When my husband's nieces and nephews were small he'd sometimes be asked to buy a raffle ticket or two associated with school fundraising projects. I was always struck by the energy involved in completing such transactions. Taking into account time on the telephone and sometimes travel between different municipal zones
Shelley Bridgeman: The follies of fundraising

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Shelley Bridgeman isn't convinced by sponsorship drives to raise money.Photo / File

A few years ago my daughter came home from her Auckland school with a brand new fluffy fundraising towel for which $40 would be charged to our school account. The colour was all wrong for our house and - although someone has since advised it "washed up beautifully" - it looked suspiciously like a towel that would leak its vibrant colour over the rest of the washing. What would I do with this? I decided that if we hadn't taken it out of its plastic wrapper within 12 months then clearly we had no need for it.
Sure enough, the following year I donated it to charity: one brand new towel, still in original packaging. But it got me wondering whether there was an opportunity for the school to raise funds differently from parents with an aversion to random objects turning up unsolicited in their homes. Sure, I paid $40 for that towel we didn't need but I would have paid $50 to have not received it in the first place. An extra $10 for not having to transport it, contemplate it, discuss it, store it for 12 months, transport it again then dispose of it seemed reasonable - not to mention much more profitable for the school.
In the 1990s we attended a fundraising auction for Kidz First children's hospital. Keen to support the worthy charity, my husband had made some half-hearted bids on various items but even then we were averse to clutter so he'd failed to win anything. At the end of the night, the auctioneer announced that the final item was very special.
"What will you pay for nothing?"
From memory, there were a few bids but, sure enough, my other half secured the deal; he paid $600 for the privilege of purchasing nothing. The charity got their money, he could feel benevolent and we weren't lumbered with some inanimate object. It was a win-win-win transaction.
Roxane Horton, a long-time fundraiser for the Liggins Institute, was reported in Deborah Hill Cone's Long live the booze-soaked schmoozefest as saying: "We thought of asking for $200 a head not to come to dinner. And we'd send you a teabag and a packet of Tim Tams [for a pleasant night in front of TV]." At a time when charity auctions and black-tie events have lost some of their lustre, that just might be an idea whose moment has arrived.
What are your thoughts on raffles and other types of fundraising? What's the most effective fundraising method you've encountered? Which ones would you like to see the end of?