Make a profit on training?

[oldisnewagain1]

In discussing some possible upcoming training courses to be held in our district, our council wants us to charge leaders 30% above our cost for the course. Is this normal? I thought the idea was to break even.

[moosetracker]

I am suppose to have a profit for training.. But, no way is it 30%.. I thought it was 10% - 15%.

 

I am new to training, so I freaked out about the costs on my first IOLS training.. I ended up with so many going and completely filled patrols of 8.. I then ended up with way too much profit.. To make it better, I added that the course would pay for the breakfast & the lunch.. Got the money back to the participants rather then to council, but I ended up organizing and trucking in alot more food then originally planned.

 

I know Camporees are to have a % of profit also.

[Hawkrod]

It's been a while since I had to fill out the form but when I was the trainer I seem to remember the figure was 25%. It may seem excessive but it covers costs you don't often realize such as flyers for round table and the council staff that process the sign ups etc... I am not saying it actually costs that much, just that is how they calculate it. Without the padding most councils could not afford office staff that do all the behind the scenes stuff you don't think about so all events have a factor built in because the expenses do have to be covered.

[Eagle92]

In my council the goal is to budget 10% for profit/"just in case." With my BALOO training, we were spot on, using everything budgeted and the 10%.

 

Gotta remember, one training course may have money left over, and another goes over. Seen that happen. The old CS leader basic training I went through (although taking the course, I was a DE and had to deal with the budget)had a nice profit b/c more people showed up than anticipated, and there was a generous donor for supplies. BUT the IOLS training we put on a month or two later was way over budget b/c we did not have the number of participants needed to break even. I think overall the district went over in training expenses.

 

 

[Hawkrod]

I pulled the budget planning and accounting form and it specifically calls for a 10% contingency and 15% for in-direct overhead costs. So Eagle92 is correct if you are just looking at contingency percentages but 25% is what you basically calculate as "profit" in that it is above the amount you spend, "normally". I say normally because you may spend some of the contingency money but in some parts of the country it is "frowned" upon.

[Eagle732]

Don't know about training but in our council Cub Scout Day Camps give back 30%. Seems like a lot of money for little or no support.

[Basementdweller]

The day camp we ran had $2600 in the account at the end of the year. Jan 1 rolled around. the council STOLE our money. they zero'd the account and added our money to their income column. Had I known that was gonna happen, I would never spent money out of my own pocket. We were led to believe that we could buy BB guns and Bows and Arrows instead of begging and borrowing them. I spent several hundred dollars out of my own pocket because we were over budget.

 

 

I will never spend a dime out of my pocket for a district or council event or project ever again.

[Eagle732]

Yep, that's probably SOP for most councils. We have over 700 Cubs each year and we try to buy lots of new stuff for next years camp before the end of the current year. Council controls the money with POs required for all expenditures and questions everything. The process is burdensome and the reason why they can't keep a Camp Director for more than 2 years.

[Basementdweller]

I ran a camp for 100+ cubs and tag alongs, had a budget of $1000 for material and property rental. I begged borrowed called in favors running the camp for WHAT? We were lead to believe that the money would be in the account for the following year. Nope.

 

hey got lied to by my DE.....imagine that.

[Eamonn]

Thankfully the Council I serve has never set a goal or had a set percentage of how much money should be made.

People in charge of events are asked to make every effort to ensure that Training's and other events don't lose money.

As a District Chair I had to meet with he other members of the Key 3 and sign off on the budgets for all of the events that the District would hold.

As Council Training Chair. During my first year. I went head to head with our then SE over a WB course which he claimed had lost almost $1,800! It turned out that he was trying to charge the course for all sorts of things that the course either didn't use or the charges were just unfair. After a few very heated meetings we got the loss down to under $180.00 and to shut him up I just wrote a check to cover the loss. When I was asked to serve as the Director of a WB course. I made sure before the course that everyone knew what charges the course was going to incur. The SE who had been a pain had by then been fired!

I kept an eye on all the money that was coming in and going out.

The Council didn't charge the course for things that maybe it should have.

We didn't pay anything for the use of the camp, the electric or gas we used in the buildings and that sort of thing.

After my run in with the old SE I had got the Executive Board to agree that any Training's on Council property would not be charged.

I have been on courses where they offer so much stuff for sale that at times you think your at the local mall not a Scouting event.

We ended up making money.

The course was full.

Being in the food business I'd managed to get a lot of donations from my food suppliers. (I hadn't budgeted for donations.)

One of the TG's worked as a photographer he took the course photos and they were offered for sale. Participants received a course and Patrol photo as part of the course fee, but we still sod a lot

Participants received a ball cap and two t-shirts as part of the fee, but again we sold extras.

We messed up big time. The Assistant SE who is a very close and dear friend was in charge of ordering the t-shirts. Which he did but he ordered them with the wrong course number. He had them made with the number that had been his number when he took the course. We set these out telling everyone that they were free, with a empty coffee can for anyone who wanted to make a donation. We ended up making a few extra bucks.

I was surprised at the number of people who were willing to lose the $50.00 deposit.

We used these deposits as a fund to help people who couldn't afford the course or were having a hard time paying for it.

During the course I didn't have a lot to do, so I took photos.

