Ron's Blog

For any of you who have been a volunteer, you’ve probably had a bit of experience with fundraising. As much as I dislike begging people for money, it seems that I’ve been involved in it all my life. 

As an example, my first career was as a social worker in a large hospice organization. Back then, most hospices received the bulk of their reimbursement from Medicare but the amount they received didn’t cover the cost of the comprehensive services they provided. So, every year, hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to be raised just to break even. At one fundraising event, my CEO said, “We’re a non-profit organization. We didn’t start out that way but that’s how it ended up.” Very funny.

And then I was a member of a Rotary club for about a dozen years. We had to raise lots of money to fund the many community service projects we sponsored. Now, the fire and rescue department where I volunteer must generate the funds needed to purchase the equipment we use to save lives and put out fires. It just wouldn’t look good to have an ambulance break down on the way to an emergency situation.

So, as difficult as it is to ask for money, if the donors see the value in it, they will open their wallets. However, if the fundraising campaigns are sketchy, the fundraising is much more difficult. That’s exactly what happened in my high school band.

You see, band members love to go on trips. It’s an opportunity to drive all night on bus, to make out with your boyfriend or girlfriend, and to engage in the type of adolescent behavior that creates headaches for all of the chaperones. I recall that some of our chaperones actually stayed up all night in a chair in the hallway just to make sure none of us tried to leave the hotel or visit a member of the opposite sex. And speaking of staying up all night, my wife once chaperoned a band trip and was told that her only job was to keep the bus driver awake during the ride to Atlanta. Had I known that in advance, none of my family members would have been on that bus. Geez.

While some band trips were just for fun, like performing at Disney World or marching in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, many were associated with band competitions. Unfortunately, however, an impressive four-foot trophy was not enough to convince the school administrators to pay for those trips. So, we had to raise the money ourselves. During my five years in high school band (not because I was held back a year but because we did not have a middle school), we participated in a number of fundraising campaigns. Some were better than others and a few where downright ridiculous.

The best fundraising effort I ever saw was when the band sold fresh citrus from the Indian River region of Florida. The oranges, tangerines, and grapefruits were some of the best fruit I had ever eaten. We sold tons of this stuff and made lots of money.

Then there was the time we sold boxes of candy. You’d think that this would be hugely popular. Unfortunately, the company that sponsored the candy sales was an off-brand producer. If we had sold See’s chocolates, I’m sure we would have done well. But at that time, See’s was not available in our neck of the woods. We could have also gone with a classic like Russell Stover. My parents would have loved that. Even though my dad swore he didn’t like sweets, we would watch him hit the candy jar many times after dinner each night. And after my mom died, we found candy wrappers under her bed. So, clearly, good candy would have been a huge hit in my house. 

But no, the band chose an unknown chocolatier that would assure bigger profit margins—that is, if we had sold any. When you opened a box of these fringe confections, the color of the chocolate just looked off. There was a slight dullness of the candy’s sheen. It suggested that the box was either old or had been left opened on the floor of someone’s car. And instead of delectable nuts and chews like you’d find in a See’s candy box, these chocolates were full of gunky creams and fruit gels. No offense to those of you who like this kind of sweetness, but there should never be a spoonful of pasty apricot preservers inside a dull chocolate exterior. It’s just wrong. Needless to say, the bigger profit margins didn’t matter since there weren’t any sales to begin with.

Another unsuccessful fundraising effort was a calendar with a picture of the band on it. Below the photo were monthly calendar pages that showed major holidays, school events, and the band’s performance schedule. However, the photo was taken from the top of the stadium so that it would be wide enough to include everyone. That made it impossible to see individual faces. In fact, I couldn’t find myself even though I knew where I was standing. Turns out, this calendar was popular with exactly one hundred and twenty people which, coincidentally, was the same number of households that had a student in the band. Nobody else in the community was interested in a calendar with a photo of the band as seen from the moon. Again, the sales were underwhelming.

But by far, the worst, and by “worst”, I mean an idea that rivaled the decision to let the Titanic sail, was when our band director got the idea that we should sell Amway rug cleaner. Yes, you heard that right. A bunch of young, naive band members, who just wanted to go on a cool trip that year, were forced to go door to door and ask people if they were in need of a bottle of multilevel marketing spot remover. Oh sure, at first we were excited. The Amway rep who pitched the campaign came to our band room and showed us all of the cool prizes we could win for large numbers of sales. At one point, the guy who, by the way, was dressed in a plaid jacket, striped pants, and red bow tie, pulled a string of dollar bills out of his sleeve to show us how lucrative our efforts could be. We all cheered. But little did we know how reluctant our neighbors would be to purchase a bottle of rug cleaner, especially knowing that the guy in the plaid and striped outfit would be making more money than we did.

Needless to say, it was a horrible product for high school students to sell and I longed for the good old days when we pushed dull, apricot-filled chocolates. I sold exactly one bottle of Amway rug cleaner. And after my mom moved out of her house some thirty-five years later, I found it under the sink, unopened. Ironically, it had not yet reached its “sell by” date.

So, why am I sharing this with you? No good reason. I’m retired and have a lot of time to reflect on the many quirky experiences in my life. But after years of seeing so many fundraising efforts, I do know this—People will always support a good cause like cancer research, services for children, or someone’s dream to compete in the Olympics. Beyond that, they need to get something in return for their money. Good fruit and good candy will always sell. Rug cleaner and band photos, well, not so much.

When I spoke to my band director, many years after high school, we laughed about those fundraising campaigns. I told him that upon reflection, I had come up with a sure-fire method to raise significant amounts of cash. All we had to do was visit all of our neighbors during the first week of January each year and ask for a twenty dollar donation to guarantee that we would not come back until the next January. I think we could have gone to Bermuda on the proceeds from that effort.