How to distribute popcorn funds?

[cubmom]

Whoah - thanks for opening my eyes on the Pack vs. Troop. Boy do I feel stupid. Somehow I never got that from all the conversations we had in our pack. Well, that is even more interesting then...I am managing one bank account, but I guess I am NOT tracking expenses correctly. Great. This is getting to be a great big headache!

[cubmom]

ScoutNut, and Yaworski - the reason we do our own prizes is that somewhere along the way we decided that we could get more "bang for the buck" if we took the additional percentage by forgoing the traditional prizes, and did our own. I do think the boys like our choices better.

[yaworski]

"the reason we do our own prizes is that somewhere along the way we decided that we could get more "bang for the buck" if we took the additional percentage by forgoing the traditional prizes, and did our own."

 

I never knew that was an option. However, as stretched as our pack committee was, I doubt that anyone would want to have gone to the trouble to shop for prizes.

 

I did notice that something changed with the prizes over the years. The first year, my son saw tons of stuff that he wanted. The second, third and fourth years, pretty much the only thing that he wanted was the Wal-Mart gift card.

 

 

[ScoutNut]

Cubmom - Do I understand correctly, that you are the Treasurer for both your Pack and your Troop, and have only 1 account with the funds for both co-mingled? Whoops! If so, then headache's putting it mildly!

 

My Hubby & I do popcorn for both our Pack and Troop. We do NOT do CASH incentives. I would NEVER give product sale/fundraising profit to a child in cash.

 

The Troop allocates all of the profit (30% here) from a boys popcorn sales to that boy. Everything is still in the Troop bank account, but the Treasurer keeps track of how much belongs to each boy. I will give him a spreadsheet at the end of the sale showing how much popcorn each boy sold and the net profit due him. That way he can tell how much each boy owes him for the popcorn and how much he allocates to the boy in profit. This money can be used for Troop fees, event fees, summer camp, scout shop purchases, pretty much anything related to scouts.

 

The Pack, on the other hand, keeps all of the popcorn profit for Pack operating expenses. We do special incentives for our top sellers. The most popular is the top 10 sellers each get to toss a cream pie (whipped cream on a paper plate) at the Pack Leader of their choice!

 

The boys in both the Pack and the Troop ALSO receive the Trails-End incentive prizes or Council Scout Bucks for their sales level.

[cubmom]

Yaworski - yes there is an option to forgo the prizes - you get an additional percentage of profits - I forget what the number is - but it goes into your Scout store account.

 

Scoutnut - yes you understood me corrrectly. I think this is the 4th (maybe 5th) year of our pack, and then this past summer several of the leaders decided to create a troop - but I never understood it to be a completely separate entity. There was some discussion - a couple of the leaders thought that we should take some of the pack funds to set up the troop (and I actually posted a thread about that because I had no idea how that should be done) but nothing was ever decided - as usual - so they have been operating out of the same account. At this point I have no idea what to do, and I doubt the committee will have any "meeting of the minds" on it anytime soon. Oh well.