I’m not sure how the council in question works, but when my son’s pack sold popcorn ago, there wasn’t any reporting of income. We just paid the council whatever they charged for a bucket or box of microwave packages and then sold it. Just like a store buying merchandise from a wholesaler doesn’t report income to the wholesaler. Thre’s no lying involved, there’s just no requirement to report anything. It would be unethical if Paper Blob’s council had a rule that the packets of microwave popcorn couldn’t be sold individually, or had set a lower price for individual packets, but the council clearly doesn’t have a rule against it , since that’s where the suggestion came from to begin with.
Up here I can’t remember how much the Guides get for their cookies, but I seem to recall it not being much. Also we have to figure out how many cases we might sell and pre-order them, they are sent out and we pay at the end of the blitz. If you don’t sell all the cookies too bad, the money gets taken out of the troops funds and they try to shill them for longer to make back the money. That’s usually why you see the guides sitting in front of the Safeway, either because they didn’t sell many going door to door as a group or they have extra cookies. Parents are also encouraged to take cases of cookies to sell as well.
We also have only 2 types if cookies (well three), in the spring we have the chocolate and vanilla cookies (all in one box) and in the fall/winter we have the Chocolate Mint cookies. Ours used to be made by Mr Christie but whoever bought them out decided not to renew our contract because they were losing money by making our cookies. So now they are made by Dare. The one good thing about that though, is the mint ones are SO much better than they were before. Now they are like eating Pep chocolate bars only there is a thin chocolate cookie on the bottom. I’m not too big a fan of the new chocolate/vanilla ones. But then they had to change the recipe as Dare couldn’t use Mr Christie’s.
The Scouts on the other hand do sell popcorn up here, not $10 a box though! I don’t usually see the scouts out seling but I seem to recall that it was less than that. They would also do things (at least in the small town I lived in) like go around asking people for their cans/bottles etc. This way they are recycling and getting the money without having to send any to council.
:rolleyes: They do that for anything my kids sell. They both (one high school age and one elementary school age) sell pizza kits and gift wrap and candy throughout the year, and the order forms specifically say that the kids are not to go door-to-door alone.
“Ask Mom and Dad to take it to work!”
Next time I pimp pizza kits and candy bars for my kids, I want the damn water bottle and sticker kit as prizes.
I’m trying to figure out how this is like underreporting income, and I’m drawing a blank here. Any help, CCL?
CrazyCatLady, please see Doreen’s post - she explained it way better than I did (Thanks Doreen!).
There is no requirement that we pay some sort of income tax to council. All we are required to do is remit to council 70% of the retail price of the popcorn we ordered. This we do. Nobody gets cheated. We’re not hiding anything from anybody, because we’re not breaking any rules. I can see why my first post might have given that impression though.
When I was a Girl Scout (not THAT long ago) I remember our order forms admonishing us NOT to get our parents to sell the cookies - that only uniformed Girl Scouts were supposed to sell (going door to door very carefully, of course). We were advised to go to our folks’ offices and sell, which I guess a lot of places don’t allow now. I was always top cookie seller, all by myself without my parents pimping anything.
We sold the cookies because, well, that’s just what you did (and competed with everybody else), and because you got cool incentives for certain cookie milestones - the good prizes were tote bags, shirts, that sort of thing. If you sold enough you went to camp free (or maybe partially free, I forget) but that was a lot of cookies. I have no idea how much the troop kept.
Paperblob
If you don’t report your sales totals to the council, why on earth would they tell you not to report the extra? Why would you even bring up the fact that the extra doesn’t have to be reported to the council when none of it has to be reported? That makes no sense whatsoever.
CrazyCatLady,
I obviously made a mistake in my first post when I said “reported to council.” If I had said “paid to council” or “remitted to council” it would have been more accurate. I then continued my R-word mistake in my second post. My apologies to everybody for causing confusion and extending the hijack.
To answer your questions:
"If you don’t report your sales totals to the council, why on earth would they tell you not to report the extra?"
There was no talk of “reporting” or “not reporting” anything. My mistake for giving that impression. But council did make it clear that all they need to get back from us is 70% of the retail value of what we order. Part of that explanation was that any extra money we took in from selling single packs was ours to keep. I guess they said this both to give us the idea about selling singles, and to make it perfectly clear to us how things work. People who are new to scouts or just new to running a popcorn sale don’t magically know these things, they have to be told.
"Why would you even bring up the fact that the extra doesn’t have to be reported to the council when none of it has to be reported?"
I just explained things badly (see the rest of this post) in trying to pass along a tip to Ivorybill. That’s all. Really. I swear.
