Cub Scout Popcorn Sale Season is coming! And I am not just picking on the Scouts here. Actually I love the Scouts. I love what Scouting is intended to teach kids, I love scouting values, and I love being a part of a scouting program as a parent as much as I did as a child. But popcorn season comes on the heels of the school fundraisers, sport team fundraisers, girl scout cookie season, church silent auctions, PTA bake sales and book fairs, the list goes on and it has no end.
Note that this entire thread applies to all of the above. Especailly the PTA book fair, they have a special place in my heart for sending the kids to the fair during the school day and thus using peer pressure to convince my 3rd Grader to make poor spending choices. In the case of the book fair, families are actually victimized on both ends of the deal - first, it's no secret that the school only makes a small amount of money compared to what Scholastic makes, and second, the kids are the ones purchasing the overpriced $10 paperback books when they could have bought a whole stack of books at Half Price Books or a library used book sale for the same amount. So the kids get dinged twice - first they wasted their money on poor quality overpriced books, and secondly, their school could have benefitted more had they just given the difference to the school instead of to Scholastic. But I digress. Back to the Cub Scout Popcorn.
OK, so here's how it works. We need to raise some money to support the activities we want our kids to participate in this year. And the scouting program itself is meant to teach our kids values like responsibility, accountability, and making good choices, among other lofty ideals. So there are some obvious (to me) paradoxes here.
If I want my child to participate in an activity outside of taxpayer-funded public school, like scouts or sports or private school or field trips or whathaveyou, I should pay for it myself. Or if my child is old enough, he should earn the money to pay for it. But there is no reason that my neighbors and co-workers should be expected to fund my child's activities. Nor for me to fund their children's activities. If we all took the amount we spent on our friends and neighbors' kids' fundraisers and just donated it to our own kids' activities, we'd be set. Those $5 here and $10 there do add up.
No kidding, it does not take a math genius to figure out how fundraising works. The kids sell some sort of product and earn a small percentage of the sales. Who actually profits? The company that provides the goods for the fundraiser, of course. The goods are always overpriced (so that the company can make a good profit even after giving the scouts their cut) and they are invariably something you do not need nor would you have gone out of your way to purchase had you not been guilted into it because the person asking is your neighbor or coworker's kid. Here's an idea: why don't we buy $10 gift cards to Walmart and sell them for $15. It's the same thing, with the advantage being that the purchaser can at least buy something they want with it. Or wait, here's a better idea: just ask for a donation that's equal to what the profit for the scouts would have been. That way the scouts get the same amount but nobody has to buy $50 worth of popcorn in order for the scouts to get $5.
What is time worth? Arbitrarily, let's say I make $30 per hour after taxes at my job. Best case: If I take my son out selling popcorn door-to-door for several weekends over a period of several months, which is typical, and we sell a whopping $500 worth of popcorn (only a few scouts sell $500 or above), we'd earn $50 for the scouts. I could have earned that in under 2 hours at my job. This is on top of the fact that I just gave up scarce weekend time in which we could have been doing fun family activities or whatever else. Now on top of all that, we have to pick up the popcorn and deliver it. And it comes in really big boxes and cartons. So there goes some more driving time, gas money, inconvenience. Enough said.
What does selling popcorn teach our boys? Arguably it teaches them how to overcome shyness, how to talk to adults, and perhaps some math. I would argue that there are other and better ways to teach that. Put on a talent show at a senior center, have the kids volunteer at church alongside adults, run a concession stand at a local event, deliver meals on wheels, the list goes on. It is not my neighbors or coworkers job to help my child overcome shyness. Besides, I think we need to give kids some credit. They are smart enough to know when an adult is humoring or pitying them. Most people have good manners and don't want to tell a young child "no." So we are preying apon people's polite nature when we ask them to buy something they don't need or want and put a small puppy-dog-eyed child in front of them. Taking advantage of other people's weaknessess or politeness is not something we should be teaching our kids is appropriate or acceptable.
Let me explain what I try to teach my kids. I want them to understand the value of a dollar, and that little amounts add up over time. I want them to understand the difference between a "need" and a "want." I want them to be able to see through advertising and marketing strategies. I want them to learn how to save for the future, how to make wise financial decisions, how to pass up impulse purchases in favor of long-term goals, how to forgo instant gratification, how to survive without keeping up with the Joneses, and that happiness comes from within and can't be purchased. So, if I am successful at instilling these values into my children, they will know better than to purchase junk food just because it's in a pretty tin and it's in front of them right now. So why, oh why, would I teach my kids that spending money on overpriced popcorn is a bad monetary decision, yet then send them out to go and convince friends and family to make this admittedly poor choice? Why would we teach our kids that this is how we treat people we love, by asking them to do things that hurt them but benefit us?
What about Nutrition? All these girl scout cookies, cub scout popcorn, school peanut brittle and soccer team chocolate frogs are easy sells. Everywhere you turn the media is telling our kids to eat junk. How can we teach our children about proper nutrition when we turn around and tell them that junk food is OK on special occasions, and then proceed to find some reason for all 365 days of the year to be some sort of a special occasion? (My daughter's preschool class this past year was grouped by age. All 16 kids had birthdays in a 2-month period. Class was Monday-Wednesday-Friday. So you know what happened....they had cupcakes or cookies every single day that they went to school for 5 weeks straight.)
I believe that children learn as much or more from what we do and model to them as from what we say with words. If we want to teach wise money management and good nutrition, we should not encourage children to capitalize on persuading friends and family to make poor choices. We should also teach accountability by teaching that we should not expect others to pay for our own wants and needs.
At our school the PTA holds two Scholastic book fairs a year. The first one generates a good amount of money for the PTA. The second one is a "Buy one, get one" deal where the PTA gets no money because the profits are given back to the kids via the 2-for-1 deal. So it is a pretty good situation for everyone.
ReplyDeleteAlso at our school, the parents got tired of having the kids sell junk every fall to raise money, so last year they instituted a check campaign and raised almost as much money as before with a lot less hassle.
Unfortunately all the door-to-door products are very overpriced. In our Scout groups, you can opt out of the fund-raiser if you can pay a certain amount straight to the troop. That way you can decide if you have more money or more time to spare, and the decision is yours.