Actually many people have a hard time figuring out what candy fundraising profits are and how they calculate them. Here are the basics:
You purchase fundraising candy by the case. In most instances a case contains multiple carriers of candy in each each. For example Hershey's candy fundraisers come with 4 carriers of candy in each case. You might get 52 candy bars in each carrier. You get 4 carriers in each case. So that means that each case has 208 candy bars.
It is important to know how much product you will get before you try to figure out the profit. The next thing you should do is determine how many cases of candy you want to buy. Candy is priced by the case. The more cases you buy the less expensive price you pay for each case.
Obviously the less you pay for a case the more money you make when you sell the case. Just about every fundraising website shows the prices per case. Many people look at the prices shown in price lists and see that prices drop when the number of cases increase.
Some actually see 1 case might cost $110 and 10 cases might show $100 so they ask if they could purchase 10 cases for a total of $100. Based on that logic if you bought enough eventually the price would drop to zero. The lesson is to know what you are paying per case so you can calculate profits.
Finally people get confused when we tell them they will make $60 profit when they sell the candy in the $100 case they just purchased. How can they make less than the cost they ask. We explain that they are selling 160 candy bars for a dollar each. That totals $160. They use the $100 to repay themselves for the cost of the candy bars and keep the $60 as profit.
I hope this article answers some of the questions about how to calculate the profits on candy bar fundraisers.
Posted on 11/06/2009
