Recruiting and Goals

We are in the midst of our recruiting drive for Fall 2008. As I have been sidelined in one of my recruiting schools, I had to make a presence at a pre-rally night event or "Meet the Teacher" night. My objective at this event was to soothe my parents who have kids attending the school. My DE ninja'd the school from my recruiting plan for this fall. For those not familar with the term Ninja'd, in many online games it refers to someone swiping reward, loot, booty, etc. from the deesrving player while they are distracted.

Either my DE pulled the wool over my eyes on this or he had the wool pulled over his eyes. The DE says that the unit he ninja'd my school for has 6 scouts. The unit leader at the event said 21 to one person and 17 around me. I am not, at this point, assigning any blame to anyone.

Being the A-1 high speed, low drag, goal oriented scout leader that I am, I took our council /districts offer for School Night for Scouting training. It would appear that the things I heard in the training they did not or they did not attend the training I did. One of the top things they said was get people to sign in. If they stop and talk, they'll sign in. If they sign in you can follow-up and see if they joined or if they did not, and why. The Council even provides 2 copy carbonless forms for this. It sounds simple, right. I guess not. My top recruiter/leader provided the other unit these forms and they did not use them. I was like, why? Why bother showing up? Why bother trying to help? Why? Why? Why?

Rather than rant, Here is how I feel you should set up recruiting at events not specfically setup as recruiting events. I like this method as it is not a high pressure tactic, people come and get information, you allow them to sign up if they want to, otherwise they can leave. This gives you the chance to set a good and lasting impression.

1. Ask for a great location where people can see you. Either at the entry door, or at an area where everyone must walk past you at least once.
2. Setup your area in a fashion that works. If you have a table next to the wall use the science project display boards. Take any thing that a boy would think was bling like and or fun. For cubs this means, Derby cars, Regatta boats, Space derby rockets, have the pack buy a cub scout belt and every belt loop just for the recruiting display. Remember if they can touch it they will want it. If the see it they will remember it. if you tell them about it, you have lost them. Take you pack flag, If you are a new pack make ribbons to hang from it. Above all remember this is the only first impression you can make.
3. Hand out as much information as you can to the kids and parents, if you don't normally make a Pack newsletter, make one for this. you can use the Cub Scout Pack templates off the national council site. http://scouting.org/cubscouts/resources/newslettertemplate.aspx This should include everything you can think of for the next 90 days in your upcoming activities section. If scouts are busy, they are tired. If scouts are tired, they had fun.
4. Record the name of the boy and parent, their phone number and / or email address. Even if they are not old enough or too old to participate. If they are too young, tell them about all the great things they will get to do when they join in the spring. Summer camps, pool parties, baseball games, anything you do each summer. If they are older than your program send them information on units they can participate in and send their information to your district so they can have the right units contact them.
5. Follow-up! The best person from your unit to contact them is their den leader. Make sure you communicate the next few meetings with them. This is somewhat presumptuous, but it will work. The best way to tell or sell someone about scouting is to show them scouting.

We all setup Centennial Unit goals for recruiting. The council will measure it for you at the end of the year, But it is up to you to track and keep progress on your goal. Only you can measure the steps of a boy asking about cub scouts and becoming a cub scout.

There are things I missed or skipped here, but this should get you through a school fair or meet the teacher night. I hope to blog some more about recruiting at the Scout Night.

Training, What do you need?

The night I was told I was going to be Comittee Chairman, I was trained as a den leader and nothing more.
That same month, I went to Committee Chair Training. The funny thing was it was the same training as Cubmaster. Do I think it was adequate? Not really. Didn't cover much except that the cubmaster ran the boys and the chairman ran the leaders. So while I know what the cubmaster knows, I'll still go to a new cubmaster course sometime.

What do you really need to know? Now this is my humble opinion, you need to have an idea of what everyone does. I know of no better way than to attend training for every position. Is it overkill? I hope so.

