to not want to 'give generously' to families better off than ours?

[broccolispears]

DP went to a posh, expensive, private school.

Whether we wanted to or not, we will never ever ever in this lifetime be able to afford to send our children to any private school, let alone this one.

Dp is on the mailing list of Old Boys for this school. A couple of times a year we get a phonecall from their fundraising team, asking if we want to donate one lump sum or a standing order of an amount a month.

NO! No, we don't. WHY? Why would anyone want to donate money to fund skiing trips and tennis courts for other people's children? When the parents of the children in question are wealthy enough already to be spending more than most people earn in a year on sending their children to the school?

School books for children in Ethiopia - yes.
A week's sailing for Joquasta - NO!

What really really boils my piss is when dp starts to waiver and say "well, they say even a one off donation of £20 would help". ARRGGHHH! NO! How about we use that one off donation of £20 to buy me some flip flops that aren't held together with duct tape?

DH pssed himself laughing when the latest Oxford appeal arrived - they are trying to raise somewhere north of £1 billion*!

Schools generally try and raise money for capital investment. A friend of mine is a headmaster and dithers between putting the fees up (which most parents can afford but some really can't) or launch yet another appeal to old boys (some of whom could easily afford a new wing/swimming pool/rugby pitch)

I just ignore college appeals and would do the same with school appeals. I don't have an issue with them asking, but several phone calls a year is a tad excessive.

I think that they send this stuff to everyone cos they can't predict who is/was minted. My DB teaches in a posh school and he was asked at the interview: "Will you be able to cope teaching & looking after pupils who have more pocket money than your entire year's salary!!" He said he was OK with it. So you can imagine them sending these forms out to a class of old boys and someone sending back a donation of fifty grand that is burning a hole in their pocket!! Mine and DH old uni has gone so far as to list people's names who have donated - shaming people like us who haven't to try and make us donate as well. We still haven't, but I suppose if we had loads of money, we would.

my godfather heads up the fundraising dept of a very good "posh" boarding school in Surrey - they raise money each year to fund the 40% of their pupils who are on full scholarships and come from care homes, from single parent families where the mother is on heroin and incapable of looking after her children, for children who are primary carers for disabled parents (also funding a carer to look after said parent whilst child gets an education) - I would give money to that school over and over again as they provide an opportunity and education for many children who otherwise have very limited options - they ask for a bit more each year so they can offer more places each year.

It's unfair to assume all private schools ask for donations to fund a golden statuette for the drama awards or rowing trips in Barbados....

my god daughter applied to ucl this year, a week after they recieved her application her father got an alumni donation request form. 3 days after the money was removed from his account she got an offer of a place. It could be coincidence I suppose...

Unfortunately I know for a fact (because I inquired) neither my old school nor my DP take any full scholarship students. They also only gives out part scholarship's to students they think are particularly talented utterly regardless of family finances or situations, and ban from boarding anybody with a difficult home situation who might actually benefit from being away from home as i might upset the other kids. So I don't feel remotely bad turning them down constantly.

The few schools that GirlWithTheMouseyHair mentions are definately a different case and far more deserving!

grr. It's really annoying that I can't edit the spelling mistakes out of that. Apologies.

But GirlWithTheMouseyHair ... if charitable status was removed from feepaying schools, as it clearly should be, then the tax revenues that came in could be used towards providing a good state education for those kids. And 40% of pupils at that school are on full scholarships from those backgrounds? That sounds very unlikely ... The average I could find on the interweb was that around 10% of the UK public school population receives some kind of financial aid, which in the majority of cases falls well short of full scholarship ( a random interweb search, for example, revealed that Charterhouse offers a whopping 10 scholarships for 25% of the fees, plus five exhibitions for 10% of the fees).