Welcome to Pack 144
Nuts, Coffee, & Chocolate!
Everyone's favorite time of year is back! Cub Scouts Pack 144 has now begun our annual fundraising drive. Our Cubs have begun visiting friends, family, and neigbors selling fantastic products to fund the many activities they participate in over the year.
A Pack 144 original
Our Annual Nut Sale
In the 1930’s, as the Great Depression wore on, Seattle, Washington Cub Scout Pack 144 explored various thrifty means of supporting our newly formed Pack of nearly 100 friendly and brave Cub Scouts.
Early Pack members shared stories of various fundraising schemes including one industrious attempt to raise Pack funds through the collection of spare, used coat hangers from the surrounding neighborhood. The Pack packaged these common goods and offered them for sale to the same surrounding neighborhood attempting to raise funds to support the Pack. Continued consumer interest in recycled coat hangers was limited, and that particular fundraiser proved to be short lived... the hunt was on to find a more viable means to fund the Pack.
In the late 1930’s, Pack members continued to brainstorm various sustainable solutions in offering a product with broad consumer appeal, while utilizing resources the Pack could easily acquire. The father of one of our Scouts, a man by the name of Carl Anderson who was employed in the local retail grocery business, proposed the concept of having the Pack procure, at wholesale pricing, 50 pound sacks of mixed in-shell nuts to package and sell. He pointed out that this product was popular during the holidays, and these bulk nuts could easily be repackaged and sold door-to-door by our cubs in convenient one pound paper sacks. It was 1939, and the Pack 144 Annual “Nut Sale” was born!
Over time, our packaging has changed a bit, and a several years ago we discontinued selling our repackaged in-shell nuts in favor of localy sourced coffee beans and chocolate bars. Our Cub Scouts are now armed with a broader product offering, but the same basic concept lives on.
Over 95 years: the tradition of the Pack 144.