Scout Accounts: My position against them for my pack.

In my last post, I breifly mentioned that I was against scout accounts. I had a comment asking why.  I think I need to clarify  the position a bit. Maybe I'm not against the account as much as I may not fully understand it, or that it really doesn't work well in the program we have set up in our pack.Let me start by asking some questions, providing my answers, and saying  I can understand accounting in so far as I can balance my checkbook.

What is  a scout account? In my mind  a scout account is a  sub account in the treasury  for  the boys to draw from for activities, and supplies.

What are Den Dues? Den Dues are a small fee to cover the cost or den activities and den supplies. Our den leaders have the option of asking for den dues. I do not know of any den that currently collects dues.

What are Pack Dues? In my pack We charge $18 to cover the neckerchief, slide, rankbadge, card, pin,and up to 4 belt loops or other patches. We currently have a loss of about $2 on these items. We also provide a pinewood derby kit to every boy at christmas for our January derby.

I guess now is the time to cover what we do  as optional activities for the boys. We have all three derbies and 3 family campouts along with  the district or council events.  The pack covers the cost of trophies for the derbies and only the Pinewood derby kit. The pack will either pay for a group campsite or a lrage piece of meat for the evening meal on the campouts. One campout we use as a fishing derby and the pack provides trophies and requests donated prizes. The rest of each event is parent paid.

One other "event" we have is the blue and gold.  We use this to celebrate cub scouting, FOS,  award  Arrow of Light Awards, and Bridge scouts to Boy Scouting.  This is about 2 hours long. We use the OA ceremony team.  We have guest speakers who were at one time scouts. We also have this event catered. The Pack pays for every Cub Scout that wants to attend, the OA, the guest speakers, the recieving troop representatives, and often a district representative. The parents are sold tickets for  remaining family members  to cover the cost of the Hall and catering for the ticket holder. We don't view this as an optional event and encourage everyone to attend.

Otherwise about 2 months before the event we let the parents know what the cost will be and  the "event" committee collects the money. This has worked with us, so far.

How would a scout account work in  my pack? I'm not sure as we operate effectively as a pay as you go pack. It would be nice  know how  some packs have implemented  scout accounts. I think  one of my concerns is that there is a core cost  of doing business as a pack. You have the cost of awards  for the pack meetings, flags,  tracks, the pack portion of events.  How do these get paid? Right now they come out of the big pot of money that comes in from our popcorn sales.  

After writing this, I think I'm not as opposed to  scout accounts as I am scared of them, scared of the change, scared of the unknown. So I'll end this with a call to the reader's. How do scout accounts get implemented in packs? How do you track all this?  How do your core costs  get paid?

Leadership: the next big business item.

Man, how time gets away from you.  As the popcorn Kernel, I have  my big kickoff this weekend.  Whew! what time getting popcorn figured out.  Since Fundraising is a big agenda item let me give you a few words of wisdom, maybe.

Ok so popcorn is the BIG money fundraising for the year in South Texas.  Many people groan when popcorn time comes up. After all, in the current times how many people are going to but $9.00 of popcorn let alone the big $50 tin. The research supports just about everyone your scouts ask will buy it.   Before we get into the sales portion of it. lets talk about who gets what from popcorn. It is my understanding  that the money is distributed as such.  Your unit gets 30% of the sales and 5% bonus for meeting deadlines, taking training, and selling 10% more this year than last.  I was told that 35% stays with the council.  and 30% goes to Trail's End.  They encourage you to use their prizes  but you can opt for the 5% cash instead of prizes.  So if all the numbers I have be given are right the popcorn costs $2.25 for the $9.00 tin. The rest is a donation to scouting. Who wouldn't give $6.75 to help scouting?

