THIS THIS THIS

[kukla_tko]

http://wondermark.livejournal.com/287163.html?

OMGYOUGUYS.

Wondermark has done a comic about me. Seriously. HOLY crap. So it being this time of year again, here's my rules with regard to fund-raising:

I never EVER turn down a Scout. Boy Scout fundraiser? Sure, I'll buy whatever crap you're peddling. Girl Scout cookies? You bet! I don't buy cookies very often in any other form, except for La Bonne Buchet, so it doesn't bother me that they're way too expensive. It's fund-raising for the Scouts, and I am a supporter of the Scouts.

BUT.

I am not a supporter of the AGENTS of Girl and Boy Scouts. Part of the point of the fund-raising activities is to build character and teach girls and boys how to network in their community. I never refuse a Scout, but I'll turn down parents and grandparents. Your little one is raising money? Cool. Have them call me. Have them email me. Have them knock on my door. I will always order multiple boxes of cookies or buy whatever thing the Boy Scouts are selling... if and only if I am solicited by an actual child.

I have several reasons for this, but foremost among them is that I was a Girl Scout myself, in two different troops from two different neighborhoods. My parents and my Scout leader were very specific about the rules of engagement for the fundraisers. See, those Girl Scouts get to win valuable prizes for their hard work. The deal is that the girls who sell the most boxes get to acquire bragging rights in addition to small prizes and patches and the like. However, the thing that chapped my @ss every single year was that the kid who sold the most boxes always had the same answer to the "How did you do it?" question: "Oh, I sent the forms to work with Daddy, and also to work/church/bridge club with Mommy." That's right, *I* stomped across the frozen wasteland of my community going door to door asking for people's cookie orders, being told "No" three times for every pity order of a single box of thin mints. *I* sorted the orders when they came in and loaded up my little red wagon with the cookies and delivered them to those addresses, collecting money the whole while and turning in the dollars, coins, and random checks written by members of my community that I barely knew. And if I came up short? It came out of my allowance.

Those other girls simply sent the cardboard sheet with their parents, then sent a trunk load of cookie orders with them when the cookies came in. Most of those girls who won stuffed animals, trophies, and mega-seller patches had done exactly two things: taken the order form home, and brought the envelope of money back with them. The rest of the time, they were talking to their friends on the phone, watching TV or doing whatever kids did back then before the Internet and Video games and online stalking.

I played by the rules of engagement. I earned every dime that was raised on my sheet with my own hard work and ingenuity. And usually, I was in the middle of the curve (if I were lucky that year) or nearly in last place. I never understood why the scout leaders never took this into consideration, despite the fact that when I asked about it I was told what the rules were and that everyone was held to the same standard (which was clearly untrue.) Perhaps it didn't matter to the Scout Leaders because when Suzie Stay At Home sent her sheet with Daddy, she sold 500 boxes which meant bigger funds for our troop. I just wish they'd called it a parents' fund raiser instead of masquerading as building character and making it supposedly about the individual Scouts' achievements.

I'm given to understand now that the rules are different. Stranger Danger is so widely circulated now that it's considered *dangerous* to allow a young girl in second grade (or older) to go door-to-door in her *own neighborhood* to sell cookies. Seriously. Apparently little Scouts are no longer allowed to do this.

Well, here's my flag and I'm going to fly it: ANY Scout who approaches me will be treated with respect, and I will buy what they are selling. I'm a sure bet, and I would never harm or disrespect your kid. If you approach me on your kids' behalf, though, be prepared to be snubbed and sent packing. You have been warned.

Comments

[reannon.livejournal.com]

First: Bless you for buying from Scouts. I wish more people did. Either because it's dreadfully overpriced or because they have objections to the admittedly-backwards national organization, it's a tough damn sell every year.

Second: Yeah, we can't do it that way anymore. At least, if we did, the Scouts would exist no more. How you did it was how I did it, but times were different.

It's not just Stranger Danger, though that's a big part of it. At Kiddo's current age, he can go around by himself, but when he was seven? Hells no. I couldn't trust the squirt to get two blocks to Granddad's house without wandering. :) We are specifically warned not to let our kids go door-to-door alone - it's in big letters on the order sheet. I am not sure, but I believe the Scout troop insurance won't cover the kids if we let them go unsupervised (yes, there's insurance that covers the kids during all Scout activities, and it's a big part of Why They Do Things The Way They Do).

What I did was drive him around and wait in the car while he went up to the doors. I wanted him to do it "himself," but the fact is, I was a working single mother with two jobs. We managed to scrape together one solitary Sunday afternoon to do this little ritual every fall. Sure, if I was Suzy Homemaker we could have done it every afternoon, but I wasn't, and most aren't these days. And so many people say no - about a four-to-one ratio on door-to-door, by my experience. So if we were solely reliant on that to support the Scouts, they would be bankrupt.

Oddly, people buy much more when we camp out in front of a grocery store (which requires adult supervision, though the Scouts do the work). But the vast majority come from people buying at the workplace. Poor Kiddo's take went way down when I no longer had a workplace to take his order sheet... but when J took it to the factory, he started bringing in the orders again.

So while I grant your premise, that the kids should earn it themselves, I think the most practical is for it to be a mix. My editor lives six towns away; my son is never going to be able to knock on his door. But he bought popcorn from us last year and this year. Most of my friends live across the river; we can't possibly drive to everyone's house. We have used the online system the Scouts provide for the boys to email friends and family to hit them up... and it is almost always deleted as spam.

We simply don't live in a society where everyone knows everyone and neighbors knock on each others' doors all the time. I wish we did. Meanwhile, the amount my son raised goes into his application for a scholarship to attend Scout camp each summer, which makes it about far more than padding the troop's bank account. We couldn't afford camp any other way. But until people stop slamming the door on anyone selling anything, I'm afraid the guilt sheet on the table in the workplace breakroom is going to stay.

[kukla-tko42.livejournal.com]

I sold cookies to relatives and friends of the family by using the phone; many of today's scouts have their own PHONES, for goodness' sake.

And to be fair, my mom did walk with me house-to-house when I was still very little. And yes, that had to be scheduled around her work schedule and both of my brothers' myriad of wacky activities.

I don't think it is inappropriate to give a Scout's parent my phone number and ask him/her to have the Scout in question call me on the phone for their order.

I also think that if the organization wants parents to raise funds, they should have a parents' fundraiser. I helped organize one of these recently for a brownie troop because the brownies were deemed too young to do a fundraiser of their own. There are lots of ways to have parents raise the money the kids need for their activities.

I want to call it what it is, and do it by the rules. If the parent sells the items, why is the child being given rewards? (And I am NOT talking about the rewards that the funds provide, such as the camp scholarship. I'm talking about the Girl Scout rewards system of tchotchkes and badges.)

[kukla-tko42.livejournal.com]

Oh, and for the next Scout fundraiser, have your Kiddo contact me. I should point out that having him dictate an email to you to send to me counts, in my opinion. Or he can talk to me on the phone.