eaglequestions2018

55 minutes ago, SSScout said:

It does sound like a useful project that will ultimately be appreciated, if successfully done.

My next question is,  how do you show "Leadership"?   Organization?   It sounds very like a one Scout operation.   Are there others involved in this?  And I do not mean your parents....

 

Wouldn't your parents count, as the guidelines technically state that you need to show leadership over any two people, Scout or non-scout, child or adult?

In any case, I do have ways to involve other Scouts in the troop. Things like helping to distribute the guide, contacting nonprofits, interviewing people in the community for some sort of video. The last one is what another scout in my area did back when Eagle projects had to have a lasting impact. I don't think that's a requirement now but nevertheless I want to produce something that can be reused and increase town pride.

On 3/3/2018 at 11:24 PM, fred johnson said:

When is the election?  You said you have a little over a month.  Is that to the election or to an earlier date?  IMHO, a voter guide is useful when it is weeks or a month or more before the election.  As such, I would not want to use the election as the due date.  IMHO, it should be weeks before as as due date.  

If I was approving your project, I'd be looking at 

• Will you be successful?
• Will you have a good experience?
• Will you meet the expectations to "develop, plan and lead" a project?

View your proposal as an agreement.  Only put in as much as you need to clearly communicate.  It is not a plan.  But you do need to be specific.  I'd want to see your proposal say something like "I will be leading a team to produce a voter registration guide, host a pre-election debate and coordinate a voter registration drive."

As part of reviewing your proposal, I'd be looking for you to demonstrate your understanding of your project and how you will successfully make this happen.  Here are some random comments

• Usually an existing civic organization or newspaper holds debates.  Usually those take a long time to put in place.  If you have just over a month, can you make this happen?  Which position?  One debate for all positions on the ballot or individual debate times for each?  Where will it be held?  Can you reserve the space, advertise the debate and get the summary results out in a timely way?  I'd be concerned you just can't make a quality well structured debate happen in less than a month.  If I was a candidate, I'd really hesitate committing to something quickly thrown together.  
• You don't have to have the city be your beneficiary.  You could have a local non-profit.  Chamber of commerce.  Elks club.  Rotary.  Lions club.  League of Women voters.  You could even have a newspaper be a beneficiary as long as the benefit goes to the community and not the paper.  
• How do you measure success?  

Direct to the requirements ... To get the proposal approved ... communicate the following

• What concepts are you developing into a project?
• How will you plan each part?
• How will you lead others in doing it?  Where are the volunteers?  How can you leverage others to help execute the project?

The "little over a month" is the time I expect to have after approval. I've learned that the election is on April 28th, and while the district says approval would come around March 18th if all goes well, I'm factoring in a week of buffer time just to be safe. Making the guide is something I'd ideally get done at least 3 weeks before the election. My current plan is to send emails to candidate the immediate day or day after approval, and in the meantime, consult with other Scouts and perhaps troop parents about what they want to see in the guide, and how best to design it. Then, using that information I could fully design, create, and upload the guide with 2 full days of work, or 1 full day with 2 school days. That portion's a bit of a sprint, I agree, but the rest of the project should have a big enough time horizon in my mind to take a lot of lessons out of it, especially if the ending date is extended by me making a visual display showing whether/how this project boosted voter turnout, probably with some quotes from town members. Plus I may need to do a fundraiser on the end stretch.

Thank you for these suggestions, I will make sure to address them in the proposal!

11 minutes ago, ItsBrian said:

How are going to raise funds for printing materials, etc? A month isn’t a lot of time, I thought I could raise all my money within a month (I needed around $600) so I ended up pushing it.

I would provide you online grants that aren’t easy to find but you need to apply 4-6 weeks in advance.

At the moment, it seems like the entire thing will only cost somewhere around $100-150, or perhaps less depending on how many paper versions of these pamphlets are actually spread around compared to a digital version I plan to make. If they're lower, I can probably self-fund the project; otherwise, I know my district has approved a project that didn't fund-raise until after it was compete, and considering how busy I'll be in the month I'm working on it, I would need something like that. If it got desperate, I could probably get about half the total cost raised through an online fundraiser.

13 minutes ago, SSScout said:

Volunteer coordinator office....   Project/community service coordinator....   media/publicity advancement guy....   

How does one Scout organize and "lead"  more than himself in this effort?  

Posters,  social media connections,   newsletters,  public libraries,  referrals of willing John and Jane Q. Public to the various possible service organizations,  connecting the Town Council into all of this and making something  "Permanent"  left behind (!) when you (the Scout) have moved on with your life (and your Eagle?).  Volunteer Possibilities Catalog  

Cross reference of all the public service agencies and who to contact and what they need....  

A lot of possibilities.  A lot of nice possibilities.  Useful, appropriate, complex...   Might make building a bridge on a washed out park trail sound easy and straight forward.  

Thank you for the suggestions, it sure does seem like I can really bring together a lot of people here if I do it right. 

I guess I have to get better at describing it though if it was confusing @ItsBrian. I heard another scout in my troop was delayed a month in starting his Eagle Project because he couldn't explain to the district what his project actually was! That would definitely be problematic since I will only have just over a month to get this done with a little built-in buffer time, due to the date of the election itself.

It's not the organizations that are promoting voting; they're just food banks, groups spreading awareness about various conditions, the town TV station, etc and my goal was to get them volunteers in order to give people a better "sense of connection" with the community.

In those other towns I mentioned it was often the Town Clerk's office or a designated Town Council contact that was in charge of approving projects like this.

For what it's worth, I have seen other councils approve projects like this. Read about a number of people whose Eagle Project was to organize and conduct a voter registration drive, as well as a few towns that specifically encouraged Eagle Scout candidates when they came forward with a plan to make a voter information guide. My scoutmaster does seem to like the project and thinks it would be acceptable as long as enough leadership is shown, heard something similar from a different adult leader too. But those questions about the beneficiaries and general nature of the project still remain.

Hey, thanks for the response.

So, The goal is to boost civic engagement in general, to increase the connection that people in my town feel to their community, and volunteering with groups in the area would be one way of doing that in addition to increasing the voter participation rate and their general knowledge of town issues. The main part of the project was a plan to create a nonpartisan voter guide for the upcoming town election, similar to what the League of Women Voters does in various towns. It would include candidate positions on some generic questions like "What is the number one issue facing the town?" plus general voting information. I also decided to try and boost participation in various non-profits in town as a way to expand the scope of the project and make it fit better with what I am trying to do. There's a few more things I can do such as hosting a debate and voter registration drive, but that would have the same beneficiary - the town government, through the town clerk's office. Is this sort of multifaceted approach OK, and would I need every organization's signature if I did it this way?