1. Memo From The Front: Who'll Fuel Our Schools?
October 31, 2005
By Diane Anderson
THE Girl Scouts have known since 1917 that cute kids can move product.
When my kindergartener came home last month all excited to sell
Entertainment Books for her school, I jumped on board. Why not hit up
friends and family for a good cause?
In San Francisco, a good public school is a rarer find than a parking
spot, so generous souls quickly signed a $30 check to get a book of
coupons for things like Loews movie tickets, 2-for-1 deals at local
restaurants and rental car discounts. Friends knew they wouldn't use
all the merchant promos in the book, but they also like my daughter,
so they ponied up.
And she, of course, was excited about the incentives. If she sold
enough books, she could earn a cool spy kit; top sellers could win a
DVD player. It seemed like a good idea, overall.
Get your children involved in bettering their own education system,
teach them the value of hard work and compensate them in return. The
youth of America get a lesson in economics; the schools get
much-needed funds for supplies. Everyone wins, right?
Instead of hounding people in person, I used technology, spamming
friends and relatives all over the country with a request to go online
to locate participating local merchants, and then decide to enter
their credit card and delivery information; Entertainment Books would
go directly to them. I didn't have to collect checks or hand out
goods. Pretty painless.
"How about I just donate directly to the school?" e-mailed my friend
Jim, who has an MBA. "The school will get all the money, and crappy
coupons won't collect dust on my counter." Others asked similar
questions and opted to donate directly. They had a point.
Turns out, the school only gets a small portion of proceeds. The
program is managed by Barry Diller's IAC/InterActive Corp. (which owns
Ask Jeeves, Ticketmaster, Evite, LendingTree, and Match.com) and bought Entertainment Book in 2003 (from
the Carlyle Group) for $360 million. IAC brings in $6 billion annually. Diller's
total 2004 salary was north of $156 million.
If schools retained up to half the total proceeds, they'd be in pretty
good shape. In fact, fundraising groups (churches and schools)
received $90 million last year from Entertainment Book sales.
How much money would our school actually see? "It depends on how much
we sell," said the mom in charge. "Hopefully this year we'll sell a
lot and get around 30%." Of course a portion of something is better
than nothing. But most parents would prefer a better solution.
One morning this October, the school's students assembled in the
auditorium. A bright pep rally was underway, getting the kids
pumped—again!—this time to sell wrapping paper, candy and doo-dads
from the Sally Foster catalog (another Entertainment Publications
unit) with more prizes dangled before the kids. I didn't like that it
cut into class time and wasn't very motivated to drum up interest.

2. EP/Sally Foster, Reader's Digest/QSP and Scholastic Book Fairs are the
three heavy hitters in school fundraising, each a division of a
larger, publicly traded firm. Another online program called eScrip,
which has raised $9.5 million for schools via links to sales at
retailers, including Macy's and Safeway, is now offering "up to 8%" of
proceeds from purchases made to my daughter's school.
Alas, that site didn't feature many Northern California merchants. I'm
a Trader Joe's fan, but sometimes shop at Safeway, so I gladly signed
up.
But the truth was in the fine print: only 1% of Safeway purchases
would help the school.
Nowadays, nine million Target cardholders can choose which school they
want to receive 1% of their purchases. That, too, is a start. My
girl's school got $206 in August this way.
Around her 5th birthday, we got a form soliciting a donation for a
book that would live in the school library and be inscribed with her
name. As a single mom on a budget, I like the idea of buying a book
for the school and letting my daughter feel it's her gift. I wrote a
check.
Instead of making our kids sell stuff, we should find out what our
schools really need and then go out and spend our dollars on those
brands: Kleenex, Crayola and Apple computers would go a long way in
Room 1.
Anderson covers technology for Brandweek.