I hate school dinner season...

mummiedearest

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 5:37 pm

and I don't even have my kids in school. we get dinner invitations from my hs, my husband's hs, and some random others. the latest took the cake. we got a letter from a couple we never heard of:

dear people,

you know it is our responsibility as a community to maintain x yeshiva for girls. we know that as our close friends you will want to spend $300 per couple to attend a dinner for a school you have no connection with. please make sure to buy an ad in the journal as well. this school is so wonderful, and we're so pleased to be honorees this year. as usual, the school is low on funds, so please send a large check to show you appreciate the level of education the school provides your daughters. the invitation is in the mail.

sincerely,

mr and mrs randomname,
parents of the year,
yeshiva x for girls.

ps. don't forget the journal ad. it only costs half your salary.

ok, so I paraphrased a LITTLE. I got so annoyed. they obviously got our names off a shul list. (an old shul list, I might add, the previous owners got the same letter delivered to our house. you'd think these fundraising people would notice that they waste postage by sending two or three letters to different families all at the same address for a one family house...)

well, a few days later, an invitation arrived. hmmm...

there are about five sets of honorees. including grandparents of the year. how does one choose grandparents of the year?
now, supposing all these honorees got a hold of all their local shul lists and sent these letters out to all addresses on the list. that's spending quite a lot of money on paper, ink, postage, envelopes. then there are the invitations themselves. more expensive than the letters. then there's the printing costs for the journal. and renting a wedding hall, paying for each meal, organizing, arranging for speakers to come, seating arrangements, school videos ("ok, girls, take out a random sefer and shuckle a bit. that's right, pretend you're davening. no, don't use charles dickens, we need a hebrew cover...")

why do we have to have these ridiculous dinners? I honestly find the repetitive requests for dinner money to be chutzpadik. you want my tzedaka, send me a letter that says, "dear neighbor, we acknowledge that you have no connection with us on a business or personal level, but we are in financial distress. fifty teachers need paychecks. if you can spare a few dollars, please donate towards their livelihood. thank you."

dinners seem so tacky.
and don't get me started on chinese auctions...

justanothermother

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 6:02 pm

mummiedearest wrote:

dear people,

you know it is our responsibility as a community to maintain x yeshiva for girls. we know that as our close friends you will want to spend $300 per couple to attend a dinner for a school you have no connection with. please make sure to buy an ad in the journal as well. this school is so wonderful, and we're so pleased to be honorees this year. as usual, the school is low on funds, so please send a large check to show you appreciate the level of education the school provides your daughters. the invitation is in the mail.

sincerely,

mr and mrs randomname,
parents of the year,
yeshiva x for girls.

ps. don't forget the journal ad. it only costs half your salary.

ROTFLMWTO

costanza

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 6:03 pm

I agree wholeheartedly.

Apparently, people like to be honored. And people like to go to dinners. I would never want to be honored (especially when they only seem to honor rich people) and I hate those dinners.

The best invitation I got recently was for a "non-dinner". It explained that no one really wants to get all dressed up on a week night. No one wants to eat the rubber chicken dinner. And no one wants to hear speech upon speech upon speech. So just give us a donation directly and we can save ourselves a lot of time and money.

Sometimes chesed stinks.

mummiedearest

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 6:07 pm

costanza wrote:

costanza, which yeshiva was that? I'd like to invest in a journal ad Smile

costanza

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 6:15 pm

It wasn't for a yeshiva - rather a counter missionary charity that wins back Jewish kids who have fallen in with Jews for Yoshke. I respect them a lot.

mummiedearest

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 6:33 pm

costanza wrote:

It wasn't for a yeshiva - rather a counter missionary charity that wins back Jewish kids who have fallen in with Jews for YOSHKE. I respect them a lot.

sounds good. I like that a whole lot more than "we contributed more than you'll make in ten years just to be able to send you this letter begging for money that you could really give to an institution you have a personal connection to."

amother

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 6:57 pm

I only realized recently that organizations honor people to raise money for their cause by sending letters to the honoree's friends, family, business assoiciates, and the community to place journal ads. This really took the magic out of the "honor" when it became clear it was a fundraiser!

cassandra

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 7:06 pm

costanza wrote:

People actually hate being honored because they know it is such a burden on people. It is usually a hard task to find honorees. But the organization begs and sometimes people feel that they owe something to an institution so they do it.

mummiedearest

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 7:09 pm

cassandra wrote:

costanza wrote:

so why not do away with dinners? maybe I should place a journal ad begging people not to pay for such a ridiculous event.

cassandra

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 7:10 pm

Because they are incredibly lucrative fundraisers for organizations.

mummiedearest

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 7:20 pm

cassandra wrote:

Because they are incredibly lucrative fundraisers for organizations.

