Kids Slinging Chintz

In grade school, around the turn of the century, I owned a small stuffed lemur which could be flung across the room by its elastic arms. The primate’s voice box lost its electronic scream straight away, and later, one of the arms snapped. I had no real attachment to the toy. Some classmates had superior gadgets: belt buckles with customizable LED displays, ‘elite’ spy gear designed for eavesdropping across a football field. My toy was embarrassing in comparison, not because of its goonish eyes or flimsy quality, but because it signaled a shortcoming. The lemur was Level Three and the spy gear was Level Nine. I’d been outperformed.
 
To receive spy gear, you had to sell 60 rolls of gift wrap. I made my parents and grandparents buy some, but as a shy, nervous child, I didn’t have the guts to phone up my parents’ friends or sling paper door-to-door. That risky behavior was for Level Nine kids. Sure, I felt an unexplainable yearning for that desktop disco ball, but I didn’t have the goods. I still remember the colorful gimmickry of my tantalizing prize catalogue. I have no idea why we were raising money, or where the money went.
 
I heard the spy gear was bunk. That didn’t matter. Its true function in our fledgling hierarchy was to broadcast the possession of entrepreneurialism, industrialism, and resourcefulness—things I’ve always lacked. Its function on a larger scale was to encourage and perhaps generate those capitalist traits in young people for the benefit of adults. And while the school and gift wrap manufacturers benefitted from sales, between 40 and 60 percent of the actual profit went to corporations called CharityMania!, Glimmers, Inc., or Skedaddle Fundraisers. Entities which produced nothing, offering only facilitation between schools, novelty trinket companies, and manufacturers of chintz like popcorn and scented pens, or ‘Smens.’
 
The grift was genius. A package from JustFundraising.com called ‘Snackin’ in the USA’ promised schools 50% profit. Snack mixes with names like ‘Say Cheese!’ and ‘Friendship’ were purchased for seven dollars each. Level Nine children sold 60 mixes, generating $210 each in profit after the school got its cut. Level Nine prizes were worth roughly $50, meaning JustFundraising.com netted something like $160 per student. Losing less than a quarter of their earnings doling out prizes, the practice was too lucrative to ever slow.
 
Calling fundraising companies unethical is relatively futile in a world containing private prisons, deforestation, and actual slavery. About eight in ten people support these fundraisers, after all. And the demand for these companies is borne of a government and culture that neglects education, forcing public schools to find alternate funding sources. Most of the friends and family members buying unnecessary flavored popcorn pay taxes intended to support public schools, so these fundraisers function as an obligation-based secondary tax for those with connections to school-aged kids. This systemic deprioritization and throttling of public education, likely driven by a combination of conservative anti-intellectualism and bourgeoisie meritocracy, is part of a conversation I’m unqualified to host. Instead, I’ll examine and condemn the ethics these school fundraisers instill and encourage in children.
 
Since I failed to sell gift wrap fifteen years ago, the practice has not changed or diminished. More than 1,000 of these companies are operating in the United States, composing a billion-dollar-plus industry of exploitation. They operate in loose networks, frequently merging and acquiring each other without disclosing details. Now, Level Nine children are awarded remote-controlled drones and Level Thirteen children win PlayStation Fours. Meanwhile, corporate culture in the United States has morphed. A generation that first experienced the notion of organized labor in the context of these fundraisers is shaping modern work life.
 
My cousin once brought me to a party at her chic marketing firm. During my tour of the space, employees raved about the virtual reality motorcycle, napping chamber, and fully-stocked bars. Their hours were long, their turnover high, and the sector competitive, but there were perks. Trading tolerable hours and manageable stress levels for a beer fridge is not an isolated occurrence. Twitter offers onsite acupuncture and improv classes, despite expectations of long hours and allegedly toxic management. Tesla offers free food at work while consistently opposing unions for their employees, 70% of whom find their job stressful. Genentech offers free car washes, haircuts, and spa trips while lacking upward mobility or pay sufficient for the Bay Area cost of living. While office perks are typically not performance-based, entrance to the companies offering them is competitive. This trendy environment uses the adult equivalent of tornado lamps and mini drumkits to attract and retain the most enterprising candidates.
 
Office food supplier FoodJunky.com claims to save companies $20 per hour in time savings and increased loyalty when they supply high-salary workers with $10 in food per day. If these numbers are true, perks like snacks yield an enormous return on investment, far cheaper than increasing wages and four times more effective than the horseshit prizes offered by school fundraisers. The principle is the same; the groundwork was laid at a young age.
 
Why do novelty belt buckles and cashew stations drive people to work harder? Common sense tells us these small bonuses don’t close the gap between our current wage and the amount we’re earning the company. But the appeal of prizes and perks is in their limited avenues of attainment. Though you can’t purchase a Nesquick Chocolate Fondue Fountain, it can be won; though you can’t hire a private smoothie chef, one can be gained through competitive employment. If these things can only be attained via hard work, possession of them is an implicit signal to peers—I am a skilled capitalist.
 
