It’s a fact of life. When you are part of Scouting, fundraising events helped the troop to provide the valuable activities and services that the scouts need to participate.

It is also a fact of life that doing the same old fundraisers year in and year out can put a damper on the enthusiasm of the scouts in your troop to participate-and their family and friends to support the efforts.

As an assistant scoutmaster for BSA Scout Troop 175 in Simsbury Connecticut, we have used Family Cookbook Project.com to host a successful fundraiser cookbook that everyone involved enjoyed.

One of our scouts, Jon, was looking for an innovative funding mechanism for his Eagle Scout project. He created an account on FamilyCookbookProject.com, invited the other scouts in the troop to contribute recipes and then sold the finished product to families in the troop and in the community. He raise thousands of dollars that he was able to use to build a wooden walkway through a wetlands area of a local state park.

The scouts all had a great time coming up with interesting recipes and seeing their name in print. The troop had a physical reminder of the project and new patrol leaders all have access to copies to help them with their trip menu planning and cooking merit badge.

John used a photo of his trip to Philmont on the cover of his cookbook however Family Cookbook Project offers several scouting related covers for troops to use.

If your troop would like to start a cookbook fundraiser, check out How to create a successful cookbook fundraiser.

Bill Rice is publisher of the Family Cookbook Project. He is also a father of an Eagle Scout and is a long-time Assistant Scoutmaster with BSA Troop 175 in Simsbury Connecticut.