Cookie Dough Goes Bad

WAITSBURG - A stu- dent fundraising project for Waitsburg Elementary School has turned into a big disappointment for students, a giant headache for school administrators and fodder for a Tri-Cities TV newscast.

The school has conducted its annual cookie dough fundraiser for many years. This year's drive was par- ticularly successful: students sold about $13,000 worth of the gooey stuff and added $6,500 to the Waitsburg El- ementary's ASB coffers. The money will be used for such things as playground equipment and special school assemblies.

But besides raising money for the club during the October drive, the student sellers were also competing for prizes. Waitsburg school superintendent Carol Clarke said that the total value of the prizes students could win was about $1,600. "The high sellers got things like cam- corders, while lower level prizes included things like shoelaces that light up and other little toys that annoy parents," she said.

Everything went fine at first: the students raised the money, the school's portion of the costs for both the cookie dough and the prizes were paid, and the cookie dough arrived and customers seemed happy.

But the prizes, which were supposed to arrive in November, didn't.

The school used a new fundraising company this year, Clarke said. "We de- cided to try somebody different, but boy what a mis- take," she said. The company is called Bolt Fundraising and is located in Chicago, Ill.

The agreement with Bolt called for the school to pay half the money it raised to the company to cover the cost of the cookie dough. They kept the other half, ex- cept that out of those funds they also agreed to pay $800 to cover half the cost of the student prizes. Bolt would cover the other half and pro- vide the prizes.

The promised prizes didn't arrive in November. And they didn't arrive in December. Calls and emails from school staff were first met with assurances that the prizes would arrive soon. Later the calls and emails went unanswered.

Finally, Clarke sent an email threatening legal ac- tion if the prizes weren't forthcoming. "I got a call almost immediately," she said.

Bolt's company presi- dent, a man named Otto Zeman, promised Clarke the prizes would arrive no later than January 7. When that date came and went, a new drop-dead of January 24 was set. And then missed.

In the meantime, school staff members decided that the best option was to go ahead and buy similar prizes for the winning students and pay for it out of the fundraising proceeds. "We felt it was important that the kids get what they were promised," Clarke said, even though it would reduce the ASB's funds.

Similar prizes to the ones promised by Bolt - but for a total cost of about $1,100 - were purchased. They were passed out to students on Friday.

While the students were waiting for their prizes, the grandparents of one student decided the case of the miss- ing cookie-dough prizes needed some publicity. So they called several TV stations in eastern Washington to alert them to the potential scam.

In mid-February, a reporter and camera crew from KEPR TV in Tri-Cities arrived at Waitsburg Elementary to in- vestigate. It became the lead story on their evening news- cast of February 20.

While preparing her story, reporter Annie Andrews called Zeman in Chicago for a comment. She didn't get one, but Clarke got an email 20 minutes later, again promising that the prizes were forthcoming.

"After that, they kept call- ing and calling. I told them all communications needed to be by email," Clarke said.

Clarke informed Zeman by email that replacement prizes had already been purchased and that the school would like to be reimbursed for the $800 it paid to the company, plus the additional $1,100 spent on the replacement prizes.

After receiving pleas from Zeman to speak by phone, Clarke agreed. Last week, Zeman told Clarke he would send two postdated checks totaling nearly $1,900.

On Monday, Clarke said she received the checks that day. The first, for $200, was dated last week and was de- posited into the ASB account. The second check, for over $1,600, was post-dated to April 14.

"That's a Sunday, and we'll deposit it on Monday the 15th," she said. "Then we'll see if it clears."