The first few prize levels of a fundraiser can be equated with minimum wage jobs, in that your share of the profit is incalculably small. If you sell 10 or fewer rolls of gift wrap, you receive a pair of flimsy sunglasses, a felt top hat, or a cheap frisbee. Not until you sell 50 items is your worth notable. Still, the $25 in prizes you receive is less than 15% of what you net the company. As your worth increases, so does your share of the profit, with the highest echelon reaping between 30% and 50%. This tiered compensation structure mirrors the modern workplace. As in adult life, Levels Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen are almost impossible to achieve.
 
If you’ve participated in or witnessed school fundraisers, take a moment to recall the types of students who ‘earned’ GameCubes and $100 bills. At my school, they were exclusively the ones whose parents helped. I remember a kid flouting a digital camera after his executive-level dad brought the catalogue to work and his underlings, eager to win favor, placed swollen orders of gift wrap and caramels. Like capitalism’s system of inherited wealth dictating upward mobility and enforcing generational poverty, the prize-wealthy children at my school had a leg up, making it further in life, faster.
 
In both fundraisers and the modern economy, those receiving a greater share of their profits are viewed with frustrated respect. They’re grinders, hustlers, and hard workers. Any notion that they received unfair advantage is stamped out by accusations of jealousy. Indeed, we are jealous, because we’ve been taught these people are worth more, and who doesn’t want an increase in their perceived value? A suspicion of actual inferiority will never be fully extinguished. More familiar demonstrations of wealth, like the display of luxury goods or upper-class affectations, communicate affluence that can be attributed to family money or luckiness. These obvious indications of wealth don’t spur the same physiological jealousy because they don’t highlight any personal shortcomings, unlike the prizes and perks that can only be attained through hard work. But, in the same way high-performing kids are usually backed by highly-involved adults, employees in competitive workplaces travel avenues of opportunity paved by well-connected parents. In both circumstances, privilege is disguised by the illusion of industry.
 
Let’s examine the language used by fundraising companies and how it shapes impressionable minds. Their choice to measure productivity in ‘items sold’ and not ‘funds raised’ is an obfuscation of their scam, shrouding how schools are receiving only a portion of the profit. Worse, their reference to compensation as ‘prizes’ that are ‘won’ is intentional, meant to remove the sense of entitlement children should feel to money generated by their labor. Before school fundraisers, children may have received an allowance—almost an early concept of universal basic income—or performed chores. The concept of participating in systematized work, the yield of which goes elsewhere, is foreign. Their introduction is a fundraiser which uses language to teach them fair compensation is not a right; that any income the child receives is a voluntary goodwill gesture. The psychological damage of this education cannot be understated.
 
(Another strange component of school fundraisers is incentivized data collection. I remember being given an empty spreadsheet with instructions to record the names, phone numbers, and addresses of friends and family members. For each person I listed, I was given one raffle ticket, with the possibility of winning a minute in the ‘cash grab’ booth—the ethics of which are a conversation on their own. At such an early age, I was taught to sell the information of people close to me, presumably for use in marketing and sales campaigns. Though no fundraising companies advertise these information lists online, I recall them clearly, and have seen accounts of the practice continuing today. The extent to which this data mining deteriorates solidarity between workers later in life is unmeasurable but likely.)
 
As children construct their moral identity and learn social organization, they are vulnerable. Exposing them to unscrupulous corporate behavior during this period is irresponsible. Forcing them to participate in and model this behavior is unethical. What you learn in grade school dictates how you conduct business later in life, determining the treatment you deem acceptable for yourself and others. A child who sees personal worth defined by industriousness without learning the systems at play behind their success is prone to skewed ideas of self-worth. Dangerous power dynamics and generational wealth disparities are enforced. A child who learns to accept prizes instead of fair compensation is prone to abuse and manipulation. Corporate cultures incentivizing competition and replacing fair treatment with status-oriented perks are celebrated. And, through all this, seedy corporations continue to exploit children; schools continue to struggle.
 
Would students spend an ounce of energy raising money for hydration stations or security systems without incentivization? Probably not. Should we be relying on students to fund their own education? Also no. Still, I recognize the occasional need for additional funding, and there are plenty of alternatives to businesses that encourage competition and cutthroat capitalism. Collaborative efforts like car washes, community meals, talent shows, and yard sales raise money without exploiting and miseducating children. Newer alternatives like crowdsourcing platforms provide an effective avenue for transparent, unquestioning donations that circumvent all the awkward ceremony. With a profitable and time-tested business model, predatory school fundraising companies are unlikely to change, but they’re at the whim of schools and parents. If their services are not selected, they dry up and disappear.
 
In the same way workers don’t need Taco Tuesdays, free massages, puppy playdates, or beer, children don’t need Dubble Bubble Spiral Gumball Banks, 100” giant electric keyboards, smile emoji inflatable chairs, or Razor electric scooters. They don’t need Believe Kids Fundraising, Pryceless Promotions, Wow! Imports, or eZcontribution. In the same way workers shouldn’t be expected to trade office perks for fair treatment, children shouldn’t be expected to forfeit the fruits of their labor to corporations, or determine their worth based on productivity. We need the profits of our work; we need to end child labor.