As for the storage problem of perishables: Contact a local grocery store and ask them if you can use some of their refrigerator space. Tell them that you will distribute the product on certain days, at certain times in front of their store. Be sure to tell them that this will bring your school families right to their front door! This will also work if you have a local restaurant who would be willing to help out with space in their fridge. Again, be sure to let whomever helps you out know that you will be sending the name of their store/restaurant home listed as the pick up place and that this will get into X-amount of homes.
I am also going to add my 2 cents about changing fundraisers. I believe that you can change catalog companies without too much difference in your bottom line, but there are other things to consider. Our main vendor, Fiesta!, does most of the work, from paying for the catalogs that go home, coming up to do the assemblies (they're 3 1/2 hours away), providing all flyers and catalogs, arriving on delivery day with everything packaged by class and then by child, they do all the loading and unloading, each package sent home contains an 800 number in case something is wrong so our group rarely has to step in to help even at that end, etc. Add in the little perks like the free goodies they bring, the percentage number goes up each year and they make a hefty contribution to our library in the form of new library books, etc. I think that since we have no problems with them, we should show some sort of customer loyalty. This year Fiesta! felt that people were burning out on their brochures so they really went after new stuff and I must say, it is like a brand new company brochure. Talk to your rep. See if they could do the same thing or something along those lines.
If you are doing most of the work, you don't have a good relationship with your rep or your rep is never available, if you have lots of problems with the orders, if you aren't getting a good percentage, etc., these would be reasons to change. Otherwise, I say find a way to work out your storage issues and keep doing what you do.
This year we did something different about picking up cookie dough. We let the parents know what the dates for pick up were. We gave them 2 weeks, 2 evenings and a Saturday to pick up their dough. When we gave them this info, we let them know that any cookie dough remaining after the two weeks (unless prior arrangements were made in advance) that the cookie dough remaining would be resold. You'd be surprised at how well that worked!
