Pack operating money

[ScoutNut]

So you gave a $50 donation to your local council last year, and a $200 donation this year. That's great. That's more than most families donate. And, as a bonus, donations to you local council can be used as charitable donation deductible on your income tax. However your council never REQUIRED a specific donation amount from you.

 

Doesn't really have anything to do with weather or not you attend any council, or district, events either.

 

Scouting Magazine is included in your National registration fee of $15 (NONE of which stays in your local council BTW). There is no way for your local council to process any type of subscription payment for the magazine because it comes from BSA National in Texas. You could have given your local council an additional FOS donation of $12 however. I am sure Beth would have appreciated that.

 

If your Pack is not interested in a monthly payment schedule from you, and keeps on putting extra money in your sons Scout Account, even when asked not to, why not simply do the monthly payment anyway? Put your $10 in a coffee can at home each month. Pay your $18 registration money out of the can. Use the rest of the money you put away all year to purchase Handbooks and neckers for all incoming Tigers to the Pack. This will help out the Pack, and help out the brand new Scout families!

 

BTW, as for selling popcorn, based on my councils average profit scale, if my son sells $500 in popcorn, the council would still get their $200, the Pack would get $150, my son would get experience in salesmanship, goal setting, merchandising, public relations, math, handling money, public speaking, and more, plus what ever sales prizes he earned. About the only down side is that I would not be able to declare it a contribution on my taxes.

 

I really don't see a problem here.

 

 

 

[ScoutNut]

Oak Tree, you would be OK with your local council charging every member an extra yearly council fee on top of National registration?

 

Capital campaigns are wonderful, and ongoing in every council. Unfortunately that money only goes so far, and you can only go to the same corporate donors so often each year. In these economic times many companies are cutting back on their donations.

 

What many councils are doing, and what many council members are complaining about - is selling off council camps, and downsizing council offices.

 

 

[Pack212Scouter]

In answer to your question Oak Tree, because they are used by Packs, or at least should be. In the case of our council, they have two properties. One is used primarily for Boy Scouts, although there are areas of the reservation specifically for Cubs. The other is used principally for Cub Scouts. All of the Resident Camps are held there and our Pack, for instance, holds our Spring Campout there. You should really look at what is available for your Pack to use at these properties.

[CPAMom]

Your Pack sold $5000 in popcorn ($2500 for SS + $2500 for TO), and your councils portion was $2000? That means your Pack earned a 60% profit of $3000, and you are complaining about it?

 

No - Trails End received 1/3; our portion was about $2000.

 

I know other packs that sell candy bars and have other fundraisers that cut Council out of the profits entirely. We don't do that. We put a huge effort into popcorn and have no more fundraisers the rest of the year.

 

We had 34 scouts in the fall, 24 sold popcorn. Dividing $2000 by 34, we contributed $59 per Cub Scout to Council. We were the top selling pack in the district. My guess is that $59 is far above the average amount that a Cub Scout family supports Council. Council was appreciative. They treated our top sellers to a special party and had great prizes there. We got an extra 3% because we exceeded last years sales by more than 10%.

 

 

 

[infoscouter]

OakTree - our council has 8 camps. Only three of them are "Boy Scout" camps. All of the others support Cub Scout camping in some way, either through organized day/resident camps, or facilities for pack camping.

 

As for capital campaigns - they can *only* be used for building new facilities or upgrading existing ones. That money can't be used to pay the electrical bill, or the garbage hauling fee, or the ranger's salary.

 

And our pack provides opportunities for monthly payments, as does our council for FOS - I can even log into an account on our council web site and e-pay my FOS pledge.

[Oak Tree]

Oak Tree, you would be OK with your local council charging every member an extra yearly council fee on top of National registration?

 

I was actually surprised when I first learned that none of my membership fee went to the local council. But yes, I would personally prefer an extra fee rather than being asked to sell popcorn. I do realize this isn't everyone's preference - so again, I'm ok with popcorn and FOS going to fund the council office operations.

 

You should really look at what is available for your Pack to use at these properties.

 

Our council camps are available for packs to use. But the state parks are better. And I'd be happy if the council charged packs a fee to use the camp (to cover the cost of the electric bill and whatever.)

