fred8033

If your troop is like most troops, your real challenge will not be switching to official BSA publications. The real challenge would be changing troop practices to meet the scouting program as documented by the BSA.

#1 Keep it brief. Anything too long just won't be read.

#2 Document carefully that which is unique to your troop

- practice

---- where and when the troop meets

- Money

---- dues, prorating, boys life subscriptions, ...

---- how fundraiser profits are divided

---- when money is refunded

---- if and when you pay for milage

---- reimbursement process / forms / accounting

- policies

---- cell phone policies

---- soda pop policies

---- knife policies (no machettees and such)

- discipline

---- IMHO, ... not really needed beyond simple friendly statement about scout oath and law ...

---- what if things break ... who's liable.

- gear

---- packing list / don't bring list

---- tents (who's are used, can scouts use their own,

- expectations

---- parents (support, camping, support, roles, ...)

---- scouts (oath and law, please don't document attendance percentages ....)

#3 Add a short executive summary guide for parents that quickly points to sources of more information. Best practice is to google until you find one you like. Then borrow and change to match your troop.

#4 Document the sources of the official information

#5 Put copies of the BSA official publications in your troop library

#6 For everything else ... usually redocumenting only raises more questions and adds confusion. If you do need to do document though, you could have paragraph headers such as "Advancement - Service projects". Then the first thing, reference the source and include the quote. For example....

Per BSA "Advancement committee policies and procedures" (BSA publication 33088, ISBN 978-0-8395-3088-6)....

Second Class Rank

For the Second Class rank, a Scout must participate

in a service project or projects approved by his

Scoutmaster. The time of service must be a minimum

of one hour. This project prepares a Scout for

the more involved service projects he must perform

for the Star, Life, and Eagle Scout ranks.

Star and Life Ranks

...

...

...

#7 Or you could approach it as a FAQ section that quickly references the official source.

#8 Or have it as an online document with hyperlinks to the official sources for further reading.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

ANNUAL PLANNING SESSION

- Our big focus is reflection and making improvements. Similar to STOP, START, CONTINUE. What isn't working? What should we start doing? What should we continue doing. Another form of Roses, Thorns and Buds.

- Much of our year is cookie cutter. We try to work in a little variety.

- We try to get each den to step up a level to reflect that their kids are more mature. Webelos don't want to do the same things they did as Tigers.

- We try to work in service projects during the year. One in fall. one in spring. Two or three during the summer. Make them fun too!

PACK CAMP OUTS

- Our fall and spring (june) camp outs are FREE. Parent's have already spent enough and the # one thing we want is to get the kids to camp. And parents need to pay $5 per car to get into the park. Pack budgets $250 to $300 per camp out for food, location and equipment. Parents are to bring a dish to share.

- Our focus is getting them to the camp! We try to work in den advancements and awards. That usually makes parents get off the sofa.

I think BeAScout.org is just not promoted enough or correctly. We've received dozens of calls over the years from our council unit promotion web site.

http://AdventureIsCalling.org

Not a single call from anyone using BeAScout.org. But then again, the council does not promote BeAScout.org and has for many years promoted the AdventureIsCalling.org site.

Plus, the old version of BeAScout.org was hard to use, slow and clunky. The AdventureIsCalling.org is quick and also includes unit mapping if you punch in your home address. Try it with zip code 55125. For a map, search using "1584 Hadley Avenue North, Oakdale, MN 55128"

I don't really care one way or another ... and I definitely prefer almost any other tent over the BSA canvas wall tents

... BUT ... as long as our summer camp provides free tents and does not provide a significant discount if we don't use them, why would we use our own? It's basic economics.

Our troop uses troop owned tents (Eureka Timberline 4xt ... moving to the Timberline SQ 4xt model). They cost $250 to $270 each. 40 scouts. 20 tents. Seven nights at camp? We would have at least one damaged beyond repair; two or three significantly damanged and all experiencing signficant wear. Plus, then getting them dried out and collected once we got back home. Considering this, using camp tents is about $400 dollars cheaper for the troop .... probably more. And it's less headache and cheaper to use camp owned tents.

And yes ... every BSA canvas tent I've slept in leaks and is too hot. Scouts routinely bring large tarps to hang over them and to put under them. If these tents were gone, there is one thing I'd really miss. After a good storm, it's always fun to see the contents of several tents blown completely out of the tent.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

I posted to another thread discussing this topic.

I've read much about failing units and the scouter suggestions how to fix them. There's always good suggestions, but I keep thinking the heart of the issue is being missed.

