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I need some other opinions. Our pack consists of 17 cubs. Like everyone else, a large portion of the money we take in from dues goes to re-charter. We pay for our Blue and Gold with proceeds from a seperate fundraiser which typically brings in just under $300. Of course there is the popcorn sale. This year we set a goal for each boy to raise $250. Out of 17, 3 boys meet this goal easily. A few others sold come pop corn but less than $50. Problem is, the entire pack benefits from just a few scouts and families who meet the goal or who participate in our other fundraiser. We have been kicking around having those who do not meet the goal or sell anything at all 'buy out' of the fundraiser which would enable them to contribute to the pack resources. I dislike the idea because it takes away from the idea of the progrm and is an easy 'out' for some. I know sports teams do this but scouts? Then there is the issue of some becoming upset witht eh whole idea and leaving. Any thoughts on the subject??

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I've heard of some larger Packs doing it. I think the example I was given was a $75 buy-out and you didn't have to touch Popcorn. However, with 17 Scouts, you may have 15 out of 17 paying the fee and then your fundraiser is a bomb.

 

What I would suggest is what we have done. We don't do the "take order" for popcorn anymore. We do show and sells and schedule Scouts to cover the sale. We also have recently incorporated a "hot dog and bake sale" into our fundraising which will operate similarly.

 

This not only eliminates the "he didn't do jack and still got all his awards..." syndrome, plus does away with the headache of order filling and delivery.

 

Good luck to you.

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For popcorn sales, we had a something that worked.. But, with alot of debate in the committee.. I will tell you the what we did first, then tell you the two main arguements against. You may already do this, but left the detail out.

 

We would set a cap like you did say $250, After they make that, then the money they make the profit was for them to put in their accounts for summer camp, or events or purchases at the scout store.

 

When this was the policy we had the best results.. Other committees wouldn't want to do that, they would do the $250 cap, then do an 80 for scout /20% for unit.. Another 50/50.. It seemed when the unit took more of the percentage after the cap was met, the more the scouts did not meet the base, but they did get something from those who went over, so I don't know which was more profitable for the unit.

 

Another thing we did while a pack was take the 10 top sellers of popcorn to the YMCA rock wall (I don't know if Guide to safe scouting would cause this to be a no-no now. But you could think of something else that is a great priviledge for the 10 top sellers.

 

The arguements against giving the scouts the profit after they made the cap were

1) The scout should be learning to do for others, not for themselves..

2) The troop would make less because of they would loose the extra profit from those who over sold (but we found getting more to make the cap was more profitable then keeping the extra profit of those who over sold.)

 

 

We did debate and even agree to the parents paying for the amount they did not raise.. But, except for getting as far as telling them this would be expected, when the time came to collect, everyone whimped out, so it was just an idle threat.

 

Oh not popcorn, but a great fundraiser for out Pack was that we did a parent/son (preferably father if there was one).. Bake off at the Blue and Gold. After the blue and gold banquet there were not deserts to eat.. But the bake goods were raffled off, for your dessert.. There would first be a compition of "most artistic", "looks Delicious", "most unique" etc.. So that the bake-off produced more then chocolate chip cookies.. Then you raffle off the baked goods.. Our high bid war was always for a father/son team that made homemade beef-jerky, that would go up to $50 or more. It was fun and profitable

 

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We have an opt out amount. I double it and give that to the pack and I opt out.

 

Why?

 

Well, let me tell you:

 

I live in a area that greatly benefits from tourism. In my particular neighborhood, about 80 percent of the "residents" are summer only. I live about 100 yards from the mainland side of the intracoastal waterway in NC.

 

Pretty much, alot of my area is like this.

 

Now, I'm not sure if your pack can set it's own sell date or if if your council does. I'm not even sure when yours is, but ours is right after kids start going back to school .

 

Ahhhh, yes. School! I just broke a paycheck buying my son all new clothes for school. I just blew my wife's paycheck on school supplies. Then we take more money out of thin air and pay for some other school supplies as well as school pictures, put money on our son's lunch account, and pay for pack dues and recharter.

 

Then the schools want our kids to buy the school shirt, then the various sports teams that my son joined needs money for uniforms.

 

With all that going on, I, as well as my son - do not have time to sell popcorn. And if we did, we'd have to go to other neighborhoods that already have "their" scout residents selling popcorn.

 

Then there is reality: Some folks buy popcorn from BSA only to help out. But people who really and truely love popcorn ( like my wife) can go to Wal-Mart and buy a 2 gallon can of mixed popcorn for $2.00 instead of the $10.00 for a tiny box. That's if she doesn't just buy a 10 pack of microwave popcorn that she can pop and eat HOT whenever it suits her.

 

 

 

The last time we tried to sell popcorn...a months worth of work resulted in a ten dollar sale and 3 "Oh, I forgot...do I still have to pay?"!

 

 

But I might want to point out...My pack has a spring and fall B-B-Q Chicken dinner fundraiser that covers/makes up about 80 percent of our budget.

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Individual Scout Accounts seem to be getting more popular at the Pack level. Especially if the Pack has an exceptionally large number of boys who do no fundraising at all.

 

Other Packs raise their Pack dues to a high enough level to cover their budget. Then they give the families a choice to pay the dues thru fundraising, with cash, or with a combination of both.

 

I really prefer the boys to work some money earning activities. They have promised to "help the Pack go", and one of the first principals of Scouting set by Baden-Powell was that the Scout pays his own way in Scouting. They also can learn quite a bit by participating.

 

 

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Ok, Im glad to see we are not off base. Our pack does have 'accounts' for the boys. The parents know money is there but we do not talk it up alot to the boys. It does help for summer camp. We like the poocorn fundraiser because the stuff sells itself. I am proud to say that my 10 year old son does a great job as a salesman. I have heard him giving recommendations to his customers and he gets repeat business. I guess the most frustrating part of all of this is that quite a few families do not take it seriously at all. You have to do the typical arm twisting to get them to help. Good point about the buy out that some may choose to pay that. Sure that pack gets the money but BSA suffers with lower sales overall. We have thought about cutting out items that pack pays for such as pinewood derby cars, t-shirts that we just made etc. I think this mostly falls back to lack of participation overall.

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Two things our pack has done to GREATLY reduce the "all benefit from the work of the few".

 

#1 - 10% of popcorn money sold goes into individual scout accounts, so you sell $300, you now have $30 scout bucks to go towards ANY scouting activity you want. Buy a new shirt, turn in the receipt and get your scout bucks back in cash. Apply them towards day-camp or resident camp fees. Apply them towards unit family campout fees. Even if you buy a new tent (its scouting related) - we reimburse out of your scout bucks if you want.

 

#2 - We look at historical program costs and break that into a per scout dollar amount. Then we determine how much each scout needs to sell for the 1/3 that goes to the unit to hit that target operating cost. Most years, its around $300. So, for every scout that sells $350 or more, they get to "pie the cubmaster" with a whipped cream pie at a pack meeting. You sell, $700, you get TWO pies for the cubmaster.

 

Myself and the ACM took 36 pies in the face for the cause this past fall. We had 8 kids that earned TWO pies and one kid who got to throw THREE pies. This 'incentive' proves to be a large motivator for the scouts. We spend about $50 on supplies and cans of whipped cream (get them at cost from my employer), but the incentives and an awesome popcorn kernel organizing our show and sells have netted us over 20K in sales per year for the last 3 years. That means this is the only fundraising we do.

 

We also offer an opt-out for a cost of $120, but I try to discourage parents from taking this option because it does little to teach their child how to pay their own way AND while it feeds the unit account, it does nothing to help out the district and council (1/3 popcorn goes to unit, 1/3 council, 1/3 Trails End). Our council camps need the funds just as bad as the units, so I feel one should try and do their part to help fund both.

 

DeanRx

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Speaking of fundraisers....

 

We just had our spring chicken dinner fundraiser yesterday. It was supposed to be from 11am til 1:30 pm( garranteed) and later - as long as "supplies" last.

 

Based on pre-sale tickets and last years sales..we ordered enough food for 300 more diiners at our CO location and 400 more for our beach location.

 

We barely were able to maintain food for the garranteed time at the CO location and the beach location had a line 30 minutes long.

 

What we did for the scouts was this:

 

During individual ticket sales, scouts get 10% of that amount added to their passbooks. They can use this for anything at the scout store, camping, field trips, etc..

 

During mass ticket or group ticket sales, we divide the time into shifts and then divide the 10% from amount sold amongst the participating scouts. This is also recorded into passbook accounts.

 

Same for popcorn.

 

I'm just saying( earlier) why my son and myself don't sell popcorn. The pack still does and some scouts bring in big bucks doing it too.

 

Our pack created the opt out option for cases like mine OR people who never physically participate in any fundraisers or functions.

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I have a few questions for those who use the opt-out:

 

#1: Is the opt-out voluntary, or is it required if the scout does not reach his sales goal?

 

#2: If the opt-out kicks in when the scout does not reach his goal, is it implemented on a sliding scale (e.g., if he sells 40% towards his goal then the opt-out is reduced by 40%)?

 

#3: If the parents opt-out then is the boy eligible for any of the incentives (e.g., pie in the face)?

 

Just curious how this is handled. We have kicked the idea around for ourselves, but I struggle with how to implement it.

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KIS-MIF,

In our pack, we do not mandate that anybody has to sell. Be we encourage it to no end! LOL!

 

Our opt-out is a voluntary thing in leu of selling ...period. Wether it's because of other obligations, work, time constrains, or just lazyness. The opt out is better than nothing.

 

As far as incentives...there are prizes for scouts who sell over a certain amount ..such as $200.00. We do not make a big deal out of those who are below the minimum, rather we just give an extra nod to those who surpass it. Know what I mean?

 

There isn't any atmosphere of "Oh, you didn't do good enough", but rather......" hey! Little Jimmy did an extra good outstanding job of selling "X" amount of popcorn.

 

Matter of fact, we recognize that no scout ( usually) sells anything without his parents, so , no matter how much the scout wanted to, could have, or needed to sell, it's still dependant on wether mom or dad had time to go out and sell. Add in when mom or dad sells over $500.00 at work without the scout even participating...well explain that to a scout who sells only $10.00 worth.

 

Point being, we don't make a big point of one doing better than anybody else so much as "Let's see what we can do for BSA and the council!" Either you are helping or not. Selling or opting out is still helping BSA and council.

 

Also, opt out doesn't kick in due to low sales. Opt out is just that: when you opt out from selling due to....... whatever reason.

 

But that's just our pack.

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We don't call ours an "opt-out", but it works like this. Each Scout is expected to bring in $125 of profit from our fundraisers each year. Say he sells enough to gain $50 in profit. His remainer is $75.00. His parents are given a bill, and offered the option to pay $10 a month for the rest of the school year. (Nov-May)

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We don't call ours "opt out" either. We determine in our preplanning meeting what it cost for each boy in our pack for rehcarter, awards, pinewood derby car etc. We divide that in half and that is the dues for the year (last year $50 dues) it left $56 remaining that they needed to make up through fundraising efforts like popcorn or our two pack yardsale/bakesales. If they chose not to participate in the fundraiser then they received a bill for the $56 that they were required to pay. If they did fundraisers then the first $56 they made went to the pack general operating budget and anything in excess of that $56 went to individual scout accounts. By doing it this way we had alot of participation in fundraisers this year!

 

Parents were told about how this all worked at our parent meeting at the beginning of the pack year!

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I guess I ned to add one more thing:

We have dues of $36.00 per scout. That covers $18.00 for recharter and insurance and $18.00 for nominal expenses such as rank badges awards , etc.

 

We hand out beltloops and pins on this basis: the first two earned at a time are paid for by the pack. After that, each additional pin or lop is covered by the parent.

 

Books , uniforms, etc.. are covered by parents.

 

We do have a scholorship program for those who cannot afford it. We will not have a scout un uniformd or not going to camp for economic reasons!

 

Campout fees are covered by those who attend and are broken down to parent and scout cost.

 

We do it this way so that we don't have the animostity that sometimes develops by scouts (actually the parents) who feel like "that other scout" IS GOING CAMPING ON LITTLE JIMMY'S DIME!

 

I guess in a way, we are an "Ala Carte" pack. But it seems to be working so far.

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Adding to what Scoutfish said...we pay for any belt loops earned at a cub scout event like den meetings, day camp, coucil camp o rees, etc. Any belt loop earned by a Scout outside of Scout events such as little league etc are paid for by the parents.

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When we first started last year, we had our first popcorn sale we had 4 boys out of 16 that sold.

We opened accounts for them couple sold enough to pay for dues and 1 other sold enough to go camp and dues.

Our CM told the pack at last meting that popcorn sell are coming soon and this is what can happen when you sell. trying to get parents more involved in this years sale,as it could benefit them in long run for not having to pay for a lot of things.Shoot it is hard enough to have them pay their dues on time each and every month. Maybe this way they can get the message.

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