 

[studentscout]

I would be OK with the council or BSA national, whatever, charging fees for everything. And stopping the begging. Some of the adults in this unit cringe any time the district executive shows at a meeting, and especially the council executive, because they're afraid they'll have to listen to one more pitch. Seems like if users paid the actual costs for whatever they are doing this would be more of a market-oriented approach to funding.

[nolesrule]

I think it's fair to say that a large number of member families would not be able to afford scouting if everything was done ala carte without the fundraising, because then Council administrative costs would have to be built into the cost of every activity.

 

The whole point of fundraising is to get little bites from outside sources rather than taking large bites from those who are already members. The general idea is that getting 10 people to donate $20 is less painful to all involved than getting one person to pay $200. Sure, it requires a bit of leg work, but the financial burden gets spread out not just among those in the scouting community but to people who are acquaintances of theirs.

 

I have no kids in the program, so I don't sell the popcorn. I make my annual FOS donation, and I buy one can of popcorn annually as token support. You can get a whole lot of "token support" with a little effort which will then add up. It'll help support council operations and it won't be coming out of your pocket directly.

[infoscouter]

"Some of the adults in this unit cringe any time the district executive shows at a meeting, and especially the council executive, because they're afraid they'll have to listen to one more pitch."

 

In 20 years with my pack I have **never** seen a professional at one of our meetings.

 

As part of a unit rescue team, I've worked with a DE and a commissioner to help a unit, but that's different.

 

To have the Scout Executive show up would mean something important happened - like a heroism award.

Why do they come? Are they doing your FOS? That's a volunteer job.

[TigerLisa]

Our pack does not give an opt-out option. It is totally voluntary to sell, but we do strongly encourage it and try to make it as painless as possible. Like someone else above said, we focus most of our energies on show-and-sell sales. We have had great success with these, and try to hit at least 2-3 different store locations over 4-5 weekends to make sure each Scout has at least one opportunity to sell (we have roughly 50 Scouts). Once everyone who wishes to has signed up for a slot, we offer additional slots to anyone who wants them. Our popcorn sales were almost $20,000 last year by this method. Yes, a handful of boys still went gung-ho with door-to-door sales, but not many.

 

We also do the Scout Accounts. Any Scout selling $400 worth got his recharter and Boys' Life paid. A percentage of any sales above that went into his Scout bank. Any Scout selling $1000 got a free ride to camp. We do not charge ANY pack dues, so this is our only way to raise funds (aside from the "No Girls Allowed" bake-off at the Blue & Gold). Now I am hearing that Trail's End is eliminating tins for ALL popcorn products and I worry about our fundraising for this coming year, but that is another issue for another post.

[Sebastian a lady]

When our pack and troop did popcorn last fall, we came in just over breaking even and still have popcorn left over that we couldn't sell. The general comment from the adult leaders was that they felt bad charging $10 for a tiny tub of caramel corn. Our customers were pretty much making a donation to scouting and getting a little popcorn gift.

 

With a similar outlay of time, we can hold a bake sale and make $300-400 profit. The cubs did a bake sale booth at a recent festival and made over $1000.

 

Of the four units in our area, only two sold popcorn in 2009. I don't think that either of those two will sell in 2010. Don't know if the other units will pick it up. I did look at doing online sales with Trail's End, but the price points for products were so high that I was honestly concerned to be putting our unit's name on that as a fund raiser.

 

Our council has a fair share fee at recharter that is $20 per scout in addition to the $15 national registration fee. Our troop met our FOS goal of $50 per scout. It might be a quirk of our overseas military environment. But it seems that we can bring in far more money a dollar at a time than selling popcorn. Plus just about every family will help with a bake sale (baking and/or selling) while only a few will come to sell popcorn. With one sale council gets an upfront cut but we hardly break even and people are frustrated and burned out on fundraising. With the other we have lots of participation, make more profit and then have cash to pay to FOS. Plus I see the pack (which rarely contributes to FOS) considering things like renting a bus to get kids to the next day camp which would really up participation and retention (which is a long range win for the council).