economic woes and pack dues

[DeanRx]

LisaBob and everyone else...

 

I hear you about your concerns, but dollar for dollar scouting is one of the BEST deals out there!

 

You have a kid in soccer. Around here - that's a minimum of $60-80 for a 2 to 3 month season.

 

You do little league. Last year my son played - it was $150, plus you either had to work the consession stand or buy it out for another $50. Thats $200 for a 2 to 3 month season !!

 

GYmnastics / dance / acting / voice - forget it... those start at around $100 / month and go up from there...

 

Our Pack charges $80 dues a year. They can play $40 in Jan and $40 in June if its that much a hardship.

 

We do a HECK of a job on popcorn as well. Its our one and ONLY fundraiser and we let the public know this when we sell. I was VERY concerned about popcorn sales this year given the economy. While not hit with the auto industry issues - we are in SoCal and the housing crisis has hit us BIG-TIME. I figured if we sold 70% of last years numbers we'd be doing good... nope... Our highly organized Popcorn Kernel and her helpers got us going and we sold nearly 25K in popcorn with a pack of 50 kids !!

 

Now we have the best kind of problem possible... HOW to earmark / spend this money in the FY, so we don't have too much carryover and loose our non-profit status! What an excellent problem to have!

 

Bottom line - you can doom and gloom it, or you can DO something about it! Scouting is great for the kids, its great for families, and I don't know of ANY family activity that can provide more bang for the buck. So, in bad economic times, scouting IS the way to go.

 

Motivate / market your unit and the fundraising $$ will take care of themself. Do fundraising, but let the public KNOW the community service you do. Even when times are hard, people will give to kids doing positive things in their community. It worked for us, WAY more than I would have EVER imagined this year.

 

Best of luck-

 

Dean

[Lisabob]

I don't want to get side tracked here.

 

I agree that scouting is a great value for the money it costs!

 

I agree that times change, costs increase, and probably many packs have felt the need to increase dues!

 

I am not criticizing any pack for either charging a lot or charging nothing, or where ever you are in the middle.

 

I am merely asking whether people are hearing/seeing evidence that the current economic downturn (c'mon, we've got 9+ % unemployment where I live and it is quite likely to top 10% soon - nationally, new jobless claims last week were the highest in 26 years - things really are tough for a lot of folks!) is causing ripples, or whether it might actually push some folks back toward scouting!

 

From what people have posted so far, it sounds like maybe there's a lot of the latter going on.