How many fundraisers does your troop or

[troop_358_potlatch]

pack do during the year? The troop that my son belongs to has at least 5 or 6. When some of the other units were told this they were shocked. We like the boys to raise most of the money for their monthly campouts and the different activities that they do over the course of each year. It also eases the burden on the parents, as part of this money helps pay for summer camp.

[eisely]

My offhand reaction is that 5 or 6 fundraisers for a troop in a year is an unusually large number of fundraisers. We do two car washes each year and that is all. We subsidize summer camp out of this and do other things, but all our outings are supposed to be self supporting. We pay all fees for adult training and underwrite a couple of large outings each year, but that is it.

[Scoutmaster Ron]

The boys in the troop that I am in do 3 a year...popcorn, candy bars and Xmas Tree Recycling

 

[mk9750]

We do Popcorn, (1) car wash, (1) spring clean up, where we sell our patrols to rake leaves, mulch etc. If the boys decide they want to do anything particularly expensive, the decide how they are going to pay for it. sometimes they do fund raisers over and above these.

 

If the money raised by the 5 - 6 events you do covers all of the costs of Scouting for the boys, I'd say good for you! Actually, that would be assuming the boys are able to do the connect between their work and the benfit they get. If they understand that the more work we do, the more fun we can have, I think your Troop is doing well.

 

Mark

[mschwartz]

Our Pack does one (1) fundraiser - selling candy bars in September. That raises enough money to get us through the year with no problem. We frequently do a Bowl-A-Thon in March, but that doesn't benefit the Pack - all proceeds go to a designated "good cause" (this year it'll be to the educational fund for the three kids of a den leader who died suddenly this summer).

[eagle90]

As a Troop we do 2 fund raisers a year. A Pancake Breakfast in fall and a Rummage Sale in spring. 2/3 of the profits from the Breakfast go back to the scouts in the form of Camp Credits to be used for summer activities or weekend campouts. I think burnout would occur with 5 or 6 fundraisers a year. When is there any time to do the "Scouting stuff"?

[ScoutNut]

Pack - 1 - Popcorn. This covers most expenses. Outings are either free or minimal cost for non-scouts only (scout is free).

 

Troop - 2 - Popcorn: all profit goes to the scout who earns it. The boys use this to pay for campouts, summer camp, scout stuff, etc. Pancake Breakfast: Profit to Troop, boys who work it get service hours to go towards money off for summer camp.

[packsaddle]

This may be out-of-place, but (this may surprise those of you who have seen my posts elsewhere) my wife is occasionally frustrated with me. She sometimes refers to me as (I'll try to get this right, I'm usually thinking about something else by this time in our conversation): "a humorless WASP with thin Nazi lips". To which I reply, "I do too have a sense of humor!" I submit evidence of this as follows, the result of years of popcorn sales:

 

From Ye Olde Email Archive, message to new popcorn chair:

As if I didn't say enough about popcorn already, this is a big job for someone. The cubmaster, I can say from experience, does not have enough time to do this. Another person really should do it. There is a special meeting for the popcorn chair in the fall and at that meeting the materials are distributed to the packs. These are given to the dens as soon as the sale is ready to begin. Unless you miss that meeting... in that case, you have to chase the materials as they make their way through security at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport (just kidding there, that would be too easy!) The sale proceeds and the scouts take orders (not money, not yet anyway). The orders must be collected and entered into a spreadsheet (no lie, this is really important). I have such a spreadsheet and if it is used it really simplifies things. Almost nothing can go wrong. But....

Catch #1. They don't get their orders in on time even though they took plenty of the orders from friends and neighbors who didn't hide quickly enough. In fact they wait until well after you send the orders in to tell you that they'll be late with their paperwork.

Catch #2. The pack needs all the orders it can get. The budget critically depends on this so you bend over backwards to accommodate any little glitch.

Catch #3. Did I mention a little glitch? The information on the boys' orders may or may not be correct. At this time in the process, the district executive is hollering for all of the information while the popcorn chair (me) is making last minute adjustments..."let's see now, how much extra should we list for the REALLY last minute orders?"

Catch #4. After you factor in a modest order of extra popcorn, your orders are placed. The DE asks you to pick up the entire order during two hours early on a specific morning or late evening at a loading dock in a run-down industrial area. After determining you can squeeze a couple of hours out of your work day, you arrive to find out that he actually needs help in unloading an 18-wheeler full of popcorn which must then be sorted for all of the Packs in the entire district. This is a REALLY big catch.

Catch #5. It is at this time that he informs you that he also included some extra popcorn in your order....just in case (remember you already ordered some extra, this is on top of that). You grimace and nod your head. He thinks you are smiling in thanks for his thoughtfulness. After you send the 18-wheeler on its way and the drug dealers are anxiously waiting for their turn at the loading dock, you shove the popcorn past the hot TV's and VCR's and into your...oh no, you drove the Corolla! At least it seems like it (I wish that case of Lite Caramel would stop pushing the transmission into neutral!)...and there's barely room for that new TV and VCR as well. You transport this home and parcel it out according to each den and each scout. Then you call in to take a day of annual leave. The house begins to smell like hot butter and you develop a certain hatred for popcorn.

Catch #6. That night you call all of the dens or scouts and arrange to meet them at the church or at home to distribute the popcorn. Actually, you leave messages on answering machines and note to yourself to call again, notes that are immediately eaten by your dog when you are not looking.

Catch #7. You discover that the order that you received is not what is on the receipt. Hopefully, the error is in your favor and hopefully, the extra few cases will cover the mistakes. Hope springs eternal.....

