Should units share the wealth?

[MattR]

How much do you charge for Christmas tree removal

We print out something like 2000 flyers with pre-addressed envelopes stapled to them. The first weekend we distribute them. The second weekend we pick up any trees we find. The money shows up over the next two months as people remember to mail them in. Some people call when we miss their tree and we have to pick a few up the next day.

[Basementdweller]

How much do you charge for Christmas tree removal

And that works????

 

So how much do you gross with that method????

[Sentinel947]

How much do you charge for Christmas tree removal

Matt, I'm impressed people don't take advantage of your system and get a free removal. That's a fantastic fundraiser though.

[Basementdweller]

How much do you charge for Christmas tree removal

I am impressed too,

 

But worry about spending $200 on printing and envelops for $50 in donations.

[King Ding Dong]

How much do you charge for Christmas tree removal

BD you may not want to try it in your immediate community. Market it across the beltway. but make sure their sanitation engineers don't do it for free already. I have lived in a lot of places over the years and most, but not all, municipalities have a date or week where they pick them up for free. Do your research.

 

Now if you can get your hands on a chipper, make mulch and have the boys deliver it in the spring.....have any vacant lots around ?

[boomerscout]

Are there any universities or ball parks that would allow your pack/troop to come in and clean up the day after games? Maybe even after events at county fairgrounds? My university did that, and student organizations got paid for it. It took about hundred people to clean up a 40,000 seat stadium in a couple hours. Just the trash.

 

Do you have a county fair or some other community event where you could sell bottled water and sodas? Or even just staff a booth for the event organizers, that way you aren't providing money to buy the beverages and ice?

 

And, is any troop over on the rich side of town open to the possibility of your kids, maybe just a few at a time, coming over and working a fundraiser for an equal portion of the profits? Yes, the other troop would be giving up some money, but there's something about being kind, helpful, and friendly in the Scout Law. Do the SMs over there have any idea what your budget struggles are, and how open would you want to be about that?

 

 

Many drunks are lonely. They will either tell you to buzz off, or they will try to put a ten into your Scouts donation can

[boomerscout]

Are there any universities or ball parks that would allow your pack/troop to come in and clean up the day after games? Maybe even after events at county fairgrounds? My university did that, and student organizations got paid for it. It took about hundred people to clean up a 40,000 seat stadium in a couple hours. Just the trash.

 

Do you have a county fair or some other community event where you could sell bottled water and sodas? Or even just staff a booth for the event organizers, that way you aren't providing money to buy the beverages and ice?

 

And, is any troop over on the rich side of town open to the possibility of your kids, maybe just a few at a time, coming over and working a fundraiser for an equal portion of the profits? Yes, the other troop would be giving up some money, but there's something about being kind, helpful, and friendly in the Scout Law. Do the SMs over there have any idea what your budget struggles are, and how open would you want to be about that?

 

 

If the parents won't help, maybe you can find some Girl Scouts. There will be two sales periods -- before the game, and after the game.

Where the hot spots may be:

"Alright, admittedly tailgating is much easier when you have a car but at Ohio State it doesn’t matter! Between the Ohio Stadium and St. John arena you will find all kinds of vendors available to feed you, entertain you and generally get you excited about Buckeye football. Want a free poster, yep, it’s there. Want a free burger from Wendy’s, on this day, you could have that too. How about a cardboard Buckeye’s football helmet, seems every 30 year old man had to have one of those! Local food vendors offer their specialties and everyone is having fun. If you really want to get in the O-H-I-O spirit, head in to St. John’s Arena. We did not attend the Skull Session going on inside but the music from the band let us know that we will be buying tickets to this event in the future! It is the type of tradition that defines Big Ten football, and apparently Ohio State football, and should not be missed!

 

 

 

 

If you want a true party atmosphere, head to Lane Avenue. There is an over 21 year old “tailgate†offered at Village Club. Food, drink and Scarlett and Grey….who needs anything else? If you are not 21 years old or are significantly older than 21 years old and not interested in the type of scene offered at Village Club, many other food and drink offerings are available on Lane Avenue. My favorite by far was the Ray Ray’s Hog Pit barbecue truck. Expensive but exceedingly delicious barbecue. Another vendor offered Brats that would have been the envy of any Wisconsin Badger fan! Fine Midwestern cuisine! This is where you will find lots of Ohio State novelty vendors. My favorite novelty is the Buckeye necklace with plastic red and grey beads. It is a classic and seems to be worn by most of the people we saw."

 

The stadium has a new food concessionaire. They allow non-profit groups to work a concession stand for a cut. Contact Levy Restaurants to get your troops name on the list -- maybe your COs name may work better.

