“Why I Give”: On Forced Philanthropy and Fundraising in a Toy Store

Last month, Izzy SC kicked off a new Fundraising for Breakfast series called “Why I Give” in a post about why she donates blood and what giving feels like for a teenager.

“Why I Give”: There Will Be (Donated) Blood!

My friend, Angda, asked me if I’d yet done a post about our kids duping us into fundraising. I told her I’d been duped by my kids into many, many things. But not fundraising.

Substack, meet Angda.

• Angda and I have been friends since graduate school at American University. (She had a pool at her apartment complex and snuck bunches of us in all summer).

• She’s one of only two subscribers to this Substack who were at the party where I didn’t help my Then Girlfriend/Now Wife bring the keg into the house.

• She’s a dedicated English teacher who left this banger of a comment when Child #2 wanted to skip school:

Angda shares below about the school fundraisers her Dear Daughter (DD) participates in every year.

Hi, guys! It’s true. I met Dan and his amazing wife back when they were roommates and Dan and I were in the Master’s program together at AU. Good times!

We all give to various organizations with or without an incentive. (It’s fun to carry that NPR tote around, isn’t it?) But I need some help thinking through a specific type of forced philanthropy and fundraising: the kind that seems to depend on parents giving more and more money on causes the market relentlessly to kids.

Listen… I love to deck the halls with holiday trimmings from the Music Boosters. I look forward to my annual Thin Mint fix from the GS. And I let DD rummage through my wallet for change so she can win a popsicle party after “Penny Wars” class competitions.

But I’m puzzled by the fundraising campaigns at DD’s school that incentivize participation with cheap crap to get kids to give more and more. DD’s school participates in the American Heart Association’s “Kid’s Heart Challenge” (KHC) and it’s really changed over the past couple years.

Once upon a time you received a wristband you could wear to school and the culminating “prize” for donations was a t-shirt. Low key. Manageable. I get it.

In recent years, however, the incentives marketed to kids have exploded! Check out DD’s Fundraising “Headquarters” below:

These Beanie-Baby-looking keychains (collect them all!) are like catnip to kids. Note that DD did not hit the $200+ threshold and therefore could not “unlock” the rest. Luckily, she wasn’t concerned. She just really, really wanted Ace.

You can get all sorts of toys by giving more and more. And you can go out and do things, too. With the Chicago Bulls, no less!

Luckily DD isn’t interested in going to the game or else I would have had to buy tickets (but at least I’d get a discount!).

I can’t shake the feeling that donations to the AHA are getting spent on toys to beget more giving to get more toys and so on and so on. I’m struggling to see beyond the sea of incentives. At bottom, I think the “heart” of the issue is that marketing has eclipsed the cause. Am I off base, here?

I don’t want DD’s answer to “Why I Give” to be about getting a toy. She’s old enough to see past that. But that’s a hard calculus to expect of her: what our donation does, how it helps, what it makes possible is lost in all the noise. Of course, I’ll sit down with DD and get her perspective, but for me, the focus is off and it’s awfully hard to course-correct.

I like my NPR tote bag as much as the next person, but I donate for the organization. Not the gift. I’m afraid DD is learning that giving only feels good when you get a toy for doing it. I love that she’s exposed to good causes at school, but I’m concerned she won’t know what to do with this exposure if it’s not immediately rewarded with crap you exchange for a donation.

As a parent, my advice to Angda is to stop checking DD’s backpack for school updates! (True story: Child #1 had his school pictures in his backpack for like 6 months before we thought to ask him about it). It’s not great advice and not great parenting. But there you go.

As a fundraiser, I’d say Angda’s right to be dubious. What happens when the answer to “Why I Give” is purely transactional? Because transactions are fleeting. My sense is that Angda is bristling because there’s little attempt to do something more substantive and this is a problem for the organization. After all, Angda is an influential, working professional. She has money to give, she’s not motivated by a keychain, and now she’s skeptical. That’s a lot for a gift officer to have to unwind to bring her back around.

Against my own parenting advice, I just checked Child #1’s backpack to make sure there wasn’t a fundraising appeal in there. There wasn’t.

This is Child #1’s backpack. I expected it to be filled with junk. Shame on me. It was practically empty (which is its own separate problem). Except for this Christmas card. It’s April and I have no idea why he’s carrying this card to school with him every day. When pressed, he didn’t know either.

I’m reminded that I “won” the above school backpack in an office fundraiser last year and then gave it to Child #1.

Getting stuff when you donate happens all the time and lots of different ways.

Let’s talk more about how it works in the Comments!