00Eagle

I've seen a few oddities where one town was deemed an "island" of one district ("District A") surrounded by another district ("District B"). The charter was held by a church in that town and there were no other charters in the town. The troop actually met in another town within the contiguous boundaries of District A which is why they did the boundary shift. If your chartering organization serves a wide area spanning council boundaries and just has a mailing address in XYZ territory, this is more likely to be workable. BTW is this a Jewish unit? 613 = the number of commandments in

A funeral home two towns over charters a troop.

Jedi Mind Trick I learned from our last SM, who learned it from another SM...: Never offer the scouts an open choice like that. If it's time to pick a new troop t-shirt design and you need to pick a color, SM says "alright scouts Red, Green, or Blue." The scouts settle on a color rather quickly. Next year change the color choices slightly. "OK scouts last year's shirt was Red, do you want Gray, Blue or Green." We do patrol names similarly: when the patrols are reorganized (we always seem to have two) the scoutmaster picks 6 new patrol patches. Patrol A picks from three choices, Patr

An old English scout (parent of one of my cubs when I was in college) told us* that a popular scout fundraiser was called "Bob a Job." The English shilling (£0.05 in old money) was called a "bob." The fundraiser was basically going door-to-door to hire yourself out to do an odd job for a shilling which you then donated to your troop. I believe it was phased out many years ago due to youth protection concerns. Perhaps @@Cambridgeskip and @@ianwilkins and our other British posters can comment *=an old Bear requirement was to talk to some one who used to be a scout and learn ho

Off topic.

YES!!! The BSA has no problem issuing a training syllabus for a course. But not everyone is a skilled presenter, and worse, even if you can present, it doesn't mean you can turn a syllabus into a presentation. I'll give ILST as an example. An SM's supposed to do ILST once a year for his junior leaders. It's supposed to be a prerequisite for NYLT. Unfortunately, there are several problems: Not every scoutmaster knows of this (and worse some aren't "fans" of NYLT either) It's not a JTE requirement Not every scoutmaster is a gifted presenter All BSA gives you is a syllabus. No scripts

STOP! You tell them "I will help you make it happen." Your PLC should be the voice of the change. If you wanted to impose stricter uniform standards on the troop you could have used Jedi Mind Tricks and asked the PLC "What can WE do as a troop to encourage wearing of the uniform?" and guided them to better uniforming. As it turns out, they want more uniforming already so the same question (with out mind tricks) can be asked. See what the scouts come up with. My current troop has used a scout-originated, scout-conducted uniform inspection at the start of each meeting. Points are

That's not a bad idea. I already mentioned being a commissioner to a pack and a troop. The troop's SM and ASM wore the Expedition Hat ("Indiana Jones") for "undress" occasions (regular meetings and outings) but had bought campaign hats to wear to Courts of Honor. "Cool," I thought and got a used one off of ebay. Wore it to the pack's Blue and Gold dinner. Word got back to me third hand that maybe that was a little over the top.

Yup, we were the DE's volunteer henchmen. Every district problem: FOS, membership, etc. was brought up at commissioner meetings. I think some councils (Cradle of Liberty is one) started assigning Quality Unit Executives to districts to act as paid commissioners, I guess freeing the actual DE up for fundraising and boy talks.

I don't think training will help, only experience. National likes to think that anyone can be trained as a commissioner and visit units and fill the 1:3 ratio. In reality, unless you're experienced as an SM/ASM you don't know what to look for. I relied on what I saw in my two troops growing up and two troops I helped in college to know what was right/wrong and what worked/didn't. I've seen solid patrol method (patrol competition, patrol chuckboxes, patrol offices filled and functioning [the patrol grubmaster would actually buy the food the patrol picked, the patrol QM kept track of and mai

I agree it's broke until all of the stakeholders can agree what the commissioners should do. What the BSA wants: a dedicated corps of volunteers carrying out the Unit Service function of a local district. National wants at least one commissioner for every 3 units and wants the commissioner to hold no other role in scouting. They want the commissioner to act as a coach and mentor and to uphold BSA standards but not quite at a "council cop" or "uniform police" level. Commissioners are supposed to visit their assigned units once a month (not necessarily in person or at a unit meeting) and

@@Krampus you're not from New Jersey are you? My Wood Badge Scoutmaster is big into horror films and monster movies and was talking about the Krampus and doing "Krampus Night" years before the recent film was announced.

