RMI2.0

High County and Col. Flagg,

You both made me laugh. Thank you. High County, you said exactly what my husband said, and what I was thinking. The reason I came here was to run this past others to see if they thought this was worthwhile, as a last ditch sort of thing. Admittedly, my mind was almost entirely made up when I made the post. 

I resigned the position today with a respectful and tactful letter to the other leaders without blame or details. 

At the very least I will stick with the pack until school lets out and day camp is over. If things go well, then its water under the bridge for me. I will still look at this other pack nearby, since I know my son does know several boys there who would be in his den. Better to be a highly productive scout parent than a failed CC.

As many have said, this is for my son, and I have to do MY best to ensure he has as good of an experience as he can. And won't his experience be all the better if his parents aren't stressed, groaning or resentful? :-)

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read and respond. I truly appreciate it.

FWIW, in the units that I'm in, adults pay for their own application out of their own dues.

Understood. However our pack voted to pay for the adult leadership fees. So, if it were the case that adults paid, then that would be a non-issue. In this case though, the pack is paying for some and not others willy nilly.

Please review the below quote from the OP:

 

 

OP is not the Committee Chairperson.  Even though she may very well have been performing the tasks of a committee chair, she isn't one.  She isn't a registered adult leader.  She can still walk away.  

 

 

 

RMI2.0 - you need to make a decision, and quickly, on what you want to do:  a) take your son and go to a properly functioning Pack, or b) attempt to right a sinking ship who's crew is either ignorant or uncaring of the fact that its taking on water.  If you go the b) route, expect a lot of personal confrontation, as I expect you're going to have to remove the Cubmaster, Treasurer, and several Den Leaders from their positions, with the assistance of your Unit Commissioner, District Executive, and Chartered Organization Representative / Institution Head.  Then you're going to have to create a new Committee and appoint/recruit a new Cubmaster and Den Leaders -- all without scaring off all of the existing cubs and parents ( though if they're as sick of the status quo as you are, perhaps they'll pitch in? )

 

If you really want to tackle a coup d'etat, the first thing you'll need to do is go to your council office and plonk down a check for $24 USD to get your membership application taken care of.  Hopefully its been signed by your Chartered Organization Representative, and not pencil-whipped by the prior Chair on his/her way out the door.

Mr. Bob I thank you because think you've really honed in on the key points I was trying to articulate. I appreciate all of the responses, and I respect those who say I should step up to take over more work. But you've really seen what I'm up against. Already doing the work of so many, and in order to fix that I'd have to do the work of even more...all while facing confrontation, resentment and probable obstacles too numerous to count. 

I can get past occasional petty drama, learning curves, disagreements on activities or leadership styles. Those are par for the course, and I understand that. However with this position, with these dynamics, it is like fighting a battle on all fronts to have all of those issues all at once from nearly everyone in it. As far as me doing a coup, we even have an assistant cub master I'd have to get through. He's what I call "all hat, no cattle". He points out the flaws, complains a lot about everyone, comes up with ideas for things other people should do, does nothing. 

Anyways, I don't want to sit here and complain and be a hypocrite. I'm just trying to express the magnitude of obstacles I face in just carrying out the basic functions of the position, let alone actually fixing them. 

And as you said, rightly so, I'm carrying out the functions without actually being the real chairperson...since they won't even bother to pay for my application.

I will politely resign my nomination for the position (since again, its just a nomination at this point).

If not one steps up to help, have Pack meetings be where the bling is handed out and nothing more. 

 

I wish we even did that. Somewhere along the way they decided that Pack meetings had to be big events every single month. By that I mean big pack activities. We don't even hand out awards. Those are given to the Den leaders to do. Ours just kind of calls the kid's name during a den meeting and gives them whatever belt loop. So, pack meetings have zero awards, yet there is this big stress to make these some huge awesome thing each month. 

We have at least 2 other packs in my immediate area (within a few miles of each other). There is one that has a great reputation. I'm considering seeing about sitting in on a den and pack meeting to see how they run it. I think that might give me some perspective on this issue.

After all, this boils down to my son as you said. So, I could run myself ragged trying to fix a pack of 100 kids + parents, or move to another one of the several functional packs around that already has their stuff together. 

Is there another FUNCTIONAL Pack in your area?

Absolutely. Several, actually. I definitely don't want my son to be pulled from scouts altogether. 

Hi all,

Thanks for giving me your opinions. I will try to answer the questions.

1. I take as much online training as I can (through myscouting). I also signed up for additional classes like the water safety for this summer. I think only one or two other people in the committee actually take any training classes. 

2. I entirely agree that this is for the boys experiences. That's why this is such a challenge, and also so frustrating. I certainly don't expect everything to be perfect. It just seems like only a very select few even care. Having the headaches in this position would be easier to swallow if I saw my son getting more out of it. Some other dens (older groups) are VERY active and do so much. We can't seem to get other den leaders to be inspired by that, or simply use their resources to do more. Its very "by the seat of our pants" at the den meetings. The den leader freely admits that he is disorganized and isn't very active with the kids. A few parents have stepped in to try to help organize meetings, provide resources etc. It is very hard to know how to help when we ask what the upcoming plans are (so we can try to beef up the meetings and make them more fun and productive) and the Den leader doesn't even really know what he will be doing in a few weeks. 

