Why Bake Sales are Still A Good Bet for School Fundraising
When I accepted the job of a school administrator and principal, one of the first things I did was to put out a survey to parents, asking them to tell me what kinds of events they’d be willing to volunteer for.
Hands down, the most popular response I got was “Bake Sales”. At first, I was surprised the reaction was so strong in that particular direction. But, as I started to think about it, the reasons behind the response became clearer.
Now, maybe, I just happened to work at a school with a lot of moms who loved to bake. However, I don’t think so. Rather, I think that volunteering to bake something has many things going for it over other forms of fundraising volunteer gigs.
First of all, I think that most parents have some vague sense of obligation to volunteer for their kid’s school. Unfortunately, most of the volunteer jobs either take too long or are too hard to fit into the family’s hectic schedule.
However, if the school asks a parent to just bake a pie or a couple dozen cookies, that is a much easier undertaking. Most people have stuff at home to whip something up, and it can be done after the kids go to bed. If they don’t have all the needed ingredients, it’s still pretty easy to stop by the store, since they probably need other stuff anyway. Therefore, the parent can finally say “yes” to helping the school, because it is on his or her own terms.
I think another reason why bake sales are so popular is that many moms and some dads see cooking and baking as a competitive sport. They fancy themselves a bit of a whiz in the kitchen, and they don’t mind other people knowing they are, either. So, they take no small amount of pride in their award-winning banana cream pie or their triple chocolate fudge meltdown brownies. Therefore, when I issued the order to go bake something, I was like the starter at the Indy 500, telling them to start their engines.
We had many bake sales in my time at the school, and never once did I have to worry about recruiting enough people to bake.
Our bake sales were always held at local grocery stores on busy Saturday mornings, usually scheduled right before a big college football or basketball game was on television later that afternoon. I think the lowest amount we ever sold was $500. With an army of bakers at the ready, we could have four or five of these throughout the year and do pretty well for ourselves.
I know that bake sales as a fundraiser can seem very old-fashioned, but let me tell you, they do work.
