Popcorn Problems???

Has anyone else had a problem with a neighboring Pack starting their sales drive 2 weeks before the official start date? One of the 4 Packs in our county has already started taking orders even though the Council start date is October 1 which is going to kill our Pack's sales.

I informed our DE about this but he didn't seem too concerned about enforcing the rules which i think is a a really bad example for the Leaders to be setting for their Cubs.

leader732:

I suggest you call the council service center and speak to the Scout Executive or the Finance Director, Assistant Scout Executive, or whoever the "money man" in your council is.

DE's don't often understand that a unit selling popcorn before the United Way approved date (which it sounds like is 10/1 in your council) can jepordize the United Way funding of your council. That is possible.

That possible jepordy is what will concern the leadership of your council. United Way does most of its fund-raising in September and gets downright cranky about any of its agencies raising money while they're raising theirs.

DS

Our Council will cancel prizes for individual Scouts selling before the start date and fines the units if it is an organized thing.

You're right about it being a poor example.

How could they do it in the first place? You don't get order forms with product offerings until District kickoff. Were they taking orders based on last year's lineup & prices on notebook paper or something?

KS

"official start date"? "united way conflict"?

My son got his popcorn order form in August. I asked the Council Popcorn Kernel when he could start selling, she said that he could start in August.

My big complaint is with the Girl Scouts, they expect the girls in my area to sell cookies in the dead of winter. Door-to-door is deadly and storefront sales can leave you with frostbite.

Maybe your council is different, FOG, but here we have hard-and-fast start and stop dates assigned to us by the United Way. Since we are one of the first organizations to do our fundraising following the UW campaign, they are pretty persnickety about us not jumping the gun.

(Reason #374 to tell the United Way to stick it in their ear.)

And silly old me thought that everyone sold popcorn the same way!

Here when you receive the packet in the mail, you can start selling. It was recieved about 3 weeks ago.

We got ours last night, but we arent allowed to start until October 4th.

Councils have to learn that the only way you will get 100% of the families and units to wait until the start date to sell, then they need to wait to distribute the forms until the start date.

As long as the forms are in the hands of the scouts there will be a certain percentage who will start selling early. We are not surprised that there are leaders who don't follow the program, why are we surprised by early sellers?

Bob White

My district passed out the popcorn stuff at roundtable on 9/3 & told us the start date was 9/27. The popcorn chairman passed out the stuff at our Troop meeting on 9/22. He told them the sale starts 9/27. If they start selling now, they do! I consider it initiative!

Ed Mori

Scoutmaster

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

Actually, Ed's post is a good example in many ways.

United Way funding is declining, but it's still an important part of funding the services of just about every council.

The United Way campaign runs during the month of September and councils have negotiated definate fund-raising "blackout" dates with each United Way. Violations of those dates can result in a withdrawal of funding. It's an easy excuse the United Way can give its constituents.

It may be initiative on the part of the Scout who sells early -- but it could result in big-time damage to the council.

The council, for it's part, disseminates the order forms, etc. at a time of maximum impact of getting them out -- say at Roundtable, and trusts the units on their honor not to begin selling to the public until the date agreed upon by the United Way and the council.

I know that this became a really big issue in one council I served -- a United Way executive board member who had a son in the Cub Scouts deliberately began selling to other United Way board members prior to the sale start date just to put the funding the council received --$100,000 14 years ago -- in danger. I don't remember what her beef was, but she had a beef.

This isn't just to Ed -- it's to all units -- please do not allow your Scouts to sell prior to the approved sale dates. Encourage them to sell as hard as they can during the approved dates; that's great. But selling before the approved dates is bad.

DS

Let me understand this. United Way is concerned that contributions will diminish because a bunch of Cub Scouts are out selling popcorn. I can see Joe Businessman saying, "I was going to donate $10,000 but since I bought popcorn last week from the Scouts, I'll make it just $5,000." Then there is Bob Bluecollar who gets hammered at work, "I was going to give United Way $5 per week but since I bought popcorn, I'll cut it to a buck."

Either I don't understand the process or people are goofier than I previously thought.

For my part, I haven't given to United Way in nearly 30 years. I'd rather give my money directly to the organization.

Even if there wasn't a United Way jeopardy issue, there is a Scout Spirit issue. Remember, all the Scouts in a District are selling at the same time. If one unit jumps the gun, its Scouts carve out an unfair advantage, because they have no competition and are picking all the low-hanging fruit, so to speak.

It's as if one of a group of runners started a race from a point 100 feet ahead of the rest of the group.

KS

Thanks for all the replies.

It may just be me but since we have now waited to start selling at the official start date my son's are going to miss out on about $1,000 worth of sales that i usually get from my co- workers.What really burns me up is that my boys work hard to reach the selling level for the scholarship every year but will probably miss it this year because a bunch of people who can't follow the simplest rules.This is a terrible lesson to teach their scouts and it causes hard feelings between the packs every year.

I had really hoped that BSA would do something about this but the official response i get from the Scouting office is kind of "Boys will be boys" and we have no policy on this type of thing.I don't want the Kids punished but i would LOVE to see the Cubmaster get a punishment for teaching the kids such a bad lesson.

One of the poster here brings to mind one of my pet peeves about prizes in fund raising. His comment about his son missing out of $1000 in sale he gets from his co-workers. I know we need to raise the money but it bugs me to see a Cub Scout gets a ton of notoriety for selling a record amount of pop-corn. When it is he just lucky that his parents work somewhere they can hit up their co-workers. Many places of business do not allow parents to sell at work. There is no effort from the Scout. What about the Scout who cant have the same done for him.