What is a scout account? In my mind a scout account is a sub account in the treasury for the boys to draw from for activities, and supplies.
What are Den Dues? Den Dues are a small fee to cover the cost or den activities and den supplies. Our den leaders have the option of asking for den dues. I do not know of any den that currently collects dues.
What are Pack Dues? In my pack We charge $18 to cover the neckerchief, slide, rankbadge, card, pin,and up to 4 belt loops or other patches. We currently have a loss of about $2 on these items. We also provide a pinewood derby kit to every boy at christmas for our January derby.
I guess now is the time to cover what we do as optional activities for the boys. We have all three derbies and 3 family campouts along with the district or council events. The pack covers the cost of trophies for the derbies and only the Pinewood derby kit. The pack will either pay for a group campsite or a lrage piece of meat for the evening meal on the campouts. One campout we use as a fishing derby and the pack provides trophies and requests donated prizes. The rest of each event is parent paid.
One other "event" we have is the blue and gold. We use this to celebrate cub scouting, FOS, award Arrow of Light Awards, and Bridge scouts to Boy Scouting. This is about 2 hours long. We use the OA ceremony team. We have guest speakers who were at one time scouts. We also have this event catered. The Pack pays for every Cub Scout that wants to attend, the OA, the guest speakers, the recieving troop representatives, and often a district representative. The parents are sold tickets for remaining family members to cover the cost of the Hall and catering for the ticket holder. We don't view this as an optional event and encourage everyone to attend.
Otherwise about 2 months before the event we let the parents know what the cost will be and the "event" committee collects the money. This has worked with us, so far.
How would a scout account work in my pack? I'm not sure as we operate effectively as a pay as you go pack. It would be nice know how some packs have implemented scout accounts. I think one of my concerns is that there is a core cost of doing business as a pack. You have the cost of awards for the pack meetings, flags, tracks, the pack portion of events. How do these get paid? Right now they come out of the big pot of money that comes in from our popcorn sales.
After writing this, I think I'm not as opposed to scout accounts as I am scared of them, scared of the change, scared of the unknown. So I'll end this with a call to the reader's. How do scout accounts get implemented in packs? How do you track all this? How do your core costs get paid?
Posts
1 comment:
In our pack we have scout accounts as well as a general fund account for the pack. When we do fundraising it is determined ahead of time if a cetain percentage of the fundraising is to go to the general fund account, with the remainder going to the individual scout accounts (based on that scouts partisipation). Some fundraisers are dedicated to the general pack account only, but most allow the scouts to earn for their individual account based on the time or sales they generate for the fundraiser. The scouts can use the money in their account for any scout related activity that would have a cost associated to it (most use them to reduce their price of summer camping at the various scouting camp grounds). My son used his scout account funds this year to pay for a week of day camp that the district was holding this past summer. It would have cost him (me) $65 to go, but didn't cost us anything due to using his scout account funds. The accounts allow families who don't usually have enough money for their son to partisipate in scouting activities, to earn the money needed to partisipate without the parents having to pay for it. It works great in our pack and all the parents truly enjoy this type of fund management. Everything raised for the general pack account goes for covering the costs of the pack (pack dues are still charged as well). All the individual scout accounts are kept track of by the Pack treasurer. We have nearly 70 kids in our pack so that is a big responsibility and requires a good bit of book keeping. Account totals can be viewed by each scout or their parents at every pack meeting. Hope this helps.
Post a Comment