These Corporations That Raise Money For Schools Keep 48 Percent For Themselves
Elementary school students are in their school gymnasium for a pep rally. An extremely enthusiastic young host shows them a video based on the year’s theme: a community spirit called “Rock’n Town Live.” He leads the students in loud cheers of “go Tigers,” “can’t believe it,” and “thirty to thirty-five laps.” And in addition to whipping the kids into a frenzy, he and the school’s principal take turns asking the kids to go home and get two adults to pledge a contribution. Roughly half of that money will go to benefit the school. Roughly half of it will go to Booster Enterprises Inc., a Georgia-based for-profit company putting on the event.
This is the scene in a video was shot at a Memphis Lutheran parochial school, but the same story plays out in hundreds of public and private schools across the country.
Booster Enterprises, which says it currently hosts Boosterthon events in schools in about 35 states, is one of several firms offering to outsource fundraisers known as “fun runs.” In 16 states, kids are participating in a similar program hosted by an Arizona-based company called Apex Fun Run. And still other schools use a comparable fun run fundraiser company called FundRunners. The general structure for all three appears to be pretty similar: the companies send a team to each school to promote “character education,” fitness, and pledges. They host pep rallies, spend several days getting the kids excited for the fundraiser, and then cheer on the students as they run laps around a track to earn sponsor contributions. And they take a large percentage of the haul.
Some parents and administrators rave about fun run fundraising events as the best and easiest fundraising they’ve ever found. Others have strongly objected to the the use of school-day time for the efforts, and the 48-percent cut often pocketed by these companies. Charity watchdog groups advise that no more than 25 percent of proceeds from a fundraiser should go to outside fundraising firms.
And some experts say these programs are emblematic of a national move toward more corporate involvement in public education. At the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Education Policy Center, experts have extensively studied commercialism in America’s schools. They have noted that in times of educational funding challenges, “beleaguered educators are ever more open to offers of corporate ‘partnerships’ that might bring in additional money for their schools. Unfortunately, many school-business partnerships are little more than marketing arrangements that have few benefits for schools while carrying with them the potential to harm children” psychologically, educationally, and health-wise.
The price of outsourced fundraising
Since the 1980s, the Key School in Annapolis, Maryland, has raised a good chunk of funds through its annual 5K, 10K, and Family Fun Run event. Trish Gallant, the parent programs and special events director for the private school, said the school organizes the entire thing in-house each year and gets many of the necessary overhead costs donated by parents. “They are kind enough to sponsor it, they carry the expenses,” she told ThinkProgress, and with over 200 runners participating from inside the school and the running community, “it’s a good moneymaker for us.”
But not every PTA, PTO, and school has the resources to put together a fundraising event by themselves. Chris Farri, the development director at Grace Christian Academy of Maryland in Waldorf, Maryland, told ThinkProgress that with the decline of volunteerism that has coincided with the growth of two-income families, her school does not have “the army of volunteers you need to put on something like this.” Recognizing the “you have to spend money to make money,” the small Christian school turned to Boosterthon four years ago. The company sends a team to the school, it does just about all the work, and the school gets just about half of the proceeds. And, according to Farri, it has been “very much a success,” and has helped bring in the funds needed to purchase smart boards and smart desks for the classrooms.
Boosterthon markets itself as a “hassle-free event that rallies families to get involved and provides the resources to fund their budget.” Apex says that “‘hassle-free’ is not just a bullet point on our marketing materials – it’s a promise from our team to yours.” And FundRunners says its program is “designed to keep the hassles off the schools and parent organizations. But in return for the enthusiastic team of young facilitators, the recipients pay a price.
A Boosterthon spokesman told ThinkProgress that in the past, the company simply charged a $2,000 fee and took a flat 48 percent of all contributions. But since, it has created a sliding scale option based on how much the event These Corporations That Raise Money For Schools Keep 48 Percent For Themselves | ThinkProgress: