Re: Recruiting in Schools

>how I can get into the school where my pack meets to advertise when
>the principal wont let anyone

We have a similar but somewhat opposite problem.

In our case our school doesn't let the district do anything. Fliers won't make
it and the DE told me this school is very "reserved" .
But, Pack 6 never had any problem. We get rooms when we need them,
even on short notice. The school distributes pack recruiting fliers and the
secretary tells me how wonderfull scouting is. (The other pack which has
a few children from that school is treated well also)

Now this is my theory: It matters who asks. I guess my pack is not an
anonymous organization recruiting their children for mysterious
purposes. It rather is an organization with children from their school
lead by parents from their school. Non threatening, small and
cooperating and known to exclude nobody.

(In truth I am quite happy those council fliers don't make it to "our"
school. I expect the fliers made by the local packs to be more personalized
and the dates when meetings are held to be more accurate)

----

Let me make a few other remarks to a council membership chairman.

Please listen to your packs. Ask them what they want and what they
need.

In my case I love using council fliers and and posters with personalized
printing in some area.
I do not like the council round up night. We had council roundup night
simultaneously at all schools. That means at a time which is not
conveniant to us (and two weeks after the right recruiting time) we
had to split up two recruiting teams. Schools got confused which
meeting is what. Parents got confused which meeting is what. And
finally, the council recruiting night brought us 0 (zero) new cubs.

Do the timing right! Our council had two tiger cub recruiting nights
(one for each school of my pack) in May. Nobody who signed up
for tiger cubs in September was from those May meetings.

I think the council would have done better (it actually did) by spending
its efforts in creating packs in areas which don't have cub scouts then
in interfering with pack recruiting efforts.

One problem with tiger cub recruiting is that the leader training happens
after the tiger cub recruiting meeting is over. Our tiger cub coordinator
gets his/her training usually when 80% of the job is already done.

What I would love to see is some real quantitive data why and how
boys have been recruited. My pack is too small a sample to gather the
data and it needs to be gathered of a period longer then a year. If I
would know how the boys were recruited, I would spend my recruiting
efforts in the areas which are more successfull. I asked the participants
on a leader training why their son joined cub scouts and why their
son still is a cub scout. The results I got were very different from my
excpectations. Most those boys had one parents who was in scouting and
were not simply recruited by peers or recruiting nights. But my
statistical sample had a few methodical mistakes. It was asking those
people who were leaders, at the beginning of their leader career.
It is by the wy difficult to distinguish why somebody
-listened to the recruiting pitch
-from why the boy joined
-from why is the boy still a member
-how long did the boy stay in scouting
also, peoples memory fades.

Good luck recruiting
Chris

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