I'd rather pay the schools not to host dinners. Twisted Evil

I'm sure there are others who agree.

also, I'm not in the situation yet, but don't schools charge a dinner fee in addition to tuition? I really think that isn't right. they shouldn't charge the parents extra in order to be able to fund an expensive dinner that most people don't want to attend anyway.

Twizzlers

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 8:02 pm

mummiedearest wrote:

also, I'm not in the situation yet, but don't schools charge a dinner fee in addition to tuition? I really think that isn't right. they shouldn't charge the parents extra in order to be able to fund an expensive dinner that most people don't want to attend anyway.

YES, YES, YES. I am in the parsha, having just registered my son for september. in this yeshiva, they call it a "melava malka", not a dinner, but its costing me a nice $200! and of course I was reminded to tell my parents to make sure to show up at the event as well. Rolling Eyes

costanza

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 8:04 pm

I hate those dinners, but the point of them is to raise money - not to include everyone under the sun. If you think of it like that and not take the price tags that may be out of your range too personally, you may be less bothered.

Just give to what you feel is most important. Oh, and I should take my own advice because I have been pressured into too many charity events by friends who were on committees lately. It's just the way it goes that peopleask their friends and family first.

lagirl

Wed, Jan 07 2009, 8:18 pm

I work for a school. The Reason that the Dinner/ Melava Malka is a separae fee and not added onto your tuition is really for your benefit. Dinners are tax deductable while tuition is not.

cindy324

Thu, Jan 08 2009, 7:55 pm

mummy....I don't know if you're talking about the same dinner where my SIL and BIL are honored as parents of the year (probably yes, the fee is also $300 per couple), but in this case they are NOT wealthy people, far from it...they were actually chosen out of merit.

That being said, it put us into a slightly uncomfortable situation... we were not about to fork over $300 , that would've made a pretty big dent in our pockets...and they DO understand.
Who has an extra $300 these days they can just fork over for a meal???

sbs

Fri, Jan 09 2009, 4:33 am

I can't say anything about dinners cuz I don't know enough about the cost and how much profit is made, but I could say a few things about chinese auctions.
I volunteer to organize a chinese auction for a small organization. we're not talking about those big fancy auctions with booklets that are very expensive, it's on a much smaller scale.
we get most of our prizes completely donated, and we fundraise to cover the cost of our booklet, auction decor, and some bigger prizes. this is done by having businesses advertise in our booklet or at our auction.
now, you might say just fundraise and use the money for the organization, don't go spend it on planning on auction, however, if we spend 10,000 on the auction, we bring in 50,000. so we end up with much more. now what if we just sent a letter to all the people who usually purchase tickets and say we're not doing an auction, please just send in your donation, people don't just send in the same way, everyone gives more for an auction, because they want to try to win a prize.

micki

Fri, Jan 09 2009, 6:04 am

by us its $500 min. per family. oy

baseballmom

Fri, Jan 09 2009, 6:34 am

we have $1500 minimum in ads for the dinner

Fox

Fri, Jan 09 2009, 9:32 am

Let me preface my remarks by explaining that I work in a consulting capacity with approximately 600 Jewish schools and organizations ranging the full gamut of Jewish experience, including places that represent every constituency here on imamother as well as a number of non-frum places.

Everybody hates fundraising dinners, including the honorees, the schools themselves, the parents, and the innocent "victims" who open their mail! The problem is that dinners are the most effective fundraising vehicle at this point. A few large schools/organizations have been able to replace the much-maligned annual dinner with a concert or similar function, but they seem to be the exceptions rather than the rule.

So why can't we find a better way to raise the money needed? A few reasons, IMHO:

"We've always done it this way."
The schools and organizations I admire most are constantly questioning the efficacy of their fundraising activities. They are not "married" to any particular practice. To give a few examples, I work with one Chabad organization that analyzed its data and discovered that their "annual" dinners raised far more money if they were biannual. So they immediately changed their practice to having a dinner every other year rather than every year. A yeshiva I work with discovered that they can raise more money hosting an "appreciation event" for a local non-Jewish leader -- usually the chief of police of their medium-sized city or something similar.

