An Experiment in Fund-Keeping
Thursday Feb 26, 2009
My kids are always involved in fundraisers for school. Wrapping paper. Candles. Cookie dough. Nuts. Candy. Magazine subscriptions. Who knows what else I've sold.
I used to reach out to friends and family to hawk these wares, until I hit burn-out. Remember, I have 4 kids to peddle for. And the schools never expect that *they* will actually sell the stuff - only that the parents will. So 4 kids times 3 fundraisers a year x 9 years they've been in school = approximately 108 fundraisers. Wow - it's amazing I have friends and family left.
Now I just buy a few of the useless items myself and call it a day. I've decided not to feel guilty about not being the top fundraiser (or even anywhere close) with all of my other responsibilities as a parent.
This week I was thinking about all of the email attachments I get from my kids' teachers in Word format, and I thought, "They must be paying a mint to Microsoft for license fees. No wonder they need all these fundraisers." Then I had a great idea! Why don't they use the OpenOffice productivity suite?! It has all of the word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications that the school uses, and it's available at no cost because it's open source software. Many companies (including Sun), schools, and governments use OpenOffice because it's open, easy to use and, best of all, it's free.
So, as an experiment I sent emails to the principals of the two schools that my kids go to, suggesting that they use OpenOffice rather than Microsoft Word to save money (think of it as fund-keeping rather than fund-raising). So far I haven't received a response. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll include information about the OpenOffice productivity suite in the envelope next time I'm asked to participate in a fundraiser. 
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