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From: "J.R. Brockman" <brock.man@comcast.net>
Date: Wed, Nov 3, 2010 10:53 pm
Subject: Congratulations!
To: "J.R. Brockman" <brock.man@comcast.net>
Dear Scouts and Parents,
I am happy to report to you that although the final numbers are not in, another review of our Popcorn Sale results indicate we have broken another record. With the final numbers coming in and remaining sales still being tallied, we could top $14,000, which would be remarkable. You will be the top selling Scout program in the city of
Again the credit goes to Mr. Walt Livingston our Treasurer and of course our Scouts and parents who worked extremely hard to make this sale a success. Again, I cannot thank you enough. Despite this unbelievable success the fact is we could have done better and could have exceeded our goal of $15,000.00 had our participation rate of families contributing to the sale was higher. As it stands, we were below the 50% mark, meaning that more than half of our families did not participate at all.
We recently had a Leaders Meeting and the conclusion was that we will need to review our budget process and our fundraising. With all of the success of the Popcorn Sale, we will not be able to continue using it as our primary fundraiser. The sale is time consuming, requires more participation from families than we are able to get, and the prices of the products are getting beyond what people are willing to pay.
This means we will have to find a substitute and despite all of the problems of the Popcorn Sale, we will have raised more than $4,000 for our ourselves and more than $4,000 for the Council. In total we have earned more than $8,000.00 to support our local Scout program in about a month’s time.
This eclipses all other sales venues or fundraisers that we have attempted in the past. Although we have raised a substantial amount of funds, our actual budget for our Scout program can be in the $8,000 to $12,000 range depending on the number of Scouts in our program and how robust our program tends to be. Therefore to fully fund our program we still need to raise additional funds.
We will also have to look at our fee structure. Currently our dues of $4.00 per month have remained the same as when we first reactivated the program 12 years ago. Currently Scouts receive handbooks free, which cost in the range of $8.00 to $10.00 per, and all Scouts receive at least one free t-shirt. Additionally, all Scout events to include camping trips, etc. are subsidized in some way. There have been suggestions that we review our give-aways and subsidies as a means to compensate for the lack of participation in supporting our fundraisers to include raising the dues structure.
To discuss our fundraisers and to contemplate a different means other than the Popcorn Sale there will be a meeting held on Saturday morning 18 December to future steps. We will not abandon the Popcorn Sale completely, but we will significantly scale back our involvement. The plan will be to conduct a limited sale in the future to maybe one weekend of show and sell and then rely on take orders from individual Scouts.
A substitute fundraiser or fundraisers will have to meet the criteria of bringing in enough money to fund our programs and create enough to donate to the Council since we need to do our fair share of supporting our camps, paid professionals, and other expenses we incur as a national youth program. I have been proud of the fact that we have kept the dues so low for such a long time, but the reality is we may have to raise it to $8.00 to $10.00 per month to fill in the gap. If you would like to be part of the Fundraising Committee please let me know and you will receive further information on the meeting to be held on 18 December.
Should you have questions please let me know.
Yours in Scouting,
J.R. Brockman
Scoutmaster
Troop 133
609-381-9981
http://phillyscouts133.blogspot.com/
