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Sell Something Useful and Low Calorie!

by E. B.
(Calgary Canada)

I helped the Girl Guide troop I volunteer with sell magazines in order to raise money to do some minor repairs around the campsite we own in the area. We also needed money to put aside that we could draw on to fund girls that could not afford the camp fees, in addition to subsidizing everyone.

We didn't want to criticize the well-known cookies :) but we decided to publicize it as "New low-cal Cookie Alternative". The parents thought it was hilarious. The girls liked that they could open with a bit of a joke when they did a little bit of door-to-door. Some of them have a hard time asking strangers to buy things, so this was an ice breaker. Also, people are going more away from buying 'stuff' that is going to do nothing but clutter their homes- so this was a good idea.

The final thing we did was offer the places where you could drop them off for recycling- including the community center we meet at. I don't know if that was a deciding factor, but the magazine fundrasing worked beautifully.

One important thing- be sure you have a wide variety to choose from with the company you work with. This means people will not be buying something they don't really want- and if you do it in the fall, it is nice for people to think that oh, they might start something new in the new year ie hobby. Also good as holiday gifts.

Our troop had 36 girls plus about 4-6 leaders. I am not sure how much the magazine subscriptions were worth, but our cut of the profits was nearly 10,000 dollars, which will be put to good use for the girls.