Our Annual Fundraiser
Troop 800 only has one major fundraiser per year and that is our annual mulch sale where we sale bags of mulch from Jan-Mar and deliver them on the last weekend in March, usually just on Saturday from about 7am-5pm. On a very few occasions, we have also delivered a few bags on the Friday before and the Sunday after, but this is rare. The money we raise from this fundraising event sets our budget for the entire year.
As you can imagine, the cost of running a scout troop like ours can be and is very expensive. We have been fortunate over the years to be able to offset most of the costs of running the troop with this fundraiser. That means the money is not coming directly out of your pocket.
What would it be like WITHOUT the money from the mulch sale?
Without the funds we raise from the annual mulch sale, our Troop Committee would be forced to institute either annual or monthly dues to cover the costs of each scout and the troop's expenses. To put this into perspective, here is a simple breakdown of our anticipated 2025 budget and the associated costs:
- Rechartering (this is not optional)
- 40 Scouts @ $110 ea. ($4,400)
- 16 Leaders @ $160 ea. ($2,560)
- Courts of Honor (2/yr @ $500 ea.) ($1,000)
- Monthly Programming @ $100/mo ($1,200)
- All Programming for 2025 ($17,100)
- Big Red
- Insurance
- Fuel Costs
- New Equipment Costs
- Summer Camp
- Food Supplements ($2,000)
- Leaders Camp Fee ($4,500)
- Please remember that the leaders who go to Summer Camp are taking time off from their jobs, time away from their families and many use their own vehicles to transport your children at their own expense, so this is the least the troop can do to show their appreciation for their efforts, especially since the leaders ALSO work the mulch sale. Many troops struggle to even have two leaders with their boys for the entire week of summer camp.
This all works out to roughly $32,660/yr for 40 scouts.
Our Annual Budget
Our annual budget is normally around $27,000/yr with an average of 40 scouts, which works out to around $450 per scout per year plus the troop's expenses. However, as you can see, it looks like that number is going up.
If we were to pass on all these costs and increases directly to each family, we would immediately lose some scouts due to them not being able to afford these expenses out of pocket. One of the things this troop has always been proud of is that we have always been able to keep our family's costs down so that anyone who wanted to could afford to be a scout if they were willing to work just that one weekend per year.