How Does It Work?

The Darling’s Ice Cream for a Cause truck offers free ice cream in exchange for voluntary donations to help raise money for charities and causes in our communities.  If you have a cause or charity, no matter how large or small, we want to help you raise money!

1. You request a stop for an event at your cause by filling out the Request a Stop form.
2. We will be scheduling on a rolling basis this year, so expect to hear from us about six weeks before your event! If we’re available, we schedule your stop and confirm our availability. We will let you know if we are unable to attend, so you’ll hear from us either way!
3. We’ll help you promote the event to make it a success, so you can raise the most money possible.  We provide free resources and marketing materials to help you promote it, and will also help to promote your stop.
4. At the event, one of our ice cream ambassadors will bring the ice cream truck to your stop, and hand out free ice cream in exchange for voluntary donations.
5. We mail you a check for 100% of the proceeds within 2-3 weeks after your event.

 

An average two-hour stop earns between $200-$400, although some events earn much more. This varies depending on the events, location, and weather. The more you help spread the word about the event, the more you can earn! We help with promotion and can give you lots of ideas how on how to get the word out, but the more people that you can have stop and get an ice cream during your stop, the more money you will raise!

 

We’ve found that large events with lots of people work best to help maximize donations!  Some events that would be a good fit for our truck:

• Open houses
• Sporting events and games
• Concerts
• Touch-A-Truck events
• Parades
• Hosted stops at business locations
• Family fun days
• Car shows
• Fairs and festivals
• Holiday parties and gatherings
• Awareness walks, 5Ks and “Fun Runs”
• … and many more!

There is no cost to your cause. Darling’s donates the ice cream, and 100% of all collected donations go back to your cause.

Free ice cream- what’s the catch?

There isn’t one. We created this truck with the idea of creating smiles, sharing some sweet treats, and helping causes in the communities that we work and live in.

We are currently preparing for next year. Our plan is to begin accepting event requests for 2025 in February or March. The ice cream truck is tentatively planned to start the 2025 season in April and run through October 31st. Please keep an eye on our website and Facebook page for updates. Once we start accepting event requests you can visit our Request a Stop form to submit your event.

Darling’s Ice Cream for a Cause events are booked on a rolling six-week basis. We keep all events on file until we review them, approximately six weeks before the event date. Once we have reviewed all the requests for the same day and decided which events we’ll attend, we email each event coordinator to confirm whether or not we’ll be attending their event. This process allows us to give equal consideration to all the events requested for the same day and plan with better logistics so we can attend as many events as possible.

We accept requests for events less than six weeks away, but they may be less likely to be booked since we already have other events scheduled.