Napa County has a annual tomato sale that is effective. Garden tours not so much!

Tuolumne County next to us does a nice garden tour. I think it works for them, but it is a heck of a lot of work.

Ours takes too many hours for the financial return

Our county MGs used to make good $$ from fruit tree & perennial sales, but the better nurseries AWA big box stores got more competitive and carried better selections, earlier, so these days MG sales are too much work for the returns; though they still have them. The MG sales do offer a few precious cultivars that will not be found locally (at least not right away) but the problem is the MGs buy them and by the time locals get to the sale, they're mostly gone so it's gotten harder to justify standing in line for plants which may sell out in less than 1 hr. One year they decided to grow their one veggies from seed and due to a greenhouse mishap, the crop was a loss and the sale had to be cancelled. Garden tours fell out of favor a few years ago. Fundraising is getting harder and harder for our local MGs and I suspect it's the same elsewhere.

Yes, the woman who runs our sales won't let MGs buy sale plants until the end of the day for just that reason (she drove to a sale somewhere and was disappointed to be waiting in line watching the help buy the best before it was opened to the public). Usually, the precious cultivars are still under plant patent and we do our best to educate folks and work ethically - so don't touch those as soon as we know/look it up. We make an effort to have interesting items although we wouldn't be the place for 'plant collectors" (the whole our mission, right plant right place, zone friendly drought tolerant). The whole "very rural" thing here - folks start things at home and bring them in the week of the sale (we check for bugs, trim and price at our sale location).

Our MGs get a list and they can preorder the tomatoes they want and pick them up the day before. At the end, there was a MG private sale and then the ones left were donated to schools and charitable organizations. They planted 4000 this year. I don't take part as I have 20 yrs as an MG and let the new ones do it.

Our program isn't allowed to do fundraisers. We take donations when a group asks for a speaker, but it's optional.