Never heard of this but my kid just started school this year. This is eye-opening.

Yes, I've always hated Boosterthon for all the reasons mentioned. I explained to my kid all the things that are wrong with Boosterthon and why we don't buy into it, but still she felt bad because she was shamed every day at school for not winning prizes. She also complained about missing subjects she liked at school because they had the Boosterthon people coming in all the time. This is not what I send my kids to school for. I take it as an opportunity to teach them to be skeptical of this kind of hard-sell w/ cheesy "prizes" operation.

My son's school is doing this and IMHO it's horrendous. Sell, sell, sell. As for character building? The only lessons he has taken home are that you're a loser and aren't doing your part to raise money for the class "awards" if you don't get enough pledges to get a prize handed out in front of everyone. A pep rally planned EVERY DAY til the run? Um, hello classroom interruption. Sadly, my son raised $300 in pledges before we looked online to find the company gets 48%...if his family would have been aware they would have happily written a check directly to the school. Now they are locked in online and he won't forgo the prizes. Nice. Character Building. Way to make me play the bad guy.

I'm confused by how much of a "good deal" folks seem to think this is....others keep pushing back that you can't get enough volunteer parents to pull this off yourselves. Boosterthon gets 48% of the pledges plus 2k. If Haycock really earned $50k for the school itself, that means that the Boosterthon people earned in the neighbrhood of mid $40ks, right? I know they put a lot of staff time/effort, but jeez, you could hire 10 people x $20 hour x 120 hours (3 weeks @ 40 hours each) and end up with labor costs in the neighborhood of $24k. The t-shirts are cheap and gifts are dollar store garbage for most. If you had 1,000 kids and allocated $5 per kid for dollar store t-shirts and gifts, that's another $5k, let's make it $8k to be generous and include printing.

I was amazed at how much money it raised, but in all honesty it took away too much class time. Plus the kids were bouncing off the walls after the activities and not really able to focus.

Link doesn't work

Anonymous wrote:Anyone's school done the Boosterthon fundraiser? If so, what did you think of it?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-boosterthon-20131025,0,5417706.story?page=1

Also, we already gave all we could as a direct donation to the PTA. Our child was made to feel bad for not raising money and kept begging us to pledge. We do not ask our friends and family for donations and they are kind enough to refrain from asking us. Had I known about Boosterthon I would have given much less directly to the PTA at the start of the year. I really hope the PTA will reconsider. Is it worth getting the money if kids feel pressured and left out and some teachers resent it but are afraid to speak up?

It raises a ton of money (half of which goes back to the company). The kids all seem to enjoy it.

That said, it drove our child's teacher nuts. She could not get control of the class after and all the instructional time made her rushes and stressed. The teachers need to be able to give anonymous feedback about how they truly feel regarding this program. They aren't going to speak out against a program that raises so much money if they have to attach their names to it. It's a shame we can't come up with something that takes up less time and where more of the proceeds go to the school. I don't put this on the PTA at all because there aren't enough parents who will or even can (due to work schedule) volunteer to create a program.

Our school raised over $70,000 profit. PTA couldn't raise that type of money and the school needed it. It's not a yearly fundraiser though.

This link provides information that may be useful to those parents and educators trying to convince schools they should not permit organizations like Boosterthon around their children: http://fundraisingaps.wordpress.com/

Good luck!

I'm not going to have my child come home and call or get online to get sponsors to run laps for half the money to go to this company. And it's ridiculous that they're allowed to come in to the school and take up class time to do their sales pitch.

The problem with these events is that they want to use your children as little beggars. I never let my child spend her time on that nonsense. She is there to get an education not solicit donations. If she wants an iTouch she'll get one for her birthday.

Anonymous wrote:I don't think they should have their people coming in to the classroom pumping up the kids to go get sponsors and giving prizes to those that have the highest amount of pledges.

I was in DD's class for one of these events. It was so sad to see the kids who couldn't/didn't get any donations. Really pissed me off.

I don't think they should have their people coming in to the classroom pumping up the kids to go get sponsors and giving prizes to those that have the highest amount of pledges.