Oh I know fully that the entire thing is nothing more than a marketing play.
Everything that gets put out into the real world that is associated with DTA is nothing more than a marketing play.
I mean ... we're talking about convincing working families to donate their money to .... college kids so they can have extra spending money to buy whatever they want.
That's what college NIL collectives are.
So at least in that sense, I very much agree that these bake sale plays are a lot better than just pure donations. At least you're getting a burger, or beer, or bottle out of it.
Of course, in a real bake sale the baked goods are given away for free so that the cause can keep all of the sales. In this case, DTA only gets a small fraction of the profit on each sale.