DenZero

I''ll be going through this later this week when we have our first pack meeting of the school year and find out if our recruiting efforts have been successful. It will be interesting how it comes out. I suppose you could combine the Tigers with anoher den (Wolves maybe?). I tried combining the Tiger and Webelos dens last year, but it didn''t work very well. I''m wondering if the 6 to 7 pm time slot is a problem for most people. We like to eat dinner as a family, and it would be awkward for many parents to wait until they get back from the pack meeting to start making dinner. You migh

Are there any parents left in the pack who care if the pack continues? You need to find one who is willing to hold things together and work on recruiting until they either get more kids and leaders or throw in the towel. (I was foolish enough to offer to do that, and have