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Custer County

Custer County 4-H Supports Montana Made Businesses

Published: 2019
By Michael Schuldt
When the Custer County 4-H Council fundraising committed decided to revamp their annual fundraiser the idea of an all Montana Made fundraiser came to fruition. Each year the Custer County 4-H members are asked to help fund the County 4-H program through a fundraiser utilized the sale of merchandise to local 4-H supporters. Historically the fundraiser has been primarily selling boxed fruit meat and cheese sourced from Food Service of America and brought in from out of state. Volunteers in the Custer County program felt that we should support our Montana Businesses with our youth program activities as much as possible. A number of ideas were explored, and the group settled on a package of 4 different Made in Montana items for the members to sell to help raise the funds needed to operate the county program. Items included in the effort were all produced and made in Montana. The Beauty Bag consists of Wool Wax Crème, a lip balm and Glo’s Healing Salve sourced from our local Miles City Buy Montana Store. Second was a specially labeled Custer County 4-H package of Charlie Russell Blend coffee from the Great Falls based Morning Light Coffee Roasters. The third was a bag of BeQuest Caramels produced in the Gallatin Valley and finally we offered a package of the regionally popular Ryan’s Meat Sticks that are produced Ryan’s Meat Processing in Jordan Montana. We also sold a Gift box that included the caramels, coffee and beauty bag. In the first year the sales were quite good with the members achieving the same amount of revenue from this activity as they did previously with their fruit sales. We feel this is a great direction for our 4-H program to go with our fundraising as we are utilizing Montana products to benefit Montana youth. We will be continuing this again this year and will be ready to deliver the products for Christmas gift giving
4H Youth Involved in Fundraiser