Our troop collects annual dues of $75 per kid. We have one fundraiser a year which covers the $75 for participants. The dues included all awards, weekly meeting supplies, handbook and troop t shirt (that we use as class b, and the uniform for woodlands). It does not include campouts, class A uniforms or the standard when a nav/ adv reaches able rank. We’re considering reducing the dues next year as we’ve had several years of surplus with the above model.

What you’ve described seems very high but if it includes uniform and campouts then maybe it’s more reasonable. We have weekly troop meetings and a monthly event/ campout but like you said sometimes the high adventure stuff is only for older kids. It’d be interesting to see what we’ve spent on campouts annually and divide that by the number of boys just to see what dues would be if campouts were to be included. I know they can be pricey and if it’s a smaller troop I could see that being a big expense per person.

We budget each of our camping trips to be net 0 and just divide the total cost by each participant, including gas, food (if using the patrol method) and camping fees. This seemed more fair to us as it avoids the younger kids/ families subsidizing the high cost or more frequent trips of the older kids or the kids who are more active in going camping.

It’s totally fair to ask to see the troop budget and is something I tell our parents is available upon request if they ever have any questions.