[Pack18Alex]

It says I don't have at least 10 characters in this post!

 

My pack is in West Phoenix. Not a bad part of town, per se, but students qualify for free and reduced lunches at about 85-95% at our schools.

We've had to fight the packs from the more affluent parts of time from taking all of our sales times at our local Fry's grocery store. The council arranges with the grocery store corporate office to have the store fronts available to pack and troops on certain weekends. Then council has units sign up for all the time slots thru them. Which means every fall I'm waiting and watching until the store sign ups start so I hopefully can snag some store time for my cubs at the store that is RIGHT THERE by where we meet across the street. We got like friday night, saturday and sunday morning so like 9 hours total, and all the other time slots for the two weekends were snagged by units that are 10+miles away. They've learned that our store is good with donations, sales are not all that good, but used to be we'd get $600 a weekend in donations money just having a cubscout sitting there asking everyone to buy popcorn and a small donations can sitting on the table. Used to be also that you could reserve a store based on how close your pack meets to the store, and how many cubs you have--which at least guaranteed we'd have some time at "our" store. The packs from the wealthier areas have more scouts and they could use more places to sell at, but they also charge more, have more $ in the bank, and it hurts if they are taking away the money we need to actually provide scouting to our boys rather than money to send leaders to wood badge. know what I mean?

 

Without those popcorn sales times at Fry's, we've really struggled. We have a couple of gas stations, a couple of churches, dentist office, pediatrician's office, no big stores except ones where corporate has decide that if they open it up to cubs they'll have to let every non-profit have time in front of their store so they don't let anyone do it. There just aren't any other types of businesses to sell at.

 

Finding other fundraisers to do instead of popcorn is a good idea, but again, if you don't have a place to sell those things, your sales will suck. door to door sales you have to have a really kick butt product. Painting house numbers on the curb I've seen do well in new neighborhoods or very old neighborhoods. christmas tree hauling away would work if you have access to vehicles and a place to dispose of them.

 

My boy's troop sells flag subscriptions to make a LOT of $. But again, it's in a nicer area, more people with disposable income to spend $50 a year to have a flag put up at the home or business 8 holidays a year. and you hve to have a place to store the flags and vehicles to deliver them.

 

We are still looking for that perfect fundraiser. Right now we are trying to sell enough popcorn to get uniform shirts for 4 cubbies that need them(probably used on ebay but still parents can't afford it so you gotta do it). Then the next goal is enough to pay for $2 per boy for awards every month for the rest of the year. then we'll see if there is any to help offset the cost of daycamp. So far we haven't met goal #1 yet.

Even in affluent areas, we have over-extended families. Families with houses they can't afford, families that consider parochial school a REQUIREMENT and can't afford it, people with large families stressed for time and money... Also, people that had businesses/jobs that lost them and are sinking.

 

Look, I charge decent sized dues and cover our main costs from that, but we're fundraising for extras. Also, when you deal with suburban kids, giving them a chance to "earn" something (popcorn prizes) is a BIG deal and a big positive. There are families that would happily pay $500 in dues/year to never hear me annoy them about a fundraiser again. Most of my families would blink at that. Others spend that much a month on extra curricular activities.

 

There are reasons we are fundraising.

 

Also, affluent packs need to spend more money to keep the boys entertained. Our family campouts (cubs) need slightly more food options than yours do, and we need the gear to do it. We all have costs. The nearby suburb's city ordinance sucks, but they have a right to run their city as they see fit.

 

Good luck, hope you find something that works.

[King Ding Dong]

Territory and turf, total BS. We have some McMansions in our "turf" but also a lot of apartment complexes. Popcorn does not sell there at all. Why are you selling popcorn at all ? Sell pizzas or something else people can actually use. Families are going to but frozen pizza anyway, why not pay a little more for some and help out a good cause. $20 for a small bag of Carmel popcorn is a luxury. Can you find a way to put that $4k BBQ to work ?

To be clear I did not mean Boy Scouts with BS.

[MattR]

How much do you charge for Christmas tree removal

We get close to 200 trees and, I believe, over $10/tree, so a little over $2k. If you'd like, I can get you exact numbers. KDD is right, you want to check things out. You also want to do this in neighborhoods where people own their houses. We do a mix of neighborhoods, some nice, some not. We live in a town of 150,000 so we don't get the big city attitude. The idea that someone would limit scouts from selling popcorn if they aren't from your area is, honestly, embarrassing. I'm sure there are people that rip us off. There are also people that really like Boy Scouts. Maybe we're lucky and live in an area with a lot of people that are philanthropic. When we first tried this I said we had to ensure payment and one guy said no, just trust people. Especially around Christmas. He was right.

