Middle School Magazine Madness
by Anna White
(Omaha, NE, USA)
There is nothing wrong with selling magazines, and it's a really good idea to use with fundraising - HOWEVER... it was just not appropriate for a good number of us. Our middle school students were from lower-middle-class families - people who owned their own home but could barely afford the mortgage. Thus, there wasn't enough disposoble income to buy a magazine subscription, even for a good cause.
A good thing to bring up was the presentation of the fundraiser. There was a group with lot of props, lighting, fancy prizes, etc - that did an hour-long skit on how it all worked. It was really informative and catered well to our age group. The prizes were crap, but we were in 9th grade, so it was gold to us. Inexpensive prizes were THE BIGGEST MOTIVATOR to get out there and get these sold.
We were discouraged from going door-to-door, though, and that also killed a lot of the profits, because not many of us had extended families in the area. I had only my mom and dad, who were married at the time, had no family for hundreds of miles, and very few close friends. If we had been encouraged to go door-to-door in groups of 3 or 4, or with an adult, it would have been a LOT better!
Since I was a kid, I'm not sure how much money we raised, but it was an advertised success and they continued to use magazine fundraising through the years. We must have scraped by on the richer kids' networking skills, because we had a great dance and after-party, at which the school sold all the refreshments instead of giving out, to help the income crisis.
To people who want to use magazine fundraising - GO FOR IT! It's a great tool, but I encourage you to think about exactly WHO will be doing the work (i.e. kids or teens), WHERE you are doing the fundraiser (i.e. demographics of the surrounding area), HOW you will be promoting it (i.e. prizes), and the METHOD of getting the subscriptions sold (i.e. internal networking vs. door-to-door). Go get 'em! :)