I hadn't seen the code list, but knew it had to exist. It's how they report chartering percentages nationally, e.g. this many Elks lodges, this many Catholic parishes,... So I googled for it.

Who knows. I'm sure a resourceful DE can figure it out if he smells a new unit and new members.

I think that if the prospective charter partner does not have a recognized "code," National level approval will be required to allow the unit to charter. If the CO falls under an existing code, it can be approved locally. Codes are on PDF page 131 (printed page number 125) http://www.scouting.org/filestore/membership/pdf/522-925_wb.pdf Edited to add: I was trying to remember where I had heard that. it turns out it's the last paragraph of the revised chartering agreement (http://www.scouting.org/filestore/membership/pdf/524-182_web.pdf) All new organizations applying for a ch

I'd submit the award form. The form is first processed by the local Council Advancement Committee. I'm sure they'd rather look at one of these forms than an Eagle appeal ;-) Once there, they can decide whether recognition is warranted: a local council Certificate of Merit or forwarding to National for higher awards (National Certificate of Merit, medals).

I'm 33 and have one but seldom wear it. I got one back in 2012 when I was newly-appointed commissioner to a local troop and the SM and sole ASM would wear them to courts of honor while wearing the BSA expedition hat for "undress" occasions. I decided to get one too and kept it as I was absorbed into the troop as ASM (before retiring for a bit and then coming back as committee). Unfortunately, the SM and lead ASM have stepped down and I'm the only one left with a campaign hat.

Another reference here: http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2014/09/05/patrol-method/ You're preaching to the choir here. It's an awkward term and does not contribute to esprit de corps like "Senior Scout," "Leadership Corps," or "Venture Patrol" did. One in-district troop (which served a surrogate "big brother" to the troop here in town) has a venture patrol that made their own "Troop XYZ Venture Patrol" jackets as if they were a varsity sports team. Not a good choice but it helps eliminate the "overloading" (a computer science term) of the venture name. It was a little hard (almost a

I heard about it here: http://listserv.besteffort.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1507&L=scouts-l&P=R18303&1=scouts-l&9=A&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4 It will probably take some time for the new term to trickle down and appear in Troop Program Features and elsewhere.

It could still be a crew, just that the Committee Chair (CC), Charter Org Rep (CR), and committee members (MC) on both rosters are the same people. You would indeed need to compare the unit rosters to be sure. You should be able to request a copy of the rosters from the district/council. In fact any council-level volunteer should be able to pull your training roster from myscouting. It only lists those members who have reported training but with mandatory YPT, every adult should appear along with occasional scouts and venturers that have taken NYLT and other courses for camp staff. The on

Chief Scout! Let Gates and others handle the boardroom business.

Funny you should mention that. My old boss is Ukrainian Catholic, and it seems that every Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox Church has a chapter of Plast (Ukrainian scouting). But that's more an effort to preserve the Ukrainian language through an immersion program.

Program: includes District Advancement Committee ops (merit badge counselor lists, eagle boards, etc.), Training, Camporees, Klondikes, Cub Day camps, Cub Family Camps, etc. Finance: Family FOS, Popcorn, Community FOS (hitting up local business to donate) Membership: roundup/recruitment, marketing, relationships (religious and otherwise) Unit Service: Commissioners and Roundtables Ideally, a district would have 3 vice-chairs for each of the first three functions with committee chairs under them. This is frequently found in districts in the Lake Wobegone Council (where all the district

I can't really fault you for that. While some of my organizations (generally composed of college graduates in their 20s and 30s) use Facebook heavily and sometimes as their sole means of communication, I see several problems with social media communications: 1.) Not every parent (or custodial grandparent) is Facebook savvy. For other forms (e.g. Twitter or instagram) it's even worse. 2.) Not every scout is old enough for Facebook (13 is the minimum age) 3.) Teens are now avoiding Facebook like the plague because their parents and grandparents are on there. They've switched over to oth