I bet that I could safely say that we have all done fundraisers that were, shall we say, less then successful. Been there, done that, don’t want to do it again.
One fundraiser that has been very successful for our Boy Scout troop has been the pancake and sausage breakfast. We have done these for nearly twenty five years. The troop usually makes a profit of $1000-$1500 each time. Two approached the $2000 mark.
Troop 68 conducts two breakfast each year. The first is held in the spring on Palm Sunday. The second is held in the fall, usually on the first Sunday in October. We serve breakfast from 8:00 am to noon in the church basement of the largest church in town.
A few parents begin working the morning of the breakfast around 6:00 am to start preparing the food. The Scout and other parents arrive after 7:00. We require at least one parent from each Scout family to work during the breakfast. The adults work in the kitchen and prepare the food. The Boy Scouts set the tables, clear off the tables, and clean the dishes. Everyone is on clean-up detail after noon.
We serve pancakes, smoked and unsmoked sausage, scrambled eggs, frosted bread, milk, and the fixings. This is an “all you can eat” event so no one goes home with an empty stomach.
The Boy Scouts begin preselling tickets three or four weeks before the date of the breakfast. We charge fifty cents more per ticket when bought at the door.
The troop takes one meeting night to conduct it’s “ticket kick-off”. A local bank assists us by allowing us to use their facility as a base of operations as we send the Scouts through our community to sell as many tickets as they can during the two hour kick-off. Parents provide the transportation to get the boys around town. We will usually sell enough tickets on this first night to pay most of the expenses of the breakfast.
The Scouts earn credit toward camp for each ticket they or their parent sells. If the Scout meet three goals set by the troop during the fundraiser he will receive a bonus that is added to his account. Tickets sold at the door the morning of the breakfast goes into the general troop account.
So, that is a quick look at our troop’s best fundraiser for the last 25 years. It is quick, nearly painless, and works very well for us.
A fundraiser that works great for our troop is our flag routes. We have 5 routes that have about 50 flags each, that get placed on businesses on holidays. Each route has 3-4 families that are on that route, so you have to go out and put up the flags about 3 times yearly. It takes about an hour putting them up and the same taking them down.
The local Lion’s club does the billing and flag maintenance and splits the proceeds. They also provide a storage site. We make about1500-2000 yearly.