Catch #8. The boys and parents don't show up on time or,...they don't show up at all... to get the popcorn. You end up delivering door-to-door just to get rid of it. By now you really hate the smell of popcorn. Now the boys deliver the popcorn and they collect the money.

Catch #9. Checks are written to just about every conceivable organization but you are only too happy to sign anything necessary to make it work. You gradually reconcile every line on the spreadsheet and then you notice the three cases of plain popcorn that nobody likes... sitting in your living room unclaimed. If you don't sell this, the profit for the pack will take a beating. Oh well, here we go again. You decide to give plain popcorn that nobody likes for Christmas - again. And you even begin, horrors, ..........to eat it.

Catch #10. Did I mention that you were supposed to keep track of what kind of prizes the boys wanted, how many points did they earn, and how to make sure they all get what they want? No? You forgot to look at those forms during all the other stuff? It turns out that I have a spreadsheet for this one as well but it won't do much good from year to year because they change the prizes as well as the points necessary to earn those changing prizes. Besides, heh, heh, did you expect this to work any better than the rest of the process? You did? Well you are perfect for next year's popcorn sale.

Catch #11. The boys change their minds about prizes... just after you send the list in. This is part of their training to become men, our nation's leaders. You remind yourself to try to forget a lot of this stuff. The dog eats that note too. Now you have turned the money in to the Council for the popcorn, given the treasurer the pack's profit and you merely have to wait for the prizes to be delivered.

Catch #12. The prizes are delayed. They are delivered to the roundtable that you couldn't attend. They didn't include all of the Camp Trails hat pins. The DE had a flat tire. He didn't have cab fare. A dog at his homework...wait a minute, those are MY excuses! A month into the summer, you get a call from the scout who moved away last fall. Where is his prize? "Are you really sure you want a Camp Trails hatpin?" Then, gloriously, summer is finally underway and...time to plan for the popcorn sale again. AAAAAaahahhhhheeeeeyeeyeyyaaaaaa!(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[YoungBlood]

My troop runs a recycling drive once a month. Every patrol takes turns manning the the recycling station. We advertise to the residents that we will be collecting papers, cans, plastic etc. They drive up to the station pop their trunks and the boys grab all the goods and sort. The troop earns a lot of money with this project. It allows the troop many luxuries including camperships. Plus, as a boy in the troop you are credited something like 2 cents for every inch of paper you personally bring in and a penny for every can into an account. After several months it can really add up. A lot of boys can pay their way to summer camp with their credited account alone.

 

[troop_358_potlatch]

The boys get to do a lot of scout and fun stuff. The money they have earned by doing all the fund raisers pays for laser tag, skiing and a hockey game in Feb.,a jet boat ride in March, 1/2 of summer camp, swimming at the pool at one of the local universities twice a year, a pizza party and numerous other activities throughout the year. The boys (or most of them) realize that the reason they get to do all of this is because they work hard to earn the money. It eases the financial burden for the families. The troop does all this along with a campout once a month, so the boys do get to do lots of things, both for fun and scout related.

[LauraT7]

We have about 20 boys.

 

Our troop has usually done two fundraisers a year - popcorn is one, which doesn't bring us much, as we have too many competeing troops and packs selling at the same time.

 

Our other fundraiser is unique to our area, in that one of our long time sponsors owns a parking lot across the street from the county fair, and for the 5 days of the fair, he lets us charge people to park in his lot. It's a great fundraiser - but the city recently sold the fairgrounds land, and we may lose it this year or next. It brings us over $5000 a year.

 

we have done other fundraisers - a car wash specifically to raise funds for JLT, and we sell bottled water at parades and fairs - things we go to anyway. We recently signed up with Cartridges for Kids, which pays for laser and ink cartridge recycling.

 

In the last year, because of the threat of losing Fair Parking, we have dabbled in many fundraisers - selling plants, pumpkins and indian corn, working a fair selling snow cones (very good!) & pop, selling bottled water, car washes and a few others. Most are too much effort for the return, or don't have a potential for repeating each year.

 

The thing that concerns me about fundraising isn't how much fundraising you do - but how much goes back to directly help the boys. Our Troop has a bus, which costs alot to support. We have a treasurer who doesn't give us the entire story, and the past treasurer(s) didn't keep good records. The only money that goes into "scout accounts" is half the popcorn profit. Everything else goes to the troop as a whole, and we DO have lots of equipment and are able to keep up with replacement and repair as needed, mostly.

 

But I can't help but feel that if the boys work so hard on the fundraisers, and we earn an estimated $7000 to $10,000 a year on various fundraisers - that the boys and families should NOT have to be paying $10 - $20 for each campout and for all of their own summer camp fees. The troop subsidizes SOME fees - like when there was a $10 fee for each boy to attend district camporee - the boys pd $10 for food, and the troop pd the camporee fee. But most campouts the families pay for splitting the cost of the entire weekend.

 

I think more of the funds we raise should be credited directly to the boys accounts, rather than to the troop as a whole.

 

I also have a feeling that lots of the money the boys earn is being stashed away to support the current bus and possibly to buy a new one in the near future. And as the treasurer is one of the people that thinks we should buy a new bus - she isn't very forthcoming with financial info. Part of the adult games left over from last years' turmoil within our troop.

 

it's a difficult question, "how much is too much?" but my answer would have to be - what ever it takes to provide the boys a good program without burning them out.

 

 

 

 

[slontwovvy]

One fundraiser. We sell Christmas wreaths, which provides us with more than enough to get by.