Beccachap

I think we need to keep things in perspective here. First off, BSA has green lighted virtual campouts and even hosted them. BSA realizes - as should each of us - that Scouting needs to adapt to the environment we live in to stay relevant to our audience - children. Waiting until COVID is over to return to the way things were is bass-akwards and we will loose the attention of every child, even the most dedicated. Some will return for a while and try to recapture the magic, but they won't return forever. We are running them off when we hold back the tools they need to continue their journey and

It sounds like there is good advice above for going about removing from the roster, but just remember that everything with BSA moves glacially. In the meantime, if it is a financial situation, i.e. missing funds by a treasurer perhaps, get their name replaced at the bank and inform members of the change in the money stream. If a legal liability situation, i.e. bar fight between leaders or w/e with the thread of lawsuit, then current roster matters less than what the roster was at the time of the event. If it is a scouting situation, i.e. a leader being called out for fictionally

So just a quick note, we have 8 registered girls in our Pack and more filing in the door, but only through word of mouth and our own recruiting. Despite fighting with our council since the inception of girls in cub scouts to reclassify us (and I mean revisited over and over and over), we still appear as a boy only Pack in the council and at national level. There may be more Packs out there taking girls than what you can see online, given how impossible it is for someone on the Council end to fix our own classification. As an aside, yes, I know it is a setting we can do through our own Sc

I don't doubt that this could work, but I totally get the response from the den leader. Kids have just minutes of recess at school instead of the hour or more that was considered the mere minimum in the past. There are endless standardized tests starting at the lowest elementary grades and kids are desperate to move. Maybe interactive stories would be better, where in the storytelling every time a title or catchphrase is mentioned the kids have to act it out or make the animal sound. Those have had success with our younger Cubs.

I don't know where you live, but I'd love to get a cuppa with you someday. I just lol'd at your Klan remark and disrupted a room full of folks here waiting on our cars to get serviced. You are doing amazing. Something that might help your lower income pack is to accept credit card payments and actually raise dues to include more activities. Those steps helped many of our lower income families. We also offer camperships, i.e. free dues, which anyone can claim. To claim one you must put your need in writing and sign your name. It's confidential, just between the parent and cubmaster. That

Our charter has a large, beautiful green space next to the Fellowship Hall where we hold the derby. This year we opened the doors and made it one big space. 2 years ago the Bears put on their carnival outside during the derby and that worked well. Last year it rained, if memory serves, so we were stuck inside the whole time and I don't recall it being as much fun. One significant improvement we did for our pack was to run separate heats and award them accordingly. That gives back uninterrupted free play to k-2 or 3-5 grades while the other heat goes down. The other half of the pack gener

I'm cautious with a response here because I've heard this same argument from a small troop that's a mess. Youth lead does not mean all planning happens the week or two before you want to go somewhere. Although I know many adults live this way (our society is largely composed of families living paycheck to paycheck), it's a reactive, painful existence that no one will gravitate towards. Leaders need to instill an expectation that it is paramount to pre plan months and sometimes years in advance, depending on the goal. Once the lesson is learned and a calendar is established, long term pla

What was the markup per dozen? Did you get any discounts from Krispy Kreme that added to your profits?

I'll be all sorts of bitter if my dysfunctional council that we've all but eliminated from our lives demands a fee from us next year. Do we have to charter with the council in our zip code, or can we charter with any council?

Thanks for your kindness, Parkman. This made me smile.

I'm always nervous about meals and cross contamination. We have no peanut allergies, I'm relieved to say, because I'd just be breaking out in panic attacks about having a child at risk at a campout 24/7. Even if we eradicate peanuts from our meal plan, other families show up with what they show up with, and kids are kids (messy & dirty especially camping). I'd have to have a leap of faith that the parents were managing it, but we'd adapt as best we could to accomadate. We have food service gloves and an actual bucket of serving utensils to try and keep that down, but then we have children

Oh, I love a casserole. Tastes like childhood. This looks yum. I think the rotel will be no problem at all, unless you opt for the spicy variety. One thought - if you pull the chicken you may have larger chunks of meat which can be problematic for little ones. You may want to take extra care to ensure all meat is pulled or cut very small for safety. But going rotisserie Sam's chicken is genius. One question, what size dutch oven?

