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Can we talk about this for a second? I think my daughter has had more school fundraisers in one school year (and the year isn’t over) than I’ve ever had in my whole school career. Taking into account that my daughter is in elementary school, putting pressure on these children to raise money for their school seems awful. For one, if we need to have that many fundraisers then more funding should be provided for these schools. Further, adding a sense of urgency so they can get a shirt or a toy that definitely is worth less than selling $1000 worth of cookie dough seems wrong.

We can get into the politics of school budgets, pimping out children to raise money, and the reasons why these schools aren’t getting the funding they need to educate our children, but honestly, this isn’t that kind of blog post. I’m here to talk about the guilt I feel as a mother when I have to sit my child down and make her pick which fundraiser she wants me to participate in because my wallet does not appreciate forking over money every time she wants to win the iPad that the fundraisers are giving away to the top seller (which will never be anyone I know, for real.)

I wish I had the money to give my daughter a $50 check every time she had a new fundraiser. But, there was one time earlier in January that she had three fundraisers happening at once. THREE. There has to be an end to these fundraisers, right? There are some that I will always participate in. This fundraiser where the children create artwork to sell on tote bags and pendants? I know they purposefully guilt you into buying your child’s artwork by using your child’s creations against you and I have no shame in buying all of that up. But, I never want to see a magazine subscription again. I have stacks of magazines that I will never read but I buy anyway because it goes to a good cause.

But what about the fundraisers that I actually like? I am a religious purchaser of coupon books but of course my daughter doesn’t sell those. I have kids come to my door with coupons, chocolate, cookie dough, the good stuff. My daughter doesn’t get any of those. She gets the ones where I stare at the pamphlet wondering what the actual f*ck am I going to get that I can use.

Don’t get me wrong, I will continue to support at least a few of the fundraisers my daughter brings home because I definitely appreciate all the hard work the school and the teachers put in to educate our children, but can we at least get better fundraisers? When I was in school, we sold cookie dough that had no eggs in it because you knew that the moms were just going to eat it out of the tub anyway. I looked forward to the day where I too could be that mom. But guess what. No cookie dough in sight for me. I mean, ya I could go get some at the grocery store but then I wouldn’t be killing two birds with one educational stone.

I feel like I have gone off on a tangent that wasn’t meant to be there. So here’s the lowdown. Down with multiple fundraisers a month so I don’t feel like a bad mom for not supporting my child and up with fundraisers where at least I can eat my guilt away, I’m looking at you egg free cookie dough.

I feel like I have little room for complaint. My mom had to deal with this x2 and there are plenty of other families with multiple children which not only means multiple fundraisers, but multiple of the same fundraiser. I don’t envy you. You have the job that I’ve dreaded so much. I don’t want to know what will happen when I reach that point in my life.

How do you deal with school fundraisers? What are your views on them? I’m very interested to know!