3. With respect to #2, I admit I am only one person. Doing the work of the CC, most of the job of the CM, and then trying to corral the Den leader into being more effective is probably not reasonable. Naturally, I show up to all den meetings and believe me I am there on deck helping out. Heck, I've even shown up to help out for things when my own son wasn't able to make it. I've sent the Den leader all sorts of resources and ideas for activities we could do. I tried to get the kids signed up for a color run, to go to several national parks/monuments, fishing, camping etc etc etc. I'm met with the email equivalent of crickets chirping. 

4. The crickets chirping is a familiar theme, and is ever present amongst the committee members. I don't anticipate they will change, since these are people who for the most part have been in their positions for several years. They don't respond to emails, texts, phone calls etc. I've asked a few other members if it was "just me" but apparently it has been an ongoing problem. The ones who don't answer are also the first ones to complain that they don't get enough reminders. Its petty things like that.

5. I had done a huge amount of work to get a special pack-wide trip planned. It was a headache from the get-go because the CM kept waiting too long to decide on things and we kept losing spots for bookings. I needed very timely responses and I could not get any. My son was in a very serious accident and I desperately needed help wrapping up loose ends on the trip while I cared for my son. Nobody would step up, and when someone finally begrudgingly did, they slopped it together half-heartily and the trip was disorganized and messy in the end. Some even treated me like I messed up the trip for just "bailing" on it. I couldn't help but take that personally and feel very bitter about that. It was a traumatic accident for us as a family, (one which he is scarred and still recovering from btw) and what I asked for was just a small amount of work after I had done so much. Its hard to like people and want to work with them after that. 

6. The treasurer being the spouse of the CM has never sat right with me. We get monthly reports and while for the most part is pretty much in order, there are a few question marks there that never seem to be answered. No huge amounts of money or anything. But I do question how it gets balanced when I know for a fact I'm still waiting on some money to be reimbursed to me and yet its not reflected on the monthly report. So yea, I question it. 

7. David CO: I hate feeling like that, and saying that. Truly. I do a lot of volunteer work even aside from this in the community. Had I come into this knowing that it would be my job to fix everyone else's attitude and work style, that would be a different story. 

Hello all. Thanks in advance for reading. I am at a difficult point and I would really like some perspective on the situation.

My son is a Wolf. I am not happy with our den meetings because we really don't seem to do much. Meaning, we seem to just barely scrape by fulfilling the requirements in the handbook as if we're doing homework. Its like checking boxes and no real "content", if that makes sense. We never know ahead of time what we will be doing that week. Many times Den meetings are cancelled and not rescheduled. We have an assistant Den leader who stands by, has no problem criticizing what is happening, and yet does nothing. Not to be a hypocrite, I have offered to help, made suggestions etc and nothing comes of it. The Den leader freely admits he is disorganized and doesn't plan many activities. 

Meanwhile I was asked to be the committee chair. I was extremely hesitant and expressed this to the former chair. The former chair did so many things outside of the requirements, it was to the point where she was doing everyone else's job for them. Also she babied them to the point of dependency (emailing them reminders over and over, accepting last minute changes that would almost cause chaos etc). I told the former chair I would not do it because she was doing everyone else's job for them. She assured me that she had fixed that problem. Apparently that was not the case, as I found out.

So 2 months into being the committee chair and I want to leave the pack. The cub master doesn't do anything. I mean that literally; I have no idea what he does. There have been things he needed to do, and he would email me last minute and just brush it off and tell me to do them like I was his secretary. He doesn't know how to run pack meetings and asks me to do it (he's been doing this for several years now!). He didn't take care of a critical step before a recent event, and emailed me last minute telling me to do it. I stood up to him and told him that he was behaving inappropriately and asked that he get more organized. He seemed quite surprised that I actually complained (because the former chair always just did whatever he said) and promised he would try harder. 

A few days later at our pack meeting, he left 10 minutes into the meeting.

Most of the committee members have a don't-care attitude. They don't read or respond to emails. We have annual calendars, a website, we have committee meetings and reminder emails about important dates...yet I still get emails all the time where den leaders are asking when the next pack meeting will be. They would know this if they read emails, yet they don't, yet they somehow have time to send me emails asking for the information I already provided to them.

Last week I got an email saying that BSA couldn't process my adult leadership application because not enough funds had been deposited into our unit account. I contacted the treasurer, who is also the spouse of the pack master to let her know. She said she would fix the problem. One week later, the funds have still not been added.

So technically, I'm doing the work of the committee chair, and the pack won't put the funds in so they can process my application.

There are a few awesome den leaders who really want the pack to succeed. I don't want to be a quitter, but at this point I'm only 2 months in and feeling like I regret being roped into this. While volunteer work is not easy, this is a giant thankless headache and I don't even have fun Den meetings to make it somewhat worthwhile. With them not even getting my application in right, I feel like I'm not even really in the position anyways.

I really need advice on this. As I said I have expressed my issues with the cub master. I can't fix the committee, and I have tried to help the den leader. At this point I want to resign as committee chair, see the den meetings through till summer then switch packs. But I'd really like to hear what others would do.

Thanks.