Philanthropy

My entrepreneurship students have finished their sales project.  They went to Sam’s Club and Dollar Tree, spending $25 on items to resell.  They turned in their money and records yesterday.  Each person or partnership had to donate ten percent of their profits to Pennies for Peace as I am trying to teach them to give back from their business ventures.  Because it has been a school-wide promotion, and because their English teacher is the person in charge, they were all happy to do so.

We contributed $75 to Pennies for Peace.  Depending on their sales and their quality of record keeping, I then returned all of the remaining profits plus some of the $25 loan.  If they do really well, I consider the upfront money to be a grant rather than a loan.  Poor record keeping or poor selling techniques qualifies for higher “banker’s fees.”  I was very impressed with their sales, most of them were only charged a dollar or so for lending fees.  Some of the students will use their proceeds to start a real business for which they are writing a business plan that is due next week.  We’ll see how well they do with that.