My leadership team voted to get the 5% cash instead of prizes this year.  So This brings me to the slippery slope of scouts accounts in a Pack. I am sooooo against scout accounts in a cub scout pack. I just do not think that it's right.  But anyway here's what led me here. I need to figure out prizes for the boys. Gift cards: Check, Camping Gear: Check, Recharter Fees: ?check?, Day camp Fess: ?check? Should the boys be able to delay their gratification  for a couple months and get more from scouting? I'm leaving the items as options, but not sure If I put them on the list as a parent or an 8 year old. If I knew I could save the money for an awesome camp in the summer I might  go for that as a 9 year old.

Ok back to leadership, Most of our district recharters in Febraury.  I like this, because you don't have  back to school, popcorn and recharter all at the same time. I'm bald already don't give me help like that.  So when do you need to start  looking for who  will replace those that are leaving? How about as soon as you get new boys in September? So for October, I'm breaking out my copy of Microsoft Visio and we're going to find out who we have and who we won't.  You can almost always count the Senior Webelos leader out. We will also lose the Cubmaster, Secretary,  and Pack Trainer. We had the Cubmaster covered with an Assistant.  So we're looking for a pack trainer, secretary, assistant cubmaster and tiger leader.   My feeling is the Pack trainer needs to be someone mid way through the cubscout program who is trained in at least one other position or is a professional trainer.  The Wolf leader stepped up to ACM, cool.  Blah blah blah.  

What do you really need to know about leadership? Who do you pick? What position do you put them in? Ask your den leader's who would they think would be a good fit in the various positions you need.  Will your charter org investigate them or rubber stamp your choices. Chances are you'll get the rubber stamp.  Will council kick them back? Chances are no...I don't know how the new background checks will effect this.  Talk to  every parent you shake hands with see if they will fit in anywhere in your leadership and if they want to. Think about assistants for every position.  Crack open your Leader's book and bone up on the poistions your unit should have.  I will say there seems to be a rule of thumb whenit comes to pack leadership, about 1/3 of the parents will volunteer.

So what do I want my reader's to take away from this.

Always look for leader's 

Expect 2 out of 3 to say no.

have depth in your leadership.

Have the XXXXX to ask a leader to move to another position if you think they would fit better elsewhere.

Asta pronto,

Chairman Garry

District Committee

I told my self this month was the month I was going to a district committee meeting.  So last night was the district meeting. It was  basically my committee meeting on a higher level.  I have to say that I went to myscouting elaerning and took the district committee fast start.  So I knew what not to expect. 

So my committee meeting and the district was basically reports from all the sub committee's then new business and old business.  Blah. blah. blah. The meat of it,  really didn't matter as  most things taste like chicken.

After taking the district committee fast start, I have started to rethink  my committee meetings.  I may  restructure  the November Committee meeting  to work like the "ideal" district committee meeting.  I know I have an October Committee Meeting in three weeks, but this is going to be out of the ordinary anyway. We are doing the committee meeting at our campout. This should  put what we do in front of all of our parents. It would be the perfect time to do something different and it is also a bad time for it. I'm opting to try the different method in a more familiar enviroment.

I'm trying to figure out how to break down the committee  into sub committee's  I'm thinking 4 months of activities, and Pack meeting. The rest of the committee is genearlly reports.  Do that for 15 - 30 minutes than come back  and go through  reports new business and old business.  while I'm thinking about it, i come across both good points and bad points. Right now I'm thinking I may be adding unneccessary length to the meeting.  Yet I think that  the people involved in activiteis and pack meeting really need to have meetings outside the Committee Meeting . I know this isn't happening, but everything gets pulled together somehow.

Recruiting is for the most part done. Popcorn is in a lull. though I have to come up with Prizes  and quick. As the committee opted out of the  Trail's end Prizes this year.  I may have time for a quick breath. Oh I need to go over my wood badge ticket items with my troop guide this weekend, too.

One last thing as kind of a PSS. I ran into a former employee last night.  I finally told him  how pissed I was about his behavior  when I asked him a direct question 4 years ago when I last saw him.  It really felt good to tell him that. 

