Snap! Raise is a fundraising company that should not exist. It brings absolutely nothing to the table that users couldn’t have done themselves with minimal effort, it’s tacky and impersonal and worst of all, it leeches 23 percent of your profits. Snap! Raise’s premise is so basic (and dumb) that it seems like a satire of 21st century laziness. So why do Lake Oswego teams and electives continue to use its services?

Here’s the run-down: Snap! Raise is essentially a website on which you build a simple online profile. You then input 20 emails of likely donors into your profile, and it automatically sends out a link to your online profile to those people. Snap! Raise then provides you with a link that you can then copy and paste into your text messages.

This all sounds straightforward enough, yet for some reason Snap! Raise insists on sending a dude wearing a Snap! Raise beanie to your class/practice to “help” you set up your profile. Upon arrival, he promises you prestigious prizes such as “Badger Head Band” if you get five donors or even “Badger Mesh Shorts (Youth)” if you get 10. However, I don’t know anyone who’s even gotten five donors, nor is the prize really an incentive at all, especially if you’re a senior like me and already own enough LO apparel to clothe a small village.

So basically, the company charges you nearly a quarter of your profits to create an online profile (which is literally just a photo of you and some info about your fundraiser), send out links on your behalf, and maybe send you some cheap merch that you didn’t even want. Even the emails and texts themselves are cringeworthy; the company writes generic phrases such as “Please help me reach my $500 goal” on your behalf rather than you just writing them yourself. And if people don’t donate to your fundraiser within a week or two? It resends the same email again. And again. Which begs the question: why do we as a district continue to support this company? And: is Snap! Raise really providing us with anything that we couldn’t do on our own?

Think about it. How hard is it for you to draft your own message (one that actually sounds like you and not a robot) and create a PayPal link? If you’re going to be asking someone for money, I would argue that that it’s much more appealing to prospective donors to receive a personalized message from you rather than some auto-generated email from a random company.

And if you really want to have a company handling your fundraising, there are plenty of options that give you more bang for your buck. Willamette Pie Company, for example, allows you to sell incredible frozen pies and keep a portion of the profits (as well as helping out a local family-owned business); it’s a win-win!

If it’s not clear by now, I think we should stop using Snap! Raise. We’d make 33 percent more in our fundraisers and we wouldn’t be supporting companies that use mind-numbingly unsophisticated fundraising tactics. Also, your donors are presumably family or friends; they want and deserve to hear from you, personally, rather than some Snap! Raise software, especially if they’re supposed to be giving you money.