With some help of the guys who were more computer knowledgeable than me, I set these photos to the music that is played near the end of the course. We showed this to the participants and offered the disc for $10.00. I think everyone bought one. I'd got the disc's for next to nothing from Staples, so all we had in it was my time. We made over $700.00.

On paper at the final reckoning the course made about $2,000.

But we hadn't paid for the use of the camp for any of the weekends before the course or during the course and a lot of the illegal photocopying costs seem to have got lost along with the costs of the mailings.

Some might say that selling the photos, shirts and that sort of stuff is a rip off? But as long as it doesn't overshadow the real reason why people are there ad there is no pressure on people to buy this stuff. I'm OK with it.

$2,000 might sound like a lot of money? But looked at as part of an almost $20,000, it really isn't. It doesn't cover what the Council could charge for the use of the camp and the buildings.

I don't think Councils should profit from the cost of the Training. But I do think we the volunteers do need to be fair and be aware of what all the costs are. These at times are not always clear.

Life would be a lot easier if the BSA method of accounting wasn't such a jumble. When everything is open and clear most of the volunteers I know really don't have a problem paying their own way.

Ea.

[Eagle92]

Well I can tell you, running the BSA is not cheap. Yeah you got to pay pro's salaries. But I can tell you from expereince, it doesn't cut it. I know folks who left BSA to go to the private sector, and with their KSAs from working with the BSA they have doubled, and in one case tripled, their salary. I know my boss is sometimes amazed at some of the stuff I did as a DE.

 

But the biggest expenditure if memory serves was on the council camps. Those are not cheap. Insurance also come into play, as well as recruiting supplies, program promotion etc.

 

Also sometimes events do go over budget. I know that I did go overbudget with CSDC, not much thankfully, but I did. Another camp had to help chip in for me in the big picture. But it may not be another CSDC that helps balence the council day camp budget, it may be a camporee, or a training, etc etc.

 

Now one thing I did do, and it's why I went $4.19 over budget, is that I did go ahead and buy one supply item for this year's camp last year. it's an Item I need much sooner than the rest of supplies, and I will keep buying it in advance b/c I need it as soon as day camp is over to prep for the next year. So if you haev money and need supplies for the next year, do it. Just make sure to keep trackof it and not use it during the year.

 

I also know that we had some supplies left over, not much but a few,and those are being saved for another year. Just make sure the CSDC stuff is marked separately form other supplies.

 

 

[Adam S]

As training Chairman for the Fishawack District of the Patriot's Path Council in New Jersey, we only charge for actual costs. This is done to encourage attendance. We have occassionally reviewed this as there is always the worry people will sign up and not show if there is no repercussions, or experience has been that you will have "no shows" wether or not they pay and there is always at least one unregistered walk in to take there place...

 

Training should promote strong leadership to deliver the program to the boys, let fundraising committee's worry about making money.

[acco40]

Our council expects a profit from training classes such as IOLS. The volunteers who organize and put on the training, make sure the council does not lose money (i.e. we cover all expenses including full cost of utilizing council property for the weekend) but we don't try to make a profit. (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

[infoscouter]

We try to generate a _SURPLUS_ (not a profit) on our training courses and other district events. These funds go to cover the back office operations necessary to make the event successful, including the Webmaster who posts the event and the electronic sign up form; the field assistant who runs regular reports from the online and manual sign ups and provides the event director with those reports so they can see how many are coming; the copy staff who reproduce the paper versions of the packets (and the paper and toner for same); the finance people who process the checks and credit card payments, prepare the final reports on the financial health of the event and importantly cut me my reimbusement checks ; the support from the DE of course; the contingency in case we miscalculated costs or attendance and probably some things I'm forgetting.

 

Should all of this come from FOS? Yes, it should. But the reality is not all of it does. So in order to employ all those people who make _my_ life easier, as a course or event director, the contingency is a fact of life.

 

The size of the contingency is going to vary from council to council depending on the financial health of the council, and how much of a burden these events become of the office staff.

[Eamonn]

"and how much of a burden these events become of the office staff. "

I hate to be disagreeable, but I just don't see this.

The word "Burden" just doesn't sit at all well.

We have Council Service Centers in order that the staff provide service and support to and for the Council volunteers.

The SE decides what size the support staff should be and the costs become part of his budget.

This support is in fact why these people were hired in the first pace.

We don't add anything extra on for the burden that the staff have during rechartering or recording all the MB's that have to be recorded after summer camp or the paperwork that new members cause.

Many of us would like to see the extra money that a particular event might have put aside and earmarked for that event next year. But we (Well me anyway) Have been informed that this just can't be done. This at times does lead to our end user the Scout paying more for something that he isn't going to benefit from.

I'm not sure what the cost of sending the Cub Scout Day Camp Director to National Camp School is? We used to have to send both the Camp Director and the Program Director. The certification was good for 3 years. When we selected the people to fill these positions we tried to get them to commit for the full 3 years.

Because of the way things worked out in the District I serve we had no choice but to send 3 people (Both Directors and the DE)Every 3rd year. We knew it was coming and it would have been nice to spread this cost over each year. Unfortunately this wasn't allowed. So the choice was to put this training cost into the budget each and every year, allowing the cost on paper for the Scout attending to remain constant or add this training cost in every 3rd year and adding that cost to that years camp or allow the camp to run at a loss.

I might add that the District is small with less than 100 Scouts attending the Day Camp.

Ea.