god so skeevy and that email from the teacher is horrifying!

Booster's pricing, as you may know, is a sliding scale - the less our children gross, the greater the percentage Booster takes.

In the version of the contract (Services Agreement) between FCPS and Booster Enterprises, Booster takes no more than 50% of gross revenue. (Not including $2K due at sign-up.)

If your PTA/O signed what Booster gave them, probably the top figure is 70% instead as it was at my local elementary school last year.

For the FCPS version, click "Amendment 2" at http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/cregister/ContractDetails.aspx?contractNumber=4400003780 and you'll see...


It's probably worth looking over all of the contract. There are a lot of differences between the Service Agreement FCPS signed and what your PTA/O probably signed.

(Keywords: contract negotiation, better deal, fun run cost, no forced arbitration, simultaneous fundraisers, child data security, child data privacy, encryption, COPPA.)

A re-imagining of a Boosterthon Pledge-O-Meter...

Cold calling is calling people you don't know. If kids are sitting with their parents calling family members and other people the parents know, what's so wrong with that? I doubt a 3rd grader is hiding under the bed cold calling people out of the phone book. Something you forget is that the parents decided which fundraisers their kids participate in.

FCPS regulations (R1370) prohibit kids from cold-calling to raise funds. A safety issue, to be sure.
But Booster gets around this by encouraging kids to use YouTube, Twitter, InstaGram, etc.

http://www.boosterthon.com/pledgesecrets/

Anonymous wrote:I'm a PTA board member, and I got emails about a free lunch at McCormick and Schmick's (for me and up to 2 guests) if I'd come hear their spiel. Another time, I was offered a $10 Starbucks gift card for filling out a 5-minute survey. I was happy to be able to turn them down, based on what I had previously read here on DCUM.

What, Booster Enterprises didn't offer you an all-expense paid trip to Atlanta - ostensibly to participate in a focus group?
Stenwood PTA got such an offer, according to their board meeting minutes from 1/14/2014. (They turned it down.)

I hear-tell PTAs elsewhere have brought in local run clubs to manage fun runs. As I understand it, they're practically the same as Boosterthons, but they use local people and the overhead is a lot lower.

BTW, here's an update: Booster Enterprises doesn't get 48% any more. Their new contract stipulates a sliding scale depending on gross revenues: 35% to Booster Enterprises if revenues exceed $160K, or up to 70% of child-generated funds go to Booster Enterprises if gross revenue falls below $15K. This doesn't include the $2,000 paid to Booster Enterprises upon signing the contract with the PTA.

On a lesser note, the contract also compels the PTAs to waive their right to a jury trial - use arbitration instead (so, no class action lawsuits) - and the contract prohibits the PTA from running other fundraisers at the same time as the fun run. How these stipulations are in the best interest of our PTAs, I don't know.

Anonymous wrote:If you hate Boosterthon so much then go ahead and organize your own fun run for the school. Get some volunteers to assist with it. Raise $40,000 and your school gets to keep it all! Heck, even just raise $20k which would be about your schools take if you went with Boosterthon.

Look, it is very hard for schools to get volunteers to pull off a run like that and raise that type of cash. By hiring Boosterthon, the PTA is essentially hiring a company to do the dirty work of the fundraiser. Dirty work that majority of parents would not do.

Exactly. And fun runs are not terribly hard to organize

A parent at our school who was horrified by the whole Apex Fun Run scam actually attended their "pep rally" on Apex's first day on our campus. She said it was really freaky, "like a Hitler Youth rally". The mind control that the Apex con artists attempt to exercise over the children is truly frightening.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DC who is attending Kindergarten came last week telling me the Boosterthon people were upset with me because I did not want to participate. My child was acting as if they have been brainwashing the whole classroom!

I have been in the classrooms while they do this. Yes, it's cultish. They have the kids repeat things they say. "You won prizes! Say 'prizes'!!!" "When you get home, you're going to call relatives and ask for pledges! Say "ask for pledges"!!!!

They high-five the kids in the hallways. They go out to dismissal and "help" with that.

Our kids do not do anything other than run that day. No pledging, no talking to these strangers, nothing.

+1. Your kid will still be allowed to run. We rebuffed all fundraising efforts of the Boosterthon "team."

Anonymous wrote:My DC who is attending Kindergarten came last week telling me the Boosterthon people were upset with me because I did not want to participate. My child was acting as if they have been brainwashing the whole classroom!

I have been in the classrooms while they do this. Yes, it's cultish. They have the kids repeat things they say. "You won prizes! Say 'prizes'!!!" "When you get home, you're going to call relatives and ask for pledges! Say "ask for pledges"!!!!

They high-five the kids in the hallways. They go out to dismissal and "help" with that.

Our kids do not do anything other than run that day. No pledging, no talking to these strangers, nothing.

My DC who is attending Kindergarten came last week telling me the Boosterthon people were upset with me because I did not want to participate. My child was acting as if they have been brainwashing the whole classroom!

Different district, but my kids came home with packets hawking cookie dough, gift wrap and other crap. I just write a check to the school, we don't ask grandparents and others to buy this junk.
It sickens me that kids are being coached on how to hawk stuff so that half of the money raised can go to these companies/cheap "prizes"/parties. If the kids sell just ONE item, they are invited to a bounce house party. Um, no thank you

Anonymous wrote:"I think if you aren't involved in the fundraising, that you just shouldn't complain. I have never been involved in the fundraising. Have I donated? Yes! Have I always liked how they fundraised? No. But I'm not the one fundraising, so I'm just happy that someone else has taken this on, and that they are getting it done for the school."

Yup. If you do not like something then you volunteer to help work on it next time. If you put in the time you get more of a day in conplaining. If you are just upset other people are not doing more work well then good luck with that!

NP, I disagree as everyone is being asked to participate, by donating, and valuable class room time is being wasted. At our school, the only parents who weren't complaining about it were the PTA members. It is definitely sleazy