. Just really baffled that something like this happens in what’s perceived as one of the wealthiest areas. What are we teaching the kids with this - you’re as good as what your parents can pay???

Yes

Boosterthon is a scam moneymaker for the company. It is not fine.

This is our first year at MCPS so we’re new to this. The school (well the PTA to be precise) recently organized a boosterthon to raise funds for the school, which is of course fine. What really surprised me was that after saying that this is to benefit the school community, everyone contributes what they can, etc, it appears that kids got rewards based on what their own parents contributed.

Am i the only one that thinks this isn’t right? Yes it seems all kids get at least a small little something. But I heard some kids talked about how much their parents paid per lap, complaining (crying even) why their parents didn’t pay more, and got very upset when they saw their friends take home much larger gifts. Just really baffled that something like this happens in what’s perceived as one of the wealthiest areas. What are we teaching the kids with this - you’re as good as what your parents can pay???