I took my 3 boys to register for cub scouts today. They were excited about it. Of course right away I got the sheets to sell the overpriced popcorn. The leader was talking about personal goals and such. So I asked how much the kids usually sell. He replied "about $1200" My jaw dropped and I asked if it was each or the entire group. He said that is the average sales per child!!!!!! Holy crap!!! Am I supposed to sell $3600 in over priced pop corn? I told him that we have absolutely no family in this area and 3 other moms there work at the same place as I do! I hate paying $15 for something I can get at WalMart for $3!!! I guess everyone is getting popcorn for Christmas from us this year!

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~Happiness is a large family~

Our Pack no longer sells the popcorn, we sell World's Finest chocolate bars and boxes of candy. We were each given 180 boxes, $360 to sell (one boy). The "buy out" was $300.

I'm curious to see what other Cub Scout Packs mandate. I wish we had a "pay as you go" option where if we participate in camp, etc. we could pay a certain fee.

It's an awful lot of money to justify participating in a non-profit organization.

We are just now getting info on Cub Scouts. They've only had one meeting. If this comes up, I won't even try. That sounds like an untruth. OK, a lie!!!

I find it very hard to believe that each child sells that much. If it were me, I would only sell what I could, perhaps volunteer to sit a a table for a day or so when they have them at local places and that is that.

My son was in cub scouts and we never sold popcorn. Our troop sells pies at Thanksgiving time. They are a big hit and cost $6 to $7 each.

The more you sell the better the prize the kid gets but we don't have to sell that much. It does take alot to get a decent prize. You sell what you can. We also have a $200 buy out if we choose not to sell the popcorn.

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Mary

Well my son always sells a bunch, but that's because my dh is one of the leaders and the popcorn chair and he takes the form to work and begs everyone to buy. But I can tell you right now....there are probably only one or two kids in the troop that sell that much. We have about a third that don't sell ANY (of course that makes my dh furious). I can't believe they would expect you to sell $3600 of popcorn. Just sell what you can. As long as you make an effort that's all they can ask. The only good thing is once they get older (like my son is now) the profit goes into "his" acct and we can use it to pay for summer camp or this coming summer when he'll go out west on a canoeing trip.

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I have a question...two of you have mentioned "buy outs". Does this mean the people just pay this and don't sell?? Or something else??

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I hate fundraisers like that...when my boys did cub scouts, we didn't do the popcorn sale (thankfully) but we did do a candy sale. I just wrote a check for what those bars would have sold for and that was that...I wasn't going to have my kids trying to sell crappy candy to anyone. LOL

Just to clarify, my boys are not required to sell any amount at all. So we will just have dh take it to work and whatever they sell, they sell. I just can't believe that people actually sell that much!!!!

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~Happiness is a large family~

The parent pays $200.00 instead of selling the popcorn.

Ds went camping for free last year because the whole pack did good with the popcorn sales. The popcorn paid for the trip.

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Mary