So neither Margie nor I are the sorts to go door to door ringing doorbells to raise money for stuff. But now that Kitten has hit elementary school, the fundraisers are beginning to come hot and heavy. So since I have this nice venue where I don’t have to actually look in anyone in the face soliciting for these things, and since our local friends who we’d be hitting up all (I think) check this place out …
It’s a bit more embarrassing than usual in the face of solicitations for money for Katrina relief. The only thing I can say is that if you are already going to be buying this stuff or spending money at places covered in the coupon book, consider this a way to redirect some of that already-budgeted money to a worthy cause (Katherine and her school). If you aren’t, then for heaven’s sakes hit the actual charity links at the top of the main page; that’s a lot more important.
For some reason, rather than pushing a single product, Katherine’s school is shotgunning their effort across multiple vendors. The following is a subset, the ones easily accessible via the Net.
- Entertainment Books: Yes, thousands of cool coupons to local vendors of national chains for only $25. These are customized by ZIP code, so they can be ordered across the US (sorry, no sign that you can make them work in Canada). Go to www.entertainment.com/support and enter in Seller Number 82610.
- Innisbrook: Home of gift wrap, candy, garden flags, and lots of other brik-a-brak, of which margin Katherine’s school will get a cut. Go to innisbrook.com and put in school number 103475.
We also have local “e” Books for the Denver area, but those can’t be ordered online; local people can contact us directly, at which point we’ll look very embarrassed over hitting up our friends for money-raising stuff.
Anyway, there you go. Orders due by 12 September. Again, if you were already planning on buying gift wrap, or think the coupon book is for something that you’re likely to make use of, faboo. If not, and you have money burning in our pocket, there’s folks that need the help more than Katherine’s elementary school does.
As much as I abhore school fundraising (since if the schools don’t have the money they need, we obviously need to give them more), isn’t there some way for me to support the school without buying a useless trinket? Can her school be linked to one of the supermarket kickback programs? Could I just give money? (If it works for the Red Cross it can’t be all bad.)
They do have a tie to a supermarket scrip program — let me look into that.
It’s not clear if the script/coupons/gift stuff can be mailed. We’ll have to look into that. We’re not doing that program ourselves because that’s already a fund-raiser at our church.
And I agree with the basic “if the schools don’t have the money they need, we obviously need to give them more” idea. I’m amazed by the amount of school supplies that the parents are being asked to bring bring into class at the beginning of the year. One could argue that it’s a “users fee,” vs. the payment of property taxes to support local schools, but it still irks to some degree.