The Biggest Ball of Popcorn is Coming Your Way!!


Mike Walton

Scouts have been know for selling calendars, flashlights and coupon books to raise monies for their units and for their local Councils. But few people know that the most effective sales program for local Councils as well as for lots of larger Troops, Packs and Teams has been popcorn.

"Popcorn"?

Those golden kernels of corn, laced with butter or toffee or cheese, that kind of popcorn.

And it is that kind of popcorn that is making its way around the United States and Canada as part of a national promotional campaign aimed at "putting Boy Scout popcorn sales on the map.", according to a release from the Nienaber Marketing Group. On Labor Day (1997), the World's Largest Popcorn Ball started a 50-city trek around the U.S. and Canada to promote local Council and unit popcorn sales.

The ball was built by Boy and Cub Scouts from the Los Angeles area and weighs 7,000 pounds when it left Anaheim Stadium. During it's trip, the organizers estimate that over 25,000 Scouts will help "build a piece of history" by adding a kernel of popcorn to the world record's popcorn ball, thereby making it just that much larger.

According to the 1997 Guiness Book of World Records, the previous record for the largest popcorn ball was 2,377 pounds. Organizers of this massive promotional event estimate that they will surpass that size by at least 4,000 pounds.

By the end of the tour, the popcorn ball should have made stops in at least 36 different United States as well as four Canadian provinces, and the travel estimate is pegged at more than 15,000 miles.

The popcorn drive program started in Evansville, Indiana in the late 70s. The Buffalo Trace Council, the BSA council which is headquartered from Evansville and which serves southwestern Indiana and southeastern Illinois had been trying to find a way to make up for the loss of funding it faced when their share of United Way monies was reduced.

Steve Nienaber, a member of the Council's Executive Board at the time, remembered that the choices were slim; he tells a reporter that there were two possibilities: "selling popcorn or selling white gym socks. And the vote was close -- it was popcorn by one vote".

Nienaber, who owns a marketing firm in eastern Evansville, looked regionally for a possible supplier and eventually had to go north in the state to find a provider. He found Mike Weaver of Weaver Popcorn Co., and the two not only offered the popcorn for the Council sales but also offered his expertise and experience in youth fund-rasing sales to the small Council.

During 1979, only Buffalo Trace's Troops and Packs sold popcorn as part of a Council fund-rasing event, with a good deal of success. Council professionals shared their fundraising idea with other Council executives during the-then East Central Region's "All Hands Meeting" The following year, seven other BSA East Central Region's Councils as well as a couple Girl Scouts of the USA's local Councils also started selling popcorn as a Council fund-raiser.

The first popcorn tins carried the BSA's emblem and descriptions of "being approved for sales by the Boy Scouts of America", originally they thought with the corporation's approval. The BSA objected after a few years, asking Weaver to remove references to the BSA because the BSA did not officially approve the usage of the indicia. The Weaver Popcorn Company responded by creating a special brand which would be exclusively offered to local Councils and their units for sale...the Trails' End brand.

Today, about a third of the BSA's 300-plus local Councils sell popcorn as their main supplemental funding effort or in connection with other fund-raisers, with units within those Councils and others selling Weaver's Trails' End Popcorn as a localized fund-raiser.

The Trails' End popcorn program includes customized flyers, special tins with outdoor and Scouting scenes and patches for individual Cubs and Scouts to wear certifying their participation in the fundraiser in addition to the popcorn available in several flavors and sizes.

Nienaber told a newspaper reporter that BSA officials were never against the idea. "They thought it was the greatest thing happening -- as long as they didn't have to touch it." Besides, he states, the BSA -- and those local Councils and units using Trails' End -- have placed around $80 million into BSA Council and unit checkbooks. "And that's with mimimal awareness that it's even happening", Nienaber adds.

To do some research on promoting and packaging the materials to assist units and Councils, Nienaber's agency set up regional focus groups made up of people who have purchased any kind of door-to-door youth fundraiser items. "We found that out of 240 people, fewer than 10 percent of them had heard of Scouts selling popcorn," Nienaber related, with even fewer ever buying any from Scouts. His research also confirmed that most people don't object to Scouting fund-raisers and other groups with a positive record of service in their communities.

(Byron Rohrig, Business staff writer for the Evansville Courier contributed to this article)

Trails' End popcorn home page

link to Trail's End Popcorn products for this year

link to how one District in one Council sells a great deal of popcorn! (Five Rivers District, Great Rivers Council).

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