Welcome to Troop 405 2016-17 scouting year! We are pleased to welcome two new scouts, Collin and Mason and their dad, David. While we had 4 graduating seniors leave us, we are half way there to adding new scouts. A shout out to Jacob for bringing a potential new scout to last week’s session. Keep recruiting your friends!

Tonight one of our graduating seniors, Marcus Willoughby will be having his Eagle BOR. Best of luck to him as he completes his scouting journey.

For the first time in quite a while, our bank account has dipped below the $1000 mark. As you know, part of the annual dues stays at the troop for the purchase of merit badges, camp site fees, and fees for various activities. We introduced the Shop with Scrip program last year but it has not taken off as we had hoped. It is the easier fundraiser possible. Scouts can sell a variety of store cards for face value and the troop automatically gets a percentage back. For example, if you get your oil changed at Jiffy Lube purchase the escrip card through our troop portal and 8% of the card value goes directly to the troop bank account.

So far only 3 families have taken advantage of the program purchasing $520 in gift cards earning the troop $46.40 in rebates. Scouts can be selling these to neighbors, families, friends, etc. The nice part if the customer gets the full value of the purchase!

There are 2 ways this program works from the transaction side – check made out to the troop or PrestoPay. PrestoPay requires you to register a bank account in your profile. Once completed you get a 4 digit code via email. You give me that code and I complete the registration. Then you can purchase e-scrips and reload cards without going through me. The cost of using PrestoPay is significantly less than getting hard cards. What does this mean to scouts selling to others, if the vendor has a e-scrip option, you can have the customer make the check out to you which you deposit into the account, then you purchase the items and print out the e-scrip for the customer. They use it just like a credit card only they have to type in the number instead of swiping. If hard cards are ordered, those checks must be paid to the troop, brought to Susan Clifton, and she will place the order. There is a shipping cost of $8.00 regardless of the number of cards ordered so it is not cost effective to place an order for only 1 card therefore hard card orders will be placed once a month on the 15th.

Attached is an order form sample of some of the vendors available. More information can be found at www.shopwithscrip.com. To enroll in the program enter this code: 99DD793C49948

We are open to other fundraiser options. We need to beef up the bank account as soon as possible.

https://durham405.mytroop.us/system/files/FamilyOrderForm1.pdf