#1 Unit commisioners. Yeah right. It's always brought up. Over the last ten years, I've been involved in three units. When the pack I just joined was in trouble, I asked multiple times for a UC. It was like pulling teeth to get anyone at all to show up to help when the pack was on life support. I did get a professional staffer to visit but that was five years ago. I have not seen hide nor hair of a UC or anyone else since then. Or even any professional non-unit leader visiting our pack.

I'm sure some UC do a great job, but I've yet to see a single one. I've heard of several who stepped far beyond the UC role with the units they visited and caused problems. As far as I'm concerned ... and my apologies to any successful UC corps out there .... The UC concept is fundamentally and permanently broken. BSA at the national level needs to re-evaluate the UC goals and re-engineer the program. As it is now, the UC program is a joke.

SUGGESTION - Replace the UC corps with a sharing concept. Require each committee chair and each unit leader (CM, SM, ...) to separately visit another unit's pack/troop meeting and another unit's committee meeting ... every year. The DE would assign visits to share good examples and create mentoring between unit leaders. Never visiting the same unit year after year. Never flooding a unit with too many visitors. Ideally, each unit is visited twice each year; once at a pack/troop meeting and once at a planning meeting. As an incentive, add it as a requirement for the adult leader recognition knots.

#2 Scouter training and job descriptions forget the social side of scouting. The units that figure it out on their own are successful. Those that don't are always begging for volunteers. It's critical to get the adults to socialize, become friends and enjoy each other's company. The goal is to bond and make the volunteering fun, fulfilling and not a burden. Heck, if it works .... you make life long friends. The best part is that people will volunteer to help a friend without even being asked.

SUGGESTION - The committee chair (or another position) should be tasked with getting the adult leaders to build friendships and to bond for a common goal. And no, not to the point of "en flagrante indelicato." The easiest way is to invite everyone out for a quick drink after every monthly committee meeting. Or play a few games of hearts, cribbage, or other at camp EVERY NIGHT when possible.

#3 I think some units see how busy everyone is and they pair down the program. It's common sense, but opposite of what creates a successful program. The more busy and rich the pack schedule, the more families you will recruit and retain and the more volunteers you will get. Parents want their kids busy with things that develop their values, skills, friends and gets them out of the house. ... and affordable .... People want to volunteer to be part of a successful program. Most importantly, if the pack / troop doesn't provide a rich fulling program, something else will (sports, karate, ....).

#4 Every unit needs to tap the scouting background of their parents. Our pack has thrived as we have convinced our Eagle scout parents to step up to help.

I had a similar situation a few years ago when our house was assigned to a new school, our former Tiger / new Wolf cub joined their pack. I volunteered in the fall and all the leaders quit at the B&G, a natural transition time. I didn't realize the pack had trouble. The adults were burnt out from starting a new pack and just waiting for someone to step forward to continue the pack. They felt abandoned by their council. The pack dropped to just below twenty kids from 60+. We are back at 60+ cubs now, but it took three or so years.

From my experience...

- AT-LARGE CALLS FOR VOLUNTEERS DOESN'T WORK. It's too much like using guilt trips. It's a self-defeating method and destructive to the mood and moral of the pack.

- SIMPLIFY YOUR CALENDAR until things turn around. Do the critical stuff. Pack meetings. Den meetings. Attend summer camp. Keep it simple. KEEP IT FUN. Let the other things go. You might even consider shutting down the pack (except attending summer camps) and starting fresh in the fall.

- DROP THE ACTIVITY if you don't have a volunteer... including canceling the pinewood derby, pack family overnights, special events and even Blue and Gold.

- CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES

----- EXAMPLE: If you don't have enough people to run a big Blue and Gold, just find a simple fun spot (open area tables at a community center, indoor park, outdoor park, ... ideally free) get a few pizzas and wa-la you have a blue and gold banquet. Just find a way to get everyone together in a quiet corner for a few minutes for awards, cross over and normal pack meeting stuff)

----- EXAMPLE: If you don't have enough people to run your own pinewood derby, your pack attends the district pinewood derby. Warn the district why you are doing it though. Just say that essentially because of small membership numbers, your pack can't run their own derby and that your pack qualifies all your cubs to advance to districts. When your pack grows, start doing your own derby again.

HERE ARE THE TWO KEYS that I saw helping our pack recover to the best pack I've ever seen.

- Get the adults to socialize, become friends and enjoy each other's company. The goal is to bond and make the volunteering fun, fulfilling and not a burden. Heck, if it works .... you make life long friends. The best part is that people will volunteer to help a friend without even being asked. The easiest way is to invite everyone out for a quick drink after every monthly committee meeting.

