From: Dave Loomis (dloomis@NH.ULTRANET.COM)
Date: Tue Sep 05 2000 - 16:58:13 CDT
Recruiting youth should start as soon as the troop has its last
membership drive, by sending exciting news releases to your local
paper. If you are the unit publicity committee member go to the local
papers and ask them for their Handbook for Stringers. The fact that you
have ANY familiarity with this term automatically establishes you as a
professional person in their eyes, as most folks just off the street
don't even know what a stringer is (someone who writes solicited or
unsolicited articles that the paper may or may not use.) If they don't
have such an animal, ask to speak to the editor responsible for human
interest material and ask him/her what s/he is looking for in HI
stories.
General guidelines are - Double spaced, typed.
Proof read for grammatical and spelling errors.
Telling Who, What, Where, When, and Why, in an eye appealing manner.
Using specific accomplishments, frequently with pictures showing Scout
Bill Jones setting up his tent at the XYZ Camp Ground for the ABD
District Camporee on 23 October.
The pix will be black and white, properly exposed and focused, actually
showing something that relates to the story. ONE shot of the 1,500
scouts is permissible to show the scale of the event, but keep it to
one. Other shots should show Scout Billy tying flies, knots, his
shoelaces, etc., or Scout Jim racing towards the finish line flipping
his pancake in the fry pay he is carrying. In short, action shots that
round out the story. Include suggested captions with each shot...or not
as the editor indicates s/he wants. You gotta know more about what
Billy or Jim was doing that day than a caption writer deep in the bowels
of the paper.
If you do this every time the unit does anything, you will get some
notice every few weeks to a month, and by next year boys will begin
dropping by asking how they can join, especially of you put a short
squib that Troop/Pack 123 meets Thursday nites at XYZ civic/school at
7:30P.M. In short, if you have a program and you publicize this program
the boys will come to join YOU, you don't have to search for them.
n.b. Most folks like pix of their kids. Most folks don't bring cameras
to Pack Meetings or Courts of Honor. If you select a publicity person
who has a 35 mm camera and is willing to take pictures of scouts
receiving their awards, and bring the SECOND print to the next meeting,
nicely arranged on a sheet of poster board, by picture number, so s/he
can take orders for additional prints to be delivered the very next
meeting, you can get a self sustaining photo program going that will
insure the historian always has pix of each event the unit participated
in. Locally prints go for about $0.10 to reprint and can easily sell
for $0.25 to a proud parent. If there is only one request for a
specific reprint, sell the second copy, right then. Else, bring the
reprints the next meeting and collect the money. IF the money becomes a
problem, grab the money now and bring the prints later - gives the
parents more incentive to return. In an active unit, the $015
difference between cost and sales price will continue to fund the
program for a long time, PLUS give you shots for the paper. n.b. You
CAN get B$W prints from color negs but they are a bit less well focused,
blurry.
Dave
IK wrote:
>
> I am looking for something to put in the school paper to recruit Boy Scouts.
> Does anyone have something flash they have used?
>
> How do other troops out there successfully recruit Boy Scout age kids?
>
> @*0*@
> Irene
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Dave Loomis mailto:dloomis@nh.ultranet.com
164 Tuttle Lane (603) 431 5342
Greenland, NH 03840
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