Iceygold - I am not sure if you read my last post or maybe you were posting at the same time. In my last post I did talk about the club policy which was instigated last year (because of this coach) and have outlined what our club policy is - that is there is definately no fundraising to be done to the benefit of one skater. All fundraising is done for the benefit of all skaters.

The saddest thing about it is that generally our skating community is quite happy and gets on well. It is not very pleasant to have this kind of thing which is peeving so many people off and is causing problems.

Iceygold - If you want to email me privately about this, I am happy to discuss off the forum. Just contact me on kwillyau@ozemail.com.au.

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AW, Just a thought......if this one coach can do this, what's to stop anyone else from the same thing? How would the club react if, say, 10 or 20 or 50 individual skaters approached them wanting to purchase candy using the club discount and then selling it for personal profit. If others were turned away, how can they justify allowing just this one person to do it?

The running joke at our rink from the skaters themselves is "well I might just start fundraising for myself seeing (coach) is doing it". Even the ones who will never get to national level say it as a joke.

Seriously it is setting a dangrous precedent. And is causing friction throughout our little skating community.

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I have been following this whole tale since the original post some months ago. I'd think the club would have a thing or two to say about this coach using their name to obtain something for her kid's own personal benefit and not the benefit of the club. Not sure how things work there, but when my daughter used to belong to the competition team at her former dance studio, we had to go through all sorts of hoops to do fundraising for the team. Legally, the team wasn't set up as its' own separate corporate entity (doing so would have cost money, which we didn't have much of), and a lot of the standard fundraisers required a non-profit ID number in order to even participate in their programs. We couldn't use the studio's ID because they were for-profit. Getting this stuff to fundraise as an individual was all but impossible (and not smart if the IRS ever caught wind of it!).

I'm not a grinch - I'm perfectly happy to make a small purchase to help kids' sports teams, music programs, school stuff, whatever. And I had no qualms about dragging a case of chocolate to work recently to sell for my daughter's school marching band. But I have a hard enough time paying our own skating bills. Unless the individual skater doing the fundraising had some fairly high-level successes (not the case here as I understand it), I'd be pretty offended to be asked to help pay someone else's bills, too. I certainly wouldn't dream of ever asking someone else to pay ours!

Just adding more to this thread to update on the latest.

She is now having a garage sale at the rink and getting others to donate goods to sell to raise funds. It is being done at the car park of the rink. Funny thing is the notice that is up at the rink starts off with "Supporters of (skater)" and basically says the fundraising is to help the kid go back to Canada again to train. Unfortunately it is only going to polarise and peeve a lot of people off again. This kid is no more special than any other skater at our rink.

Why do it at the rink? Why not do it at her home like a lot of people do with garage sales? At least if it was done away from the rink it is not going to get people's back's up but this is just going to add more fuel to the anti-skater and coach antagonism which is currently happening.

Gee if only someone would pay for me to go and train overseas!!!

I also found out recently that when she was running her raffle earlier in the year, this coach was actively encouraging people not to buy our tickets and buy her own daughters in front of the people who were selling our tickets!!! I just couldn't believe it!!

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AW, Since it appears that a lot of people are pretty upset by this coach's activities, maybe it would make an impression on the rink/club leadership if these people were to express their feelings as a group. When complaints come in onesy, twosy, sometimes it makes people look more like whiners, especially when it is the same people complaining all the time. Maybe a petition or a group attending the next board meeting would get some attention. Not sure if you have the option to go elsewhere, but since the rink/club appears to not want to do anything about the situation, even when this coach's actions are to their detriment, then maybe that should be considered.

Whatever, this coach seems to have no shame. While it is nice that she wants to provide these opportunities for her daughter, she seems to be going about it in the wrong way. I wonder how her daughter feels about all this.

Just thought of one other thing.....I'm in the USA, so I don't know Australian law, but I believe a not-for-profit organization usually has some type of tax exemption. If this coach is using the club to purchase her candy, she may not be paying tax on the purchase. However, the proceeds from her sales are for her personal profit, and it doesn't sound like the club receives any of the proceeds. Not sure, but could this be construed as tax fraud? You may want to bring this point up to the rink/club management as they could also get in trouble if there were an issue.

What level is the skater at, anyways? Perhaps someone should advise this coach/mom that if she already has to do fundraisers and garage sales to keep her kid skating, there's gonna be a day when there's nothing left to sell. This is a SUPER expensive sport and if when your kid is 13 you're already selling off everything you own, at some point you're gonna run out of money. Perhaps she should venture into more profitable, less annoying, and more long term solutions, like a sponsor (if the kid is good) a second job, or something along those lines. It's one thing to do a fundraiser for a certain competition or something, but if she's constantly doing this...it's gonna eventually run out. Pointless.

nja - only certain groups can apply for tax deductible status. Generally not sporting clubs, however there are schemes that can help with fundraising for certain projects but it is a very complicated process. So basically we don't qualify for tax deductible status.

As for the kid's skating level, she is novice level (here in Australia) and basically has all her double jumps. In my honest opinion though, I don't think she has the potential to be an international competitor - her jumps rotate quickly but they barely leave the ice and they have been like that for a few years now. I have heard from others that the mother plans to take the kid out of school when she is 16 so she can concentrate on skating solely (she is 14 now). That is such a bad move because what will the kid have to fall back on if she doesn't succeed?

You are right about fundraising fatigue. In discussing about fundraising with one of our committee members, she is very conscious of the fact that you cannot keep asking people for money, even for things that benefit all skaters. We have had quite a few fundraising activities over the last couple of years (like video and trivia nights) which is aimed at getting a jumps harness but have decided to ease off for this reason.

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