- (this goes opposite to what I said earlier) The more busy and full the pack schedule, the more families you will recruit and retain and the more volunteers you will get. Parents want their kids busy with things that develop their values, skills, friends and gets them out of the house. People want to volunteer to be part of a successful program. Our pack tries to have a pack meeting each month, one or two den meetings per den and at least once major pack event each month. Sep - Family overnight camp. Oct - Halloween party. Nov - Volunteer service event. Dec - Varied. Jan - Ice skating party. Jan - Sledding event. Feb - council day camp. Feb Blue and Gold. march - pinewood derby. April & May - varied. June - family pack overnight. Jun/Jul/Aug - School garden cleanup nights, summer camps, pack picnic... By varied I mean, pack visits to planitariums, magic shows, nature centers, train museums and almost anything we can find.

I'm the pack committee chair and in my 20th year of marriage to the current Tiger Den leader. It does cause marital stress especially during committee meetings when I ask her to save her comments for later in the agenda or for the next meeting because the agenda item is closed or because she's exceeded her speaking time. .... Hey. It's been 20 years. Gotta look for excitement where you can find it.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

"Only need 1 registered leader present at all times that has YPT training"

Not to nit pick but .... where did you find "present at all times"? Camping groups are often split between different activities and locations. While I absolutely fully support your statement, I don't see any such rule in BSA. An applicable example is that two adults are required for any camp out, at least once registered and one parent. One must be YPT trained. Whoops, we didn't realize the waffle mix required eggs. There's a gas station 1/2 mile away. There's nothing that says the leader can't go get the eggs. No different than the leader visiting a ranger station, a shower facility or taking an afternoon hike. It's a judgement call, but I don't see anything saying "present at all times".

Okay. I apologize in advance for taking this beyond the original "cell phone policy contradicts family policy" topic....

I always wonder how many youth are driven out of scouting by arbitrary rules created from the attitudes of adult leaders.

At least at the local unit level, the scout has the option and time to find another troop. My eldest son had no such option when attended the 2013 national jamboree. He was put under such gung-ho, starch-and-iron-the-underwear leaders that it ruined the NJ for him and he's still trying to decide if he wants to be part of scouting. They were creating arbitrary rules left and right. He's a hard worker and never had trouble under our 19+ year scoutmaster. But at the jamboree, he, like half his jamboree troop .... ASPL and PLs included, was threatened with one-more-incident and you go home.

Too many leaders think the Scout Law "obedient" is a synonym for "passive" and "submissive". It's not! It's about doing what's right including fighting for your own dignity and rights.

It gets down to what type of men are we trying to create from these scouts? Spineless followers or men with character and a backbone. What type of leaders are we trying to create? Prison guard leaders that beat down their charges with arbitrary rules or men that people want to follow through their example and capabilities.

As for cell phones and other similar rules... if the state does not outlaw it ... if BSA does not ban it... if the camp does not list it... why create yet another rule? Use it as a teaching opportunity and not as a criminal incident. We're trying to build up these kids, not beat them down.

And no.... I won't send my kid to another national jamboree unless I personally know the leaders and have seen them in action. I'll suggest they save their money for high adventures like Sea Base, Philmont, BWCA, backpacking trips or other grand adventures. Or even The Summit not during a jamboree. Really sad, but it was a waste of money paid for a really bad experience.

For someone totally new to scouting, the scouting program is hard to grasp. A short five to ten page guide won't be enough. Plus there's the challenge of how many to print (5, 10, 20). It's hard to predict. (and most will be lost, damaged or thrown out before they are ever read)

This is our plan.

#1 At join scouting night .... in paper ... say two double sided pages .... give them a "QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE" that has a pack calendar, contact information, local resources (pack web site, email addresses, scout shop, ...) and a strongly emphasized link to the pack "parent guide".

#2 We collect from each parent both a membership application and one or more email addresses.

#3 We send them a welcome email with a reference to our pack parent guide (unsecured) and a username and password how to get to the secured content. We again emphasize reading the pack parent guide.

Those parents that are interested will read / skim the guide at their leisure. Those that aren't interested at that moment can find it later when they are ready to read it. Here's a link to our parent guide. I really like it, but as with all guides, it could use improvement.

http://woodbury56.mypack.us/aboutus

Thanks for the input.... I received the pile-o-stuff from our troop treasurer last night. Nothing has been enetered after July 2010. Apparently, he had trouble with a computer crash and during recovery he had other trouble such as having to re-enter a scout year because he re-closed the previous scout year records and it reformatted the next year records with new initial values. Also, he showed how TroopLedger works. I was not impressed. Clunky old MFC interface. Fine for 1995. Poor for now. Problems entering dates in the account date field. Small dialog data entry windows don't resize causing alot of scrolling through long lists of scout names and adult leader names.

