Pack Financing
Michael F. Bowman (mfbowman@CAPACCESS.ORG)
Mon, 27 Jan 1997 00:14:15 -0500
Pam,
You asked for suggestions on fundraising that would be fair to all of the
boys. Any fundraising that keeps the Pack treasury afloat allowing them
to have a great Scouting experience is probably going to be fair to the
boys. Huh? For most of these Cubs, they are not the ones who make the
final decision on whether to participate in fundraising - it doesn't happen
without their family's support. When a parent won't allow the Cub to
help raise funds or is unwilling to support the Cub, he won't be able to
do much about it. These same boys need Scouting and maybe more so than
the boys whose parents help them more. So anything that would penalize
them or limit their ability to participate wouldn't be fair to them.
The parents are the ones who complain about fundraising being fair in
most cases like this. I think the real question is whether your
fundraising is fair to the families involved. The solution of giving
families the choice to either participate or pay a higher fee to make up
the difference is probably a good one, if the family has the resources to
pay. If they don't have money, this approach may not be a good one as far
as the Cub is concerned - it may lead to him not being able to
participate. Maybe their is a middle ground somewhere. Could some of the
parents who aren't doing fundraising help in other ways? Would it help
if there were incentives? For example, you could hold a special
fundraiser's reward activity where only Cubs who participated could
attend - say a special Pizza fest, bowling, game night or whatever.
There may well be some parents that just won't participate or allow their
son to participate at all and they also may be the ones that tend to
freeload on everything else. At this point I guess it comes down to
being a little less selfish and sharing a bit more with the boys whose
ill fortune it was to have parents that aren't quite so wonderful as the
ones doing all the complaining. ;-) If we want the boys to learn a sense
of civic responsibility, we have to demonstrate that here. We can either
teach them to consider what's good for the community or what's good for
me as the way to make decisions by how we make decisions.
Speaking only for myself in the Scouting Spirit, Michael F. Bowman
Dep.Dist.Commissioner-Training, G.W.Dist., NCAC, BSA (Virginia)
U. S. Scouting Service Project FTP Site Administrator (PC Area)
ftp1 or ftp2.scouter.com/usscouts E-mail: mfbowman@capaccess.org
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