OK, you are all missing the real, important point here, namely, we just went through an entire Girl Scout cookie selling season and not one person offered me any!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:
How am I going to get my fix???
panic…panic…panic…Must Remain Calm…panic…panic…panic
Riding the hijack…my nephew’s Boy Scout Troop went for a week long camping trip in Key West ( and they live in Virginia). I was actually jealous.
And I was just thinking about how much I LOVED to sell Girl Scout cookies and I wasn’t the outgoing type either…I was a shy geek. But I remember going door to door to hundreds of houses all by myself and loving it ( I don’t even think my parents knew how far afield I was going, I remember cutting through a mile or so of wooded area and climbing a tree to cross a small river to get to another housing subdivision so I could hit more houses and sell more cookies).
But I did it voluntarily and I loved it, maybe it was my first taste of independence and grown-uphood…I probably wouldn’t have liked it except I was by myself, and I imagine everyone was really nice to me or my memories wouldn’t be so fond.
Are you still in the Twin Cities? There are still 150 boxes in my basement and I have access to a cookie cupboard.
(Current troop leader - Juniors, Cookie Mom, service team member and council delegate, Minnesota and Wisconsin River Valleys - We get a minimum of $.55 a box for our troop. Council gets $2 a box. Since my daughter goes to horse camp for a week for relatively cheap, I get my money out of council. By the way, I encourage my parents to work to get their money out of Council as well - if you don’t go to camp, if you don’t participate in the Council programming, you aren’t getting the value from your cookie sales. With Girl Scouts you get out what you put in - but you also only get out what you take out.)
I used to be more fond of the cookies, but lately I haven’t really cared that much. If any of my students ask I will buy a box or two, but I don’t buy at grocery stores or the like typically, nor do I sign up at work on random lists.
I remember as a kid the purpose of all of these sales activities was for the child to do the selling. Having the parent just post a list at work was … well certainly something my parents wouldn’t have dreamed of doing.
I can certainly understand not having the child go door-to-door alone, but see nothing wrong with supervised door-to-door sales (other than not particularly caring for door-to-door sales of any type).
As a Boy Scout, we did sell the popcorn a few times, but it was never the big thing that Girl Scout cookies are.
:: sudden intense look ::
You have cookies?!!!
Where are you how quickly can I get there do I have to declare them at the border will my car make it??? twitch
ahem Sorry about that.
These cookies taste like braaaaaaaains.
hmm as a Scout Leader in Australia [we are co-ed BTW] we are not as organised as this. It seems a bit professional to me.
We fund raise through many things, on Australia Day we had a stall that sold sausages in bread and jams with scones and cream.
The local butcher donated the snags, the baker the bread, some mums made the scones and the rest we purchased. Profit for the day $2,000. 100% goes back to the group and will be used to purchase new tents and help fund major camps like Jamborees.
The same principle applies to our sausage sizzle out the front of Bunnings [like home depot] Stuff is donated and we sell tons of snags and cold drinks.
Our other way of fundraising is via grants. Many organisations will give us money for specific causes, Masons, Lions Club, Rotary etc etc. They see it as an investment in youth. We need to be clear on what we need the money for.
Our local yacht club helps us out with repairs to our boats.
Government Grants can sometimes be sought as well, again they are for specific things. The local council gave us some money recently to put in water tanks.
Our goal is always to ensure we get a large return on investment.
BTW we are a 100% volunteers, no paid staff at a group or regional level. We have great parents and ex scouts who are more than willing to help out with any fund raising we do.
Ew, 7 year old (zombie) cookies. Ptui.
- Popcorn (gotta sell it to get your Founder’s Unit patch)
- ScoutORama tickets - local coupon booklets for $10 each, worth it if you shop at the right places.
After that, each Troop can come up with its own fundraising - but it has to be approved by the local Council. We sell burgers, etc. at a couple of different events each year and make WAY more money than we would selling the official stuff.
The Girls Scouts have their cookies - beats us hands down. However, when the Boy Scouts have their $1,000 per table dinners - we also clean up at the Council level. That is something that the Girl Scouts struggle with - the Boy Scouts have deeper pocket donors.
I am currently in for at least 2 cases of cookies so far.
Maplewood, just outside the St. Paul border - just South of the 3M headquarters. I only have two boxes of Lemon Creme Chalets and one of Trefoils at this moment (they didn’t sell at all last year, and this year we aren’t the only troop selling both those kind like crazy), but I have a full CASE of Thin Mints and 11 boxes of Samoas. Email address in profile.
Goddammit…just checked the freezer…no more Thin Mints. Curse this thread!
I wish there were Girl Scouts going door to door in my neighborhood. No one sells them at my boyfriend’s work and I don’t have a job. I didn’t see anyone selling them at the grocery stores last year. Hopefully I will this year. I really want some Thin Mints.
What is a cookie cupboard?