SN4S and September Roundtable

It has been busy the last two nights. We had our district wide School Night  For Scouting on the 3rd.  My district, Keystone picked up a few more than 300 scouts. I turned in 15 scouts with one withheld for payment of fees. We had a great night in my opinion, but not on the same level as last years when I transfered packs. We had half of a cafeteria table for space. We didn't have enough room to give a presentation at all.  It was also our schools parent oreintation night for Kinder through 2nd. That was awesome, if scouting has a target audience we had it walking right past us.  My son's den was there to have a den meeting and had games for the new scouts to play.

For a break down: we had 8 boys sign up for Bears, 6 that signed up or are coming back for more information on wolves, 2 signed tigers and 3 coming back for more information, two signed webelos and three possibles. I admit I should have better numbers for the breakdown but haven't had a chance to sit down and look at the applications. The district met at a local Pizza Hut for turn in. That took nearly two hours plus time to network. That plus having lingering effects of a bad restuarant  from last Friday  has kept me wiped out.

Last night was  the roundtable for September. I was worried about  my wood badge ticket as being on roundtable staff is a ticket item. I jumped in and helped out.  The theme "Adventures in books" was difficult to pull together in the very short amount of time we had.  In our joint session,  we had all the usual plus a Wood Badge Beading. If you've ever been around for a beading ceremony you know that add at least 20 minutes to the agenda. As I'm working my ticket, I understand the importance of beading. But when your only working on an hour a week, it makes it tough. We also had announce ments about training, etc.  tha gave us about 3 minutes for the theme.  As all of us non district folk knew in our heart the district does have secret meetings. I was invited by the District Commissioner  and My UC  to drop by have a bean nacho and a tea. It wasn't really that big of deal  the Boy scout staff planned out who had what topic through December.  They started to go into the new year, but were reminder that our one district will become three seperate districts in January with new roundtables and the whole nine yards. 

Ok so we know  that we  are being redrawn other than that we do not have many details yet. Here's how this huge news got out. First some time in August, the DE said it was going to happen as of January 1, but everything was in the air. Then I went to TDC and one of the guys there said 2 districts were getting chpped in half, one of them being mine,  and the new districts were like pie slices around the metro area.  I think I was at the a district training meeting  when some one offered  the center point was  around  the intersection of I-35 and I-37. Then over the last two nights  it came out the new districts would  have no more than 40 units in each that means  my district which has 137 units  will be no less than 3 districts with a small area going into another district.  I am going to have to go to the district committee meeting this month.  With  not enough people to run the current district committees people are going to have to step up.

Speaking of Committee Meeting, I have one next week. I better get cracking on the agenda tonight.

Back to School Pack Meeting

Friday we had our first pack meeting since school started.  We invited all of our prospects. We had 3 that joined, one brought back the application from our school'sMeet the teacher night.  That is a little less than 20%  rate of return  on the parents that signed in that night. I think that is  about half of my Centennial unit goal.

Otherwise back to the Pack meeting.  We started late by ten minutes or so. But we wrapped up at about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  I always try to throw in a couple * sparklers*, run ons, quick skits, etc. to the meeting. This month I had our lone tiger  try the Wire for the cubmaster run on. He was not very enthusiastic about it. It flopped horriblly. I had a Webelos 1 doing the "Taking my case to court" run on and it worked much better. I'm sure our pack meetings  don't have the entertainment value that Cubmaster Chris' meetings have, yet we try to have more fun each time. We scarfed all of our returning scouts and handed out mucho cub scout belt bling and webelos' loot.

I warmed the parents on the the budget and popcorn sales as the sale starts the day after our next pack meeting. I still have to figure out our order on show and sale. We allowed our fledging Charter Organization to sell nachos and raffle tickets at the meeting.  Our Charter organization is a whole other post.  All I have to saynow  is thank you Plano Pack 754 for doing it first or at least before us.

Our School night for Scouting is tonight. I'll try and post tomorrow.