I'm going to try GnuCash first. If it does not work, QuickBooks.

- Scouts will be "customers" in GnuCash or QuickBooks.

- We'll keep our "chart of accounts" as simple as possible. No sub-accounts on a per-person basis. no sub-accounts on a specific economic event basis.

- We will have an account in the "chart of accounts" as a liability called something like "Scout accounts" or "Scout savings" or "Scout credit" or "Scout money".

- We will use "classes" to record specific economic events (a specific camp, a specific fundraiser, a specific equipment purchase).

- We will create an individual Excel spreadsheet for every camp out, event, fundraiser AND FOR EACH DEPOSIT (check #, amount, purpose, credited scout, family on check if different). We'll "securely" store these so that everyone can't see them, but that key members can see them. We'll use these as recovery points and to easily understand each event. Then, we'll report out of GnuCash or QuickBooks to see that records match.

Thanks for the advice and feed back everyone!

Thanks for the advice.

We use spreadsheets for our pack to manage $25,000 going thru checking it works fine. BUT... the pack doesn't have scout accounts. That's the challenge. Without scout accounts, spreadsheets would be fine. As we transition treasurers and recover records, here's our current direction....

- We'll create an individual spreadsheet for every camp out, event, fundraiser AND FOR EACH DEPOSIT (check #, amount, purpose, credited scout, family on check if different). We'll "securely" store these so that everyone can't see them, but that key members can see them.

- If we use TroopLedger, we need to start thinking like TroopLedger.

- If we use QuickBooks, we create a chart of accounts to organize finances. We record scouts and leaders as "Customers". We record events (camps, specific fundraisers) as "Classes".

- Right now, the application choices are TroopLedger, QuickBooks and GnuCash. I did not find any on-line applications that could deal with this.

I had replied early because I saw the topic fall far down the visible radar. Anything older than a day on this forum seems to be pretty quiet. I probalby shouldn't have done that, but I hot looking for info.

Any unit treasurer's out there?

Our web site vendor http://soarol.com has an on-line event sign up. We use it to track who's going. People can sign up, but only the event admins / web site admins can correct the attenance numbers and mark people as paid. We use the comments field to clarify things. It also does automatic costing with three price levels.

At camp, we event out the event sign up (has phone numbers on it). Later, we update the on-line version from the paper. Works fine. Not great, but gets the job done.

Our troop is in recovery mode. Membership and such is fine. The big issue is that our treasurer just surrendered being treasurer after insisting he could do it for the last eight months to a year and without doing much. So now, we need to re-create records, balance books and get things straightened out.

QuickBooks or TroopLedger ????

I have both. QuickBooks because of my business. TroopLedger because of previous treasurer. He said it's not easy to use though. I'd like to produce key financial statements for the troop, scout account reports and event specific profit/loss statements.

I've seen other discussions on this, but I could use more info. Can someone make a good argument for using one versus the other?

(I try to avoid posting because I probably have more opinions and thoughts than I have knowledge and experience. LOL...)

The one thing that took me years to understand is something that's pretty obvious. Don't forget the fun. Games. Songs. Skits. Jokes. Teach the adults to plan in lots and lots of fun.

If I were teaching BALOO, I'd add

- plan in the fun to every event

- include games to burn energy

- include the parents (for cub scouts) in the games and the songs

- (if the parents are playing too) take the parents aside before games to warn them...

--- #1 Don't get too competitive. We're trying to raise the pride, self-confidence the spirit of our kids.

--- #2 Help the kids in small subtal ways.

--- #3 Don't get too physical. These kids weigh 100 to 200 pounds less than us.

--- #4 Don't make it obvious ... but we want the kids to win.

If I were teaching BALOO, I'd teach like Woodbadge in that I'd run the BALOO class like a cub scout event. Start the class with a 10 minute game of kickball as a gathering game and to get to know each other. As people arrive, don't stop the game but put them in the game immediately. It breaks the ice to let them know it's okay to spend scouting time playing games. Laughing and having fun. When the majority of the formal class objectives are done, do another game. Burn some energy. Then resume with the remaining class elements.

My 4th grade son started protesting den meetings. His den leader and I discussed this and now we're working in at least one game into each meeting. The last meeting had a twenty minute parents-vs-kids kickball game. We've done mushroom ball and others too. It made a huge difference. Kids want to go to their den meetings. Plus friendships are built by doing fun things together.