How to build up a troop account to take advantage of giving back to the scouts through new equipment, subsidized trips and overall stability.
Transcript:
Last week we went through a troop budget, and I thought it was a big enough topic to talk a bit on how we have built up out troop account to take advantage of giving back to the scouts through new equipment, subsidized trips.
Before I begin it’s important to understand that based on your charter all of the money that is in your troop account belongs to the sponsor organization. And while it’s possible, I’ve never heard or read of a sponsor swooping in and essentially taking from the boys they are supposed to be serving, but it is folly to use the following to build such a nest egg that it becomes irresistible to your charter organization.
When I first joined the troop we has very little in the way of cash in the bank. This was unfortunately true when I was initially cubmaster of the pack as well. The main way to start getting ahead of this is to start to budget.
The first thing you want to insure is that you do not lose money on events. We had this a lot initially with the pack. Everyone is a volunteer, so really working it through and keeping accurate count sometimes becomes “someone else’s responsibility”. Now it’s fine to subsidize trips, but you need to do this from knowledge not hopes and dreams.
Every trip has a cost. Every seat is allocated. You have minimums and maximums. If you run a fishing trip, and it’s a flat cost for the boat figure out a cost per person based on your minimum, then if you go past that you can decide to give money back, or build up your nest egg to use on other trips. Now, pack events are not fundraisers, but if the boat hold 75 people and you cost it at 60 people, you can fill those extra 15 seats or not. It makes your life easier.
At the troop level, one of our biggest issues was dues. Most boys were paying dues monthly, and as things go, it’s one more thing someone needs to keep track of, As a result of this burden, the committee decided after discussion, that it was worth it to offer 10% back to the families to pay all at once at the beginning of the year.
Logically, if Timmy Scout missed one of the 10 months we collect dues that’s 10%, if he missed more that’s 20, 30 or 40% you are chasing. The problem was we didn’t have anyone doing the chasing, so out of 30 boys at the time we were collecting about 60% of the amount owed, but we were still paying the same expenses.
This can only go on for so long before you are broke.
We offered items that were about 10% of the cost of dues, this year we did space blanket, in previous years we did ponchos or sweat pants, and a few years ago, when we saw we had a significant boon in out account we did zippered fleece jackets with their names on it, and we did it for active leaders as well as active scouts.
Dues in our case is only part of the story. We do well through show-and-sell popcorn at the pack as well as the troop. And even there we require a scouts to sell a certain amount or give us a check for ½ of the difference. So if our scout goal is $150, and they sell nothing, they owe the troop a check for $75. If they sell $500, $150 goes to their goal, and part of the overage, I think 10% goes into a troop account for the boy to use to pay for trips or summer camp.
The remainder goes into the general troop account, which in turn goes to pay down trips or replace equipment, and so the cycle goes. But, this is what works for us.
Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with the hope we can all learn together.
I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was a bit on fees and fundraising.
