Reply to Scoutmaster of Scouts BSA Troop 248 for Girls Answers your Questions

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "Scoutmaster of Scouts BSA Troop 248 for Girls Answers your Questions"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=cburkhardt]Sorry I have not been able to get to this thread for the past few days, all due to business.  It looks like most questions have been answered except for ones from the PP who asked about our fundraising practices.

Our Scouts BSA Troop for Girls does not conduct product sales because that is the overwhelming preference of our parents and girl members.  The reasons they provide include a desire to have girls spend 100% of their time on program and not fundraising activities.  Many believe product sale fundraising does not raise a sufficient amount to do the “big things” the girls want to experience.  We could not conduct monthly campouts and our annual week at summer camp for 53 girls if we had to rely entirely on product sales fundraising.

I have never coordinated a youth product sales fundraising effort, but several of our parents have.  These people believe youth product sales fundraising is not a “good deal” because of what they believe are insufficient profit margins that are disproportionate to the efforts required.  They still want the girls to have opportunities to interact with adults in a safe environment, so they arrange for our girls to participate in an annual food drive, during which our girls are outside food stores and ask for food pantry contributions.  The resulting mountain of food contributions (and, I really mean a mountain) are a testament that the girls are able to be entrepreneurs in this different manner.

We know that we are an outlier with our policy, but after four years of operation, I have come to believe that this is a great way to go.  It respects everyone’s interest to concentrate their time on Scouting.  And, our dues are reasonable, a great value, and confidentially reduced for our under-resourced families.

Over the past four years I had one (rather wealthy) parent suggest to me that I run a product sales campaign so she could pay less dues for her girl.  When I said I would consider it if she were the chair of the effort, the look of horror on her face said it all!  Nobody in our group wants to do product sales if there is another way to go.
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics