School Band Crushed by Mag Fundraising Scam
by Mandy
(Michigan)
However, not all magazine subscription fundraisers are a good investment. Yes, many are a valid way of having a fundraiser, but there are a few out there that are just plain scams. And if you're not careful, then you'll end up with a whole lot of nothing but angry customers and disappointed kids.
When I was in seventh grade, my middle school band class decided to sell magazine subscriptions to help raise money for an end of the year trip to six flags. We had a good amount of money saved up, as the proceeds from our band concerts also went to the account for that trip, but we were still a few hundred dollars short. A few fundraiser ideas were bounced around, but in the end we settled on mag fundraising.
Now we were pretty good sellers. I remember that a group of us went to the local mall and set up a small table outside one of the entrances (with permission from the mall security guards, of course). And being the creative band members we were, we made up little dances and sang songs to try to get people over to our table. One of the people in our group was even the first-chair flutist from our band, and she brought her flute and played some music as well. All in all, we did the best out of everyone in the band. In just that day alone we must've sold over a hundred subscriptions.
But in the end, it was all for naught. The company we did the fundraiser through ended up being a scam company, and they took our money and ran. Nobody got their magazines, and we didn't get any of the promised money. Even worse, the school made us provide refunds to anyone who came asking for them, and we had to use money from our band trip funds to pay for it. In the end it set us back so far that we couldn't take the trip that year, and we continue to be the only class in the school's history that didn't raise enough money to go on the trip. That, I can tell you, is crushing to a pre-teen.
Looking back on it now, I can say I learned some valuable lessons from it. If you're going to run a fundraiser, be it a bake sale, selling magazines, or whatever, do some research. Learn about the company before you give them your money. If you're smart about it, then you won't end up like how my class did.
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