A few months back, I received a phone call from my niece, asking if I wanted to buy some chocolate. (Silly question, she could have just sent me the chocolate and a bill!) Being her first year in a public school, I knew it was for a school fundraiser and decided that instead of an automatic yes, I’d make her work for it a little bit. I asked her some normal questions: Why was she selling the chocolate? Did she know what her school would do with the money? Did she know if the chocolate was Fair Trade Certified? I could hear her mom feeding her the answers in the background, and then asked her what she thought the school should do with the money raised. I can’t remember the answer she gave, but it was the one that she could clearly answer on her own. I apologized to her mother later on for putting her on the spot, and of course, bought the chocolate.
I wondered, though, if there’s more we can be doing for our kids when these fundraisers come home in their backpacks. Most of the time we roll our eyes and wonder how much we’ll have to annoy people to make a few bucks for the school. We send a text to family members or bring the Yankee Candle catalog into work for our co-workers to take a gander at. But what if we took these fundraisers as an opportunity to teach our kids?
Do your research, or rather, help them do theirs
Find out how much your kids know about what the funds will be used for. If they don’t know, help them write a letter to their teacher or principal asking for more information. This will help them when approaching family and friends. “Could you help my school raise money for a new playground? We’re kids, and we need to move around a lot in order to learn our best” is a much better ‘ask’ than, “Can you donate to my school?” Help them to be prepared for questions people might ask (and crazy aunts who love life lessons.)
Teach the beginnings of charity
Have your kids think of something THEY would do with the money raised. Kids in grade school tend to be pretty self-centered, but fundraisers and charitable giving gets them thinking about others. The school may be raising money for a new curriculum, but the kids might know that their lunch tables are all broken, and think that’s a better use of the funds. “This year my school is raising money for new books, and I’m going to write a letter asking that next year we focus on the lunch tables.” We are all more willing to donate to a cause that the person asking believes in and clearly has thought about.
Practice
Practice. A few weeks after this phone call with my niece, my step-kids came home with a Fun Run Fundraiser. We happened to be on our way to a family birthday party, so there were plenty of people we could ask to donate. The 7-year-old said she was too scared to ask, so we practiced. No one likes asking people for money, but what better time to start practicing than now? We ran over a few scenarios in the car, but when it came time to ask, I started. Without saying anything about the fundraiser, I walked up to my dad and said, “Dad, there’s something really important to me that I’m raising money for. Would you be willing to donate and help me?” It’s my dad, so of course, he said yes. I told him I’d send him over the information. Then the kids and I talked about how it went, and how easy it seemed. (Definitely pick someone who will say yes to start off with!!) She waited a bit and then went and asked my dad to help her earn money to make her school a better place for learning. And then she asked my sister. And then she asked my other sister. And then she called her grandfather and asked him. Each time it got easier for her, and she was proud of herself for raising that money.
The Payout
It’s definitely easier to just send a text and ask our friends and family to donate to our kids’ fundraisers, but when we do that, we’re missing out on so many opportunities to teach kids about charity, public speaking, asking important questions, and learning to care about things other than ourselves. The child who independently asks for donations to school fundraisers will have an easier time asking for a raise at their first job. The child who looks into what their school is raising money for will learn about what goes into running a business and how many things cost money that they didn’t realize. And best of all, it’s one more thing we can teach them to do for themselves while instilling a sense of independence and self-worth.
