Wow. Thanks for the replies. I found out that this students family moves from school district to school district and makes some money off from doing this very thing (taking orders and not turning them in, keeping the $).

We're meeting with the police to go to their house (of course there are other issues with not returning calls, not attending conferences, etc).

It's always ONE family that has to spoil it for the bunch, isn't it?

Hi...we just finished our first check/money order fundraiser. We had some cash still come in but mostly checks...the fundraiser was down quite a bit but I dont think it was because of no cash. I didnt receive any complaints from anyone requesting checks/moneyorders. As far as bad checks in my two years we have only had a 47.oo check so i expect that might go up???

We have considered the "no cash" approach too. The stumbling block for us is the fear that we will get hit pretty hard with bad checks. Our fundraiser was about $25,000 this fall and we had about $1000 in returned checks. We've been able to recover about $700 of that so far, but it's a battle the treasurer, assistant treasurer and fundraiser chairpersons have been waging for nearly 2 months now. We've invested a lot of man-hours in that $1000. On the flip side of the coin, we had 2 incidents, amounting to about $500 worth of orders, like the situation first described above. Two students either lost orders or simply didn't turn in orders that customers pre-paid for. For us it seems to make sense to remain status quo.

The only thing I can think of to avoid some of these problems is to not accept cash at all--and have that printed on the order forms. We're kicking that idea around for next year, but we're a little hesitant because we're wondering if it will have an adverse impact on sales. Maybe there's someone out there who refuses to accept cash sales who can chime in?

Thankfully, we've never had the situation you facing, but you bring up an important situation for us to consider for the future.

We log EVERY order form along with EVERY check and dollar that comes in for our major fundraiser. It's a pain and takes about an hour per class, but it might be helpful backup in a case like this. Of course, just because we haven't logged an order is no proof that we didn't misplace the order, but it's better than relying on only faith and memory.

We have very loose controls over the fundraising envelopes between the time they are turned in and when the fundraising chair picks them up. Your case gives me cause to rethink our setup. I am constantly amazed at the number of people who pay with cash, often just paperclipped to the order form. It's a wonder we haven't had more problems.

Good Luck. I agree pushing the issue back to the unreliable parents/kids who haven't delivered the merchandise is step 1. Very problematic. Keep us posted.

Hi ...I can relate to some of this mainly number one. What happened with us is that a couple of girls sold thr product and never turned in the order/money. One customer called the school three times demanding to speak to the principal who was not in the building at the time. So through some paperwork I was able to figure out that there was never a order turned in, so I called the customer and she explained to me that she was going to the police because the girls hadnt delivered the stuff, at that point i told her they never placed the order. which is basically fraud...the lady came into the office screaming , not happy left and went to the district office and wa stold it is a civil matter, that since we never received any money or order we could not be liable for it. She went to the police, police talked to parents, then kids, kids admitted that they did it. all the money was returned but the parents were mad at us/principal because the police was involved=( The sad part of it was our reputation was on the line because we knew this lady could really slander our group...it was like a catch 22. legally we were not liable.AS far as orders that are not being delivered we have had that last year and all we could say was to contact the parents they bought from. We are very careful in that we have orders checked in front of parents and they sign for it saying they picked it up. At that point they take control and are responsibile for it. If you think about refunding money, it could lead to a ton of people who "bought" from them. There is no way to really figure it out. Im not sure if I helped ....