By Jordan McSpadden

In 10th grade when I started my club, Tune In, I did not think it would be as difficult as it has been to actually get it started. After I came up with the idea to buy iPod Nanos for kids to use at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, I thought everything else would fall into place. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. Starting a club requires students who are interested in your ideas and a lot of motivation.

You also have to submit a proposal to Jordan Church, the Director of Student Affairs, who then reads it and approves or doesn’t approve your club.

To get students to join my club, I put up a poster at the Community Council Fair that happens every November. I reserved a table, put out a sign-up sheet and baked cookies to put on my table. Although 30 people signed up for my club, only five people responded to my email asking students to bake goods for my bake sale. I was not too surprised that only five people responded to my email, because most students just sign up without knowing anything about the club or without any interest.

Despite the problem of getting students to sign up for my club, for me, the toughest part of starting a club was organizing how I wanted to raise the money. I thought the easiest and most effective way to raise money would be to have a bake sale during a Monday break. All the students would be free and walking in and out of the cafeteria. Who would not want to stop by our table for a baked treat? Almost everything we were selling was homemade.

What I did not factor in was that other clubs might be having some sort of activity that would compete with my bake sale. I needed to have my bake sale stand out so that students would want to buy my cookies and brownies.

For example, the second time I had my bake sale, I did not realize until the Sunday before that my bake sale would be during Pi Day, March 14, when the Social Committee would be giving out free pie. They had cherry and apple with whipped cream. And how am I supposed to compete with free pie? Heck, even I wanted some.

And if it wasn’t bad enough, students can only pay with cash at bake sales. So many people have come up to me during the bake sales to say, “We can pay with our student I.D.s, right?”

So many times I have had to turn them down and watch them sulk away wishing they could just take out a dollar and eat one of my delectable brownies. It is frustrating knowing that I would be making more money if students could use their I.D.s to buy goods at the bake sale.

Overall, getting my club approved, getting my bake sale approved by the planning committee and actually raising money takes a lot more work than I originally thought it would.