 

Maybe try it on a small scale first. Maybe just 200 flyers. That'll get you maybe 20 trees. Remember, 5 trees will fill up a small pickup. 200 trees is a few very big flatbed trailers with built up sides.

[Basementdweller]

How much do you charge for Christmas tree removal

found a mulch company that will take the trees and not charge us. I own a landscaping trailer...so it would just be fuel and printing for expenses. like fishing. Now research the burbs to see which burbs charge for tree removal.

[5yearscouter]

How much do you charge for Christmas tree removal

Just look for burbs that don't have christmas tree pick up day, or bulk pick up right after christmas for people to put their stuff by the road. Some big cities have drop off locations where people can drop their tree, but if they don't have the transportation to get the tree there, they might pay you a few bucks to do it for them.

 

You might do ok with christmas tree delivery now that I think about it-- if you have a lot of people who want a live tree but can't get them home cause they don't have a truck or a truck big enough. but I don't know how that would work exactly. you'd have to find a couple christmas tree lots that would let you hang out and offer your services. I know walmart type place would be best, cause the trees are cheapest there, so the extra cost of a few bucks to get the tree delivered to your house --it would have to be we follow you home, paid up front, we only deliver the tree to the doorstep kind of service. Might spend more on gas than you'd make on delivery.

[5yearscouter]

Do you have a meeting place that can handle a few people? do you have anyone in the troop that looks like Santa claus? I'm asking cause we are debating dying my husband's hair the rest of the way white and dressing him up as santa and seeing about a meet santa claus for a few bucks thing at the scout lodge. charge $1-2 at the door. give em a cheap picture of kid with santa, offer better pictures if you can get a good printer and ink cheap. sell some hot cocoa and a cookie and a candy cane.

 

Or if you think there is anyone within a close by area that is looking for an hour or two of childcare for cub age kids while they go christmas shopping, you could set up one or two saturday mornings before christmas. again offer a bit of hot cocoa, cookie and a candy cane--add in a cheap christmas craft out of construction paper glue and stuff. you can charge like $10-20/hour in nicer areas, but at least $5-10 most places. If they won't pay $5 for an hour, they are just gonna leave the kid home alone anyway. you may be able to put up a flyer up at the closest/nicest elementary school in the area. you'd have to guarantee a certain number of adults and older boy scouts to supervise, and a contigency plan and collect contact info and signature from parents that if they don't show up by X time the police will be called and a late fee charged. See if the church would support that kind of thing sent out to their members.

[Basementdweller]

Are there any universities or ball parks that would allow your pack/troop to come in and clean up the day after games? Maybe even after events at county fairgrounds? My university did that, and student organizations got paid for it. It took about hundred people to clean up a 40,000 seat stadium in a couple hours. Just the trash.

 

Do you have a county fair or some other community event where you could sell bottled water and sodas? Or even just staff a booth for the event organizers, that way you aren't providing money to buy the beverages and ice?

 

And, is any troop over on the rich side of town open to the possibility of your kids, maybe just a few at a time, coming over and working a fundraiser for an equal portion of the profits? Yes, the other troop would be giving up some money, but there's something about being kind, helpful, and friendly in the Scout Law. Do the SMs over there have any idea what your budget struggles are, and how open would you want to be about that?

 

 

The blue jackets also offer nonprofit concession stand.

 

But it is a huge commitment. One unit knocks down a rumored $40k per year doing it. But they work 2-3 nights a week for 5 hours per night and the boys cannot participate. kinda defeats the purpose.

[boomerscout]

Are there any universities or ball parks that would allow your pack/troop to come in and clean up the day after games? Maybe even after events at county fairgrounds? My university did that, and student organizations got paid for it. It took about hundred people to clean up a 40,000 seat stadium in a couple hours. Just the trash.

 

Do you have a county fair or some other community event where you could sell bottled water and sodas? Or even just staff a booth for the event organizers, that way you aren't providing money to buy the beverages and ice?

 

And, is any troop over on the rich side of town open to the possibility of your kids, maybe just a few at a time, coming over and working a fundraiser for an equal portion of the profits? Yes, the other troop would be giving up some money, but there's something about being kind, helpful, and friendly in the Scout Law. Do the SMs over there have any idea what your budget struggles are, and how open would you want to be about that?

 

 

True, the kids won't be involved. But, your troop needs to get off the ground with the camping program you've designed in your mind's eye. Perhaps your CO could use an extra $40k per year. If you spearhead this, you could see that the kitchen gets its commercial grade sinks, send the entire kitchen staff to servsafe, buy the tents the troop needs, fund some Cubs activities, etc