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Loy_36

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Posts posted by Loy_36

  1. So we've finally gotten to the point to where we're ready for our first pack meeting. I wanted to get some ideas for things we should do during the meeting besides passing out awards. All the boys will be receiving the Bobcat rank along with a few of them getting some belt loops they've earned. What else can we do to make this exciting for everyone that comes?

  2. Have a bonfire and campout open to all boys in first through fifth grade and their families. Use your local school to advertise (ours used to let us send flyers home with the kids but now it posts events and invitations on its calendar page). Have each scout invite his friends. Offer s'mores at the fire and hot chocolate in the morning. Find someone to tell camp fire stories - there are a ton on the net and I'd be glad to post links to my favorites. Have another adult arrange skits for the boys (MacScouter has a whole book you can download). The current boys can do more elaborate skits and then you can have the new boys do simple skits. Get a bunch of jokes from boys life to get the ball rolling and encourage the boys to tell jokes. Have anyone attending send you an email to RSVP. Talk to the adults one on one about the program. Invite the kids (with two follow up emails to the adults) the next meeting where you will be doing another cool activity - how about making paper airplanes and throwing them from a second story window or balcony? Tell them to bring a friend. Run it like a Cub Scout meeting - flag ceremony and all. Talk to the parents about how Cub Scouts is the best way to spend time with your son doing fun things together (as opposed to just watching). Explain that scouting is something fathers and sons can do together that creates a strong bond and the best memories. Give them the registration form and paperwork. Announce that the next meeting will be all about snow. Encourage everyone to come and to bring a friend. But don't tell them anything more. They have to come to find out. Do the closing ceremony and end with a snack. The next meeting make instant snow (Google it - I've never used it without the kids going crazy) . Make paper snowflakes. Go over the Bobcat requirements (see how I stuck that in). Play snow trivia jeopardy. Do a Frozen sing along. End with snow cones (you can get a machine to make them and the syrup for less than $50) or snow themes cupcakes or cookies. Announce that the next is about having fun at night. Tell them to bring a flashlight and a friend. Learn about stars' date=' play flashlight tag, learn about nocturnal creatures and give out the new Bobcat badges.[/quote']

    I really love this idea but let me ask you, how would you word it on the flyers? Would you come right out and advertiser it as a recruitment type event or just list it as a Family Bonfire and Camp Out Sponsored by Pack 22?

  3. Have you done a Round up at the schools? Sorry I dont know how big your town is.

    We haven't had a Round up at any schools but there are a few that I'm trying to work with the DE for my area to go in to and have a sign up night for our pack.

  4. I hate being the bad guy ... How far away is the nearest other healthy pack? Is it a 5 minute drive? A 10 minute? A 30 minute?

     

    I say this because though you can and should recruit, recruit, recruit, you also have to think about what is best for your boys. Though you can have a good experience with a small pack, you generally need a critical mass to create the common scouting experience. You could always have your pack meet as a sub-part of another pack until you have enough members.

     

    Just remember to spend as much time creating a great experience for your sons as you spend trying to fix a hard situation.

    The nearest healthy pack is a 20 minute drive from our house. I've talked to several people about joining and I've found out rather quick that a lot of the time people will come up with some sort of reason that they can't join. Rather, they are to busy with work, have to many other things going on and so on and so on. We have a lot of competitive sports especially baseball around our area and we lose quit a bit of kids to that. Personally I think it's more the parents thinking that baseball will get them something because I've never meet a kid in the 3rd grade that wants to play & practice baseball 4-5 days a week. Just my opinion.

  5. jblake, I appreciate the words of encouragement. I think I have such high expectations of what this program was going to be and people were going to be as enthusiastic about it than I was. I know at least my son is having a good time and enjoys me being the Cubmaster & his Den Leader but as I stated in my first post are the kids getting what they should out of the program when there is only one of each of them in their Den and the only interaction with other kids is when them the Cub Scout and the Den Leader which is their parent is when we have an activity at the end of the meeting. I just want to be sure my son and the other kids think back on this when they get older and say "Ya I had a lot of fun in Cub Scouts".

  6. So we're about to go into our 4th meeting and it seems to be almost impossible to continue doing this. We only have 6 Cub Scouts total 2 tigers, 1 wolf, 2 bears and 1weblos. One of the families has 1 of the tigers and 1 of the bears so when they miss which is often that only leaves one kid in each of the ranks and to top it off the dad is suppose to be our acting weblos leader. One of the whole main reasons for doing is to have your child in a group of kids his own age to experience things. So I don't feel that my son and the others kids are getting the full Cub Scout experience from this. With that being said I feel like telling the other parents and the charter we are shutting it down and enroll my son in another well established pack in another town and getting involved with them. Is this wrong of me for feeling so defeated?

  7. Thanks SSScout, that was a lot of helpful information. Even though I'm technically the Cub Master in the councils eyes I will be stepping in as one of the Den Leaders. So I got the three other parents with kids that are in various ranks to agree to be Den Leaders. That was my biggest fear for some reason. I think I will ask the school that chartered us to purchase an American Flag and a Pack Flag for us. My district does have a round table to meeting the second Thursday of each month so I'm really looking forward to going to the one coming up. About the yearly dues, how do you figure what new Cub Scouts will pay when joining? I know that the council prorates your registration depending on when you join in the year but if you join late in the year you have to turn around and pay a full years of dues at the begging of the new year. Do you just go ahead and collect the prorated rate plus the next years dues up front or just wait until January and ask everyone to pay their registration again? We are going to implement Pack Dues that will amount to $1 each week for the kids. Thanks for all the advice.

