Contribute Media's Good Eggs column

Good Eggs
07/18/2008 15:07
by Rebecca Sherman

Less than two years ago, Lisa Olson, a PTA parent and mother of three elementary school children, was caught in a special circle of hell. She sat at her kitchen table paging through a catalog of gift wrap, chocolates, and other assorted, mostly useless stuff that her kids were selling to raise money to support programs at their school. All this catalog did, she remembers thinking, was ask kids to consume stuff that was neither recyclable nor reusable, and she suddenly felt a bit ill.

“There had to be alternatives to this kind of fundraiser,” Olson thought. When she researched a bit more and discovered that there really wasn’t, “I realized I had to do it myself,” Olson said. So she started a program for her kids’ school in Agoura Hills, Calif. Today, some 18 months later, her new company, Greenraising, is working with more than 530 schools and nonprofits to raise money for their programs.

Olson was always interested in recycling. Before raising her family, she had taught economics at Viewpoint School, a high school in Calabasas, Calif., where she also ran the school’s community service program. “We did lots of beach and creek cleanups,” she says.

Olson's kids, on the other hand, were being taught about recycling but then would launch fundraising drives that did nothing to promote it. None of the items for sale in the school fundraising catalog, for example, were eco-friendly. “The teachers were telling the kids it was important to be earth-conscious, but just not while they were raising money to keep the music and computer classes going or to pay for the library assistant,” Olson said. “We needed to show these kids they could raise money and change the world at the same time.”

Olson calls herself “light green”—someone who tries to reduce, reuse, recycle, and make eco-friendly choices. “It’s a baby step toward a completely green lifestyle,” she says. “Light-greeners try to carpool but haven’t yet bought a hybrid car. They buy organic food when it’s available, recycle their cans and bottles, and think about the consequences of their actions on the environment.” As people get greener, she says, they start using biofuels in the cars, compost waste in their backyards, refrain from using disposable cans or bottles, and eat only locally-grown organic foods from the farmer’s market or their own gardens. “To be honest, I’m probably more medium green at this point,” she says.

Now Olson is working hard to let school supporters of all colors show their advocacy in the most eco-friendly way possible. Greenraising sells 100 percent-recycled gift-wrap, fair-trade chocolates and coffee, and reusable lunch bags and water bottles. When a school or charity publishes a catalog or a sale on a Web site, 50 percent of profits goes to the manufacturer, 40 percent goes to the school and 10 percent goes back to Greenraising. Last year, the company raised more than $100,000 for the schools and charities. As more groups sign up, the potential for funding increases. “I hope we’ll have $700,000 in sales next year,” Olson says.

But going green wasn’t easy, Olson recalls. Especially when she first started, there was a lot of pushback from parents and teachers alike. Grace Phillips, co-Vice President of Fundraising at the Edison Language Academy in Santa Monica, Calif., says: “People always grumble about change but as someone who is really concerned about the complete mess we are leaving for our kids, I really didn't want to buy regular gift wrap, much less encourage our students and their families to sell it. Greenraising gave those of us who are more enviro-minded another way to support the school.”

One thing that Phillips appreciates about Olson is that her environmentalism, Phillips says, is not just a sales pitch. “She once met me in a parking lot so that we could both fit it in with other errands and save gas,” Phillips said. “You have to love that - she really walks the walk, and that makes me feel good about supporting her. She’s also very thoughtful about how she ships, so she can minimize waste and packaging, and only sells stuff she really believes in.”

How green am I? The shade that’s a little envious—but I’m getting more eco-friendly by the day. As the parent of an 11-month-old baby, I’m always trying to think as greenly as I can. I might not even be light green at this point but I am doing what I can to get on the right track. Perhaps by the time my baby enters elementary school, it, too, will look a little less beige.