Cub Foods Bagging Fundraiser

This pre-season (2025) KnightKrawler has been working on expanding our sponsorship initiatives. One of the ways we decided to do this is through a Cub Foods bagging fundraiser, where we were able to raise a total of $727.68. In this Wiki document, we’ll walk through how we organized this event and our thoughts after the first trial run.

Preparation

Booking a spot

The first part of organizing a Cub Bagging fundraiser is ensuring we book our spot at Cub on the desired day. We chose to book a 4 hour slot from 10AM-2PM on Sunday, December 21st. Dates near events & holidays tend to drive more families to attend the fundraiser, but otherwise dates will largely depend upon student / volunteer availability (likely on a weekend).

Almost all Cub Foods locations are willing to accommodate local fundraisers, but it’s important to stick to local Cub Foods for volunteer ability, a larger pool of alumni / parents from your school, and to avoid imposing upon a possible fundraiser location for another local team. We hosted our event at the Rice Creek Cub Foods, but in future years we are planning to host the fundraiser at the St Anthony Cub because of more frequent and consistent customer traffic.

Informing the team / asking for volunteers

Next, be sure to announce the event to your team early on to ensure you will have enough volunteers - about 6 is our recommendation for a 4-laned Cub. Initially, our team Captains created a Google Classroom post hosting a summary of the event, date, and time, along with a Google Sheet hosting sign-up slots for both shifts (2 hours each). Then, beginning 2-3 weeks before the event, team Captains reminded the group at full-team meetings, over Slack (our communications software, similar to Discord or GroupMe), and in the Weekly Update email to check their availability / sign up to volunteer.

A few days before the event, we created a private Slack channel including all our registered volunteers with a reminder about the event & the slot they had signed up for. At this point, any materials we could not gather from the shop were placed in this channel to see if any of the volunteers would be willing to supply them.

Materials

There are a few materials you will need to organize prior to the event

• A table mat / cover (confirm with Cub if they will provide a table)

• HANDOUTS [Example document]

• 1) 1-pager handout including (i) a summary of what your Robotics program is (ii) previous season in review including competitions & performance (iii) what you will use the funds for:

(i) “We are Irondale High School’s Robotics Team, FRC Team 2052. KnightKrawler is a place where all are welcome, and students can gain significant experience across fields like software engineering, mechanical design, business, photography / videography, team leadership, and more! We are currently a team of 50 students & 19 mentors, 18 of which are unpaid volunteers.”

(iii) Supplies for our 3 subteams - Software, Mechanical, and More Than Robots; Materials for outreach programs, youth demonstrations, and summer events; Support for, in future years, building a permanent workshop for Irondale & Mounds View Robotics teams (Note: we have currently never been able to hold a weekly practice on a full field or court); To afford our completely optional membership & travel costs; To cover our travel costs to Duluth & Texas (by bus) for competitions throughout the season; And more!

• 2) Smaller posters including a QR code to Venmo / other digital donation software, and photographs of the team for reference. Hang on Enter & Exit doors + each open lane

• Cash-collection box

• 1 labeled Manila folder (for packing up the money at the end)

At the event

We recommend a member of leadership or a mentor arrive 30 minutes before the first volunteer shift begins to set up the table and posters in optimal locations throughout the Cub. Then after volunteers arrive, we recommend positioning one volunteer at the table (at the end of the lanes) to answer any questions or guide people towards the Venmo QR code, 1-2 volunteers at the beginning of each lane to ask customers if they would like us to bag their groceries, and 1-2 volunteers at the end of each lane to bag groceries for the customers who say yes.

Script / tips on approaching people

“Hello! We’re here today from KnightKrawler/Irondale Robotics, would you like us to bag your groceries for you today?”

• If they say no → “No worries, have a great day?”
• If they say yes →“Sounds great! Would you like me to use paper or plastic? Or do you have your own bags you’d like me to use?”
• If they say “I don’t have any cash / money on me” → “No worries, we’re just here to volunteer!”

Tips

• Even if the customer does not have any cash / money to donate but would still like their groceries bagged, BAG THEIR GROCERIES! It is important to represent your team in a good light, as community servants regardless of monetary contribution.
• If it comes naturally, feel free to begin casual conversation with any of the customers, especially if you are one of the people at the start of each lane.

Bagging tips:

• EGGS: Always wrap in another layer of PLASTIC bag, regardless of whether the customer has asked for plastic, paper, or their own bagging.
• Hard food goes on the bottom. Soft food is the last to be put in the bag.
• Do not stack bags when loading them into the cart as much as possible.
• Store groceries that would be placed together in the same bag - fridge items, cereals / bars, etc.

Final reflections

• We discussed our choice of location multiple times after the bagging event. As referenced above, in future fundraisers we will host the event at the St Anthony Cub due to a larger / more frequent customer rate and greater chance of chancing across Irondale families / alumni. While we still made a good amount of money from the fundraiser, we could have been more productive with our time and reduced lulls in traffic by choosing a better location.

• This fundraiser style has the potential to raise a good amount of money while also working as a team bonding event. However, it isn’t particularly repeatable without adding long breaks in between the events to ensure a diverse / different group of customers will be available to donate.