But for every organization that really analyzes what works and what doesn't work, I deal with at least 6-10 who don't have a clue whether they're doing effective fundraising -- they just keep doing the same things year after year after year. And please don't suggest they "think outside the box" -- they'll be horrified: "But we always have a dinner!" they'll shriek.

Leadership, Politics, and Turf Wars
So let's say you have a really great idea for raising money for your child's school: maybe "only" $15,000 or so, but still . . . While there are some excellent school leaders out there who will support and encourage you, there are far more who are threatened by anyone with a new idea and a little bit of energy. How many good ideas get shot down each year by administrators? "Oh, no, we don't need help with that; we have a professional fundraiser." "We tried that five years ago and it didn't work." "I've never heard of that before. I don't think it would work."

I have sat in meetings with fundraising "professionals" at frum mosdos who literally shot down every single idea. In their defense, many of these administrators are simply tired from the day-to-day slog of raising money for payroll, etc. But our mosdos often cut off their noses to spite their faces: when people are discouraged from attempting even modest ideas, it's not long before no one bothers to try. And when that happens, we get stuck in the endless marathon of annual dinners.

Let me tell you a personal experience: I'm useless at garnering the big checks, but I can run a pushka campaign that brings in a steady, respectable stream of income. Of the four different schools my children attend, one school has explicitly told me that they're not interested in my help; one school pursued me aggressively initially, but the administrator responsible for pushka collections keeps telling me she doesn't have time to discuss it; one school is using my expertise half-heartedly in a few areas; and one school not only uses every single skill I have, but the menahel purposely thinks up additional projects for me, and he actually forbid the teachers from asking me to help on field trips, etc., because he wants my energy to be put toward fundraising. Note that I volunteer my efforts -- not only would I never take money from any of my children's schools, but I don't even ask for pledge-to-raise/work credit. Oh, and which school do you think is most financially stable?

"I Dunno. Whadda You Wanna Do?"
It's easy to criticize administrators and fundraisers for becoming naysayers more concerned with their own turf and kovod, but it's not as if the rest of us are always brimming with ideas. Annual dinners serve the purpose of not only blackmailing the relatively innocent, but also demonstrating community support to the big donors.

As I mentioned, a few mosdos have substituted concerts, but that's not exactly a radical new way of parting donors from their money. Another poster mentioned how, ahem, popular Chinese Auctions are.

I have a few clients who are pretty creative, but frankly, most of us are not putting forth a lot of alternatives that hit all the points of an annual dinner, however dreary and overpriced it might be.

The Great Divide
This problem is probably more common in the Litvish/Yeshivish community, but there is an increasing disconnect between "working" families and "learning/chinuch" families. Although there are occasionally some ugly elements to it on both sides, the problem as it relates to fundraising is that many administrators of mosdos have never worked in a for-profit enterprise. They learned in kollel, became rebbeim or facility managers, and eventually became responsible for fundraising. While they are certainly familiar with the problems of making payroll and having limited personal income, they sometimes have an unrealistic idea of the financial constraints on working families. Many honestly don't understand that a family in which both the husband and wife work can still find it difficult to pay $300 to support a good cause.

I don't have any wonderful solution to this problem -- except for insisting that my children work in the for-profit world before they're allowed to take jobs in the non-profit world.

What's the Answer?
There was a wonderful op-ed article in the WSJ last week discussing the state of Jewish philanthropy in the wake of the Madoff scandal. The author suggested that perhaps we should return to the more modest philanthropic activities of our bubbes rather than rely on slick, professional efforts designed to reel in major donors.

When I read the article, I thought of a secretary at a yeshiva with whom I worked. Because she saw the boys on a daily basis, she knew who needed some money for new clothes, whose father had recently become unemployed, and who was trying to put on a brave front in the face of family financial stresses. She personally picked up the phone and raised literally tens of thousands of dollars over the years to buy clothes for boys, purchase tickets home for holidays, etc. She said something that has always stuck with me: "Nobody ever gives you their last $18." She took the time to develop relationships with "minor" donors who couldn't write a check for $50K -- but who were always happy to help another Jew with a few dollars. Maybe, as the author of the op-ed piece said, we should focus on "personal" fundraising rather than constantly chasing the next big "catch".

cassandra

Fri, Jan 09 2009, 9:36 am

Fox, you should publish that.