Barnes and Nobel reached out to our school through email. We didn't call them. Like others who posted here, we solicited parents, made posters, worked hard, attended the event which was VERY busy on a Sunday afternoon, and heard nothing back for two months. When I sent a written request for an accounting of the event, the Maple Grove Minnesota store manager called us at school and told us that our cash register sales totaled $631. He told me we had not made the minimum requirement of $1500. He then asked if our school would like to choose a clearance item from their clearance bin as payment. I kid you not.
I would expect a company as large as Barnes and Nobel to have a process for their book fares. I would expect they would follow a process with a written accounting and follow-through after the event. None of this was offered to our school. The way charitable institutions and third-party fundraisers ask for support affects people’s trust and confidence in fundraising. I do not feel that Barnes and Nobel's fundraising program for schools is open, honest or respectful. In fact, their lack of reasonable steps to render any accounting what so ever, might be illegal. Knowing what I know now, I am forced to take reasonable steps to assess and manage the risks fundraising with Barnes and Nobel poses to those parents and friends who chose to take part in our charitable institution’s activities. I feel this promotion has harmed my organization's work and reputation. I plan to file a complaint with the Minnesota State Attorney Generals Office.
With Scholastic we get 55% back if we shop their catalog but it's ok they have a lot of STEM products our school is investing in. Even if we had taken their cash option we would get 25% which is still always more than Barnes and Noble will give. We won't do the Barnes & Noble fairs again because it's too hard to get sales that seem pretty easy with Scholastic.
I don't think there is a cap. We did our first Barnes and Noble fair last year and made $2097. We had over $10,000 in sales including over $1000 in cafe sales. For us it was well worth it.
I was curious about this as well. We just did ours yesterday and it was a lot of work. We offered door prizes and put the entry form on the book fair slip. That way if anyone who wanted to win the door prizes, (an i-pod, an American Girl and one of those big Lego sets) we would get credit for the sales. We were allowed to put a board up displaying the prizes with the entries right there the day of the fair. We put entries out all over town before the event too. Short of going door to door, I don't know how we could have done more. The surprising thing is that of the $27,000 in sales the store had yesterday, we only accounted for $5,400 of those. When I looked at the numbers, it is exactly 20% of the total. While the company says that we can earn money on 100% of the sales as long as people either say the name of the school or hand in the sheet, I wonder if there is a cap in the system that only allows schools to earn money on 20% of the total sales. How have other people done with this fundraiser?
We did our first Barnes and Noble book fair on Saturday and I'm wondering what kind of money other people have made. It was a ton of work on our part--but we really went all out. We set up the Community Room with school displays and products from our Expeditions. We had our Poetry Club, Step Team, choir, and band perform. We did story time. It was a rainy day with tons of people in the store but since you're not allowed to "solicit" people already in the store, it was very frustrating. I'm assuming we didn't make much money at all. It was fun and great publicity for our school, but I don't think any of the shoppers knew why we were there.