I want to focus on this duty in the job description: If the Cubmaster is unable to serve, assume active direction of the pack until a successor is recruited and registered. If you read the Cubmaster job description, you will find that he needs to be ready to fill in for any den leader's that can't serve. He also needs to be ready to fill in for you. This goes back to my earlier point that you really should be aware of the duties of every position and if possible be trained for that position. What better way to be aware of the duties of the position than to be trained for it. Many cubmaster's are selected as they can't or don't feel they have the availability to be Den leader's. Same is true of many Committee Chair's. I venture that the Cubmaster and Committee Chair need be the most available and most active members of the Pack. In many ways you and the Cubmaster are the glue that holds things together when they want to fall apart.

Now on to the regular blog posts.

Agenda, Agenda, Agenda, almost like announcements.

So what does my agenda look like...

Here's the outline:

Opening
Invocation / Prayer
Team builder
Reports
Cubmaster / ACM
What is going on with the pack, needs, concerns, etc....
Advancement Chair
Normally just the date for advancements to be turned in.
Activities Chair
Reports status of activities for the next 120 days. who's chairing, what they need etc.
Tresury report
Last months ballance, Expeditures, Current balance
Pack trainer
What training is needed, when is the next training, I may work in enhancements in the future.
Popcorn Kernel if needed.

Business
Old Business
Second reading of decisions, tabled items etc.
New business
Items brought up in reports. Needs from the Treasury. Items we may know are coming down the pipline.

Annoucements
Closing

Taking over the World of my cub scout pack

So now that I had the position what do I do?

Scouters need training... so I went of to training. I was a bit shocked that the Committee Chair recieved Cubmaster training. Is this right?



I needed to watch a couple of committee meetings before really digging in as my old pack just winged it. No committee Meetings so I needed to see what they expected. Spetember and October I watched.



Ok the current committee meeting was just random items listed on a sheet of paper produced the night of the meeting. That has got to change. So off I go to Google. I stumbled across a template for a troop committee meeting with Woobadge across the top of it. This has to be good. So I downloaded it and set off to make it my own. Derned if I can find where I found it now. So you're out of luck if you want the wood badge one. I saw that this was basically broken into two sections. Section one of the meeting was reports from the various chairpersons. Section 2 was the actual business of the meeting.



So I created my first agenda for November, the meeting was canceled for lack of attendance. Argh! Ok lets go with Decmebr then. Redo the agenda... way too many things to talk about in a timely fashion. We made it through that meeting. And I have used that agenda for the next 6 meetings.

How did I become Chairman of the Board for Cub Scout Pack XXX

Well the story starts off with very little scouting experience as a boy. Probablly more informal than formal. Formally a year here and year there. Enough of that, So we time warp ahead to 1999.

It was April in 1999 that My son was born. I knew that he was going to be in Scouts just as soon as he went into second grade. Another time warp to 2005.

What is going on here? He's in first grade Scouts starts in second grade. My first rude awakening.

Ok so I'm a tiger parent. Then the leader moved and I'm the only returning parent. Automatically I'm the wolf Leader. Whew, I made it though that year. Well we moved summer 2007, just far enough I wasn't going to be able to make it back and forth to the old school. Ok so school night is coming up. Well I think it would presumptuous of me to wear my leader's uniform, I buy a blue and gold polo from the scout shop.

Now, I see that was my undoing. I walked into Scout night. and instantly the Cubmaster sees the shirt and starts the full court press. I must admit I was looking for a place to be a leader, but THE LEADER. Well at least I have until January to work this all out. In the mean time I'm registered as an assistant den leader.

Hah! I start taking over meetings in November.

The start of a Committee Chairmans blog.

It has to start somewhere.

Here are my plan's for the next few posts.

1. How did I get here. Prior scouting, that fateful night in 2007.
2. Taking over the World. How I transitioned in to the Chairman of the board.
3. What I use to run the show.
4. What training I think you need and was any of it adequate..
5. Regular posts about issues and committee meetings.