  8. We started a new pack because the one that was in our town was not around anymore and the other one that was about 10 miles away is not an active pack from what I understand. What I mean as active is doing other things other than just meeting once a week. Now there is a much bigger Pack that is about 15 miles away but I wanted to at least try and do something for the kids in our area that I know wouldn't travel that far for a Cub Scout Pack.

  9. KDD, when we went to sign up night we only had 5 kids there which is the minimum for a new start up along with 5 volunteers. None of the volunteers knew that they would have to be paying to volunteer. The whole issue with this is that it didn't get brought to our attention by the DE until about 3 weeks after everyone had signed up and went and spent money buying uniforms and all. So far everyone in the pack is out between a few hundred to several hundred dollars since every family has at least one Cub Scout and one Leader. My family had to sign up two adult Leaders and one of the other families has two Cub Scouts and one adult Leader that signed up. No where did the DE mention that it was going to cost this much for everyone to get started in this. If he had done so I really feel as if everyone probably would have baled on this.

  10. Ya, right out of the gate our District Executive forgot at sign-up night that since we were a new Pack he was suppose to collect at least 6 months dues from everyone instead of the standard prorate so because we signed up in October he only collected $6 for the registration from each person. When I confronted some of the other parents about the DE wanting some more money from each of us they started talking about how much they were already in money wise so the DE said he would pay the difference since it was he's screw up. You would think that if local councils would have some sort of account setup to help new start ups out with their initial start up cost or at least have some sort of basic supplies they could give you to help get everything started.

  11. As I've mentioned before I'm new to the whole Cub Scout world and we just started a new Pack on top of that. When we started the Pack I knew we would have to have at least 5 volunteers signup a long with the boys that signed up. I however didn't know that the volunteers had to pay registrations fees as well. We only had 5 kids at signup so all of the adults but one had to signup as volunteers to start the pack. I signed up for the Cubmaster spot with on guy signing up for Den Leader and the others signing up for Committee spots. I myself have gotten the boys through the Bobcat rank and now I'm asking all of the volunteers to take on a Den Leader position as well. I have talked to everyone about how we were going to do the whole den meeting program as another user on here had suggested we meet as one group for the opening ceremonies, then split off into our appropriate ranked groups for the den meetings, then group back together for activities. Up to this point I have been fronting all the money for the activities and with all the other expenses that have been involved I'm about to get myself in a bind. I really want this to work out not just for my son but for the other kids involved as well but, I'm afraid that when I go to the other parents about helping pay for the activities they are going to start dropping as they too have spent a lot of money on this new Pack as well. My fear is that these families are going to start dropping out because of all this. Has anyone on here ever had experience with a new start-up and how did you go about getting the pack off the ground?

  12. I'm wanting to setup a Facebook page for our new Cub Scout Pack and wanted to get some input on it. Is there a way to setup the page up without it having to be created under my personal facebook account? The reasoning behind this is when my son is out of this Pack in 3 years I want someone else to be in charge of it as I will be moving up to Boy Scouts with my son.

  13. Stosh, Thanks for all that input. Sounds like you've been doing this for awhile. There is a Boy Scout Troop about 20 minutes away in another town so I'll check with them. Thanks a lot everyone for all this great advice. I will definitely be on here a lot.

  14. My district does have Roundtable Meetings so I'm certainly going to the next one. So the group that chartered us is 501©(3) so if someone wanted to donate money or anything else for that matter to the unit who would it have to go through? The chartered organization or the Pack? Also, how would you go about setting up an account at a local bank for the Pack since it shouldn't be in any one persons name?

  15. jblake47, I was really excited when we had our original 5 sign-up the night we had the start-up. The thing I'm trying to figure out now is how to get these boys advancement in a timely manner. When we started this I got handed the Cubmaster position with one of the other adults being listed as a Den Leader and all the others got signed-up as committee members. We have 2 Tiger Cubs, 1 Wolf Cub & 2 Bear Cubs. Now I'm trying to figure out how am I suppose to hold one weekly meeting centered around these 5 boys and lead them in the right direction for their specific rank. Oh, the joys of a new start-up.

  16. scoutegripper, Thanks for the idea of the one-time larger donation for the founders. I was wondering what were the rules for asking for donations outside of the pack? Also, is it possible for the pack to get a 501(3)c non-profit organization status with the IRS so people that donate money could claim it on their taxes?

  17. Thanks, dcsimmons. Like I said earlier this is a new start up pack and everything is coming at us 100 mph. Trying to get the boys to buy their uniforms, getting them to show up and getting enough volunteers for everything. I know it will all come together in the end but getting a new pack up and running is a lot of work.

  18. Thank you! The popcorn hasn't been to bad for us but being kind of a rural community the whole door to door is kind of out of the question for us as well. I'm hoping the Camp Card will really bring in some money. Do you have the boys in your pack pay dues and if so how much?

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