TO BENEFIT GIRL SCOUT TROOP #477 / 478
For anyone who did not attend the meeting on 10/1, I will briefly explain the purpose of the fall festival. If you have any comments, concerns, or questions beyond what you find on this web site, feel free to contact one of the troop leaders.
Due to several factors, mostly the loss of a substantial amount of money from last year's cookie sale, we are starting off this year of Girl Scouting basically from scratch - with no funding for any of the trooop's needs. The fall product sale (nuts & candy) is a very short lived fundraiser and we started this year late, therefore there was not sufficient time to have our girls participate. Our main fundraiser, the cookie sale, will not see any funds into our troop until close to the end of the school year - it mainly funds activities for the following year. Any additional fundraising beyond the product sales can be time consuming to get approved by the Girl Scout council, and we need money for the troop right away.
Why have a Festival?
We plan to have a GREAT year. The troop will be very girl led but we will supervise and see that they get a well rounded experience. We would like to see the girls doing more activites and events of their choice, but MORE EVENTS = MORE MONEY.
With a group as large as ours, even a small field trip can take a big chunk out of the troop's wallet, but in these rough economic times we don't want to constantly ask parents to pay for activities. The worst thing of all, though, is to have to do is to explain to the girls that they must choose only 1 of the 3 things they'd like to do, because of budget constraints.
We want the girls to be able to go to many different activities and events - in a wide variety of subjects - to expose them to many varied experiences; participate in regular community service projects to stress the importance of giving back; earn lots of badges so that again, they are getting a well rounded experience; and sometimes to just go do something fun after all our hard work.
All of these things help the girls become morally conscious, confident, well rounded young ladies. Yet, as much as we want this to be a very active troop, we also want to see that it becomes nearly completely self-funded, and that all of these great experiences for the girls are available to every single girl with little or no cost to the families.
The fall festival will be planned, put together, and run by family and friends of troop. It will be a night of great fun for the girls, but it is also a fund raiser intended to bring us a large amount of much needed money. Hopefully between this, and several other creative funding efforts, combined with the girls' troop fund raising, we'll be able to cover the cost of all of the troops' needs except for the girls' weekly dues.
Our first priority is using the money raised to host an investiture / rededication / bridging / badge ceremony for the girls which will include awarding any badges and patches earned but not received last year. It will also officially welcome any new girls to our troop, and bridge any girls to new levels. It will be an ending to last year/ beginning to this great new year of scouting. We will also use the money to purchase needed supplies for the troop and to fund any events and activities coming up in the near future.
As much as I know you are all very upset about the thought of not being haggled for money constantly - DON'T WORRY - there are PLENTY of nonmonetary ways for you to help out!!
Please use the links at the top or the bottom of the page to view the rest of the web page. ACTIVITIES will show you what events & games we have planned for the night. WISH LIST will show what items we could really use to put this festival together. Visit the VOLUNTEER page to see how you can help.