Every campout we use the same meal plan with small variations, but no, we don't make anyone try anything. We require everyone to buy it as part of registration, but no one has to eat it (everyone eats it though). We charge 3$ for age 0-4, 10$ for ages 5+. They get Sat breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack dinner, dessert, and Sunday breakfast. We have a small bin for Friday night late arrivers/families in disarray to do DIY PB&J, bananas, and graham crackers for dinner, because with family camping there is always greater potential for chaos and there is nothing worse than having

I disagree with this interpretation. Step 1, Webelos must plan a menu for a balanced meal, budget, shop, etc. They can do this in a den meeting with planning, then the next den meeting at a store with pencil/paper/calculator. Step 2 does not say that to prepare a balanced meal, you must use the menu from #1. Any meal preparation that uses camp stove, dutch oven, etc, if possible, should count. That said, going about it in a simple 1, 2, 3 step process and Webs delivering a meal would be great. We don't do it that way in our Pack. But any ambitious Den Leader who declares that i

Edit: I didn't read your post carefully - you mentioned a public FB page for yourself, not a 2nd account. Whoops. Go for it. I think it's a good idea. I've had a lot of success with our public FB page as a recruitment tool for our Pack. It's also linked to various area groups, like the PD, YMCA, local business who support us, etc. It's slow to start, but on it's own it's a recruiting magnet after a few years of building it up. I hope you have the same success with your leader page.

Thanks Malraux. We worry about this constantly and mitigate where we can. Our community is very strong and cohesive, so inside the Pack we're good. We make all meetings and financials transparent, auto-transfer style, and online-accessible. I record and document everything. Neither my husband nor I touch cash. I'm always trying to unload some or all of my roles (event planner, meal plan, PR mgmt/recruitment online, plus traditional CC roles. Roles offloaded: Health form mgmt, new member coordinator, quartermaster, all den leaders, fundraising). In addition to open monthly committee meetin

One bit of advice - do not do the transfer process in paper. If you want your children to complete their AOL before crossing over, pay to create new accounts for them online with national directly and log their achievements there, and even call the hotline later to merge the accounts with their previous scouting history. Otherwise you risk a transfer, then another transfer before the first is complete, and the whole AOL rank getting lost in the suffle. Of course your council may be run like a machine, but from what I've seen my dysfunctional council is pretty much the defacto standard. I was j

Ah, sorry, I should have been clearer. I don't mean kids who want to join, I mean kids who have already joined last fall and participate. At present I have a pair of brothers, Tiger & Wolf, who are seriously keen, but none of us seem to be able communicate to the father that they are supposed to be in separate dens to complete their own adventures. Both kids are way behind despite attending a large number of meetings because they don't go where they are supposed to go, but they are having a great time. So it's hard to redirect them, and the den leaders don't want to rock the boat with the

We've attempted this process a few times with months in between, but the process fails before it completes. Have you been able to get it to complete? If so, any tips?

https://www.scoutlander.com/PublicSite/home.aspx That is a free hosting service and we use that in conjunction with a pair of Facebook pages - one public page for recruiting and a private page for members.

David, I had one conversation with him where he appeared to understand and follow along. The second conversation the next day he couldn't string his thoughts together. I'm talking bizzaro, completely inconsistent thought. I mentioned his age as a correlative factor, not as a causative factor. No offense intended. Edit: The more I think about it you have a point. Evening mentioning his age was indicative of my being ageist, so I will work on that, starting with being aware of my shortcoming.

I'm a SAHM and I married into Scouting. I used to work in tech as a Computer Engineer so I have history working with and mitigating the occasional male who is stuck in the dark ages where women were supposed to defer to all things. I'm type A, extremely organized, introverted, and run a large metro Cub Scout Pack as Committee Chair (large for our district, but not large compared to rural areas). I run it because my kind, Eagle Scout, extroverted, procrastinating, mild mannered, and wildly optimistic husband is magnificent as a magical Cubmaster but significantly less magnificent with logistics

You folks are wonderfully reassuring. Thank you for your feedback. My husband has the thickest pair of rose colored glasses wrt Scouting and insisted that there was value added there, but I've been skeptical. I called our Commissioner in to appease my non-confrontational husband when I had to diffuse a situation with a hot mess Scoutmaster in another Unit, and detected several notes of 'little woman, you don't know nothin', so I thought a male mouthpiece might help him dial it down. But no. I just had to repeat myself 5 times in writing and 2 times in person. With an audience. Lol. I thi

Can you request a different Commissioner other than what you have been assigned? Also, what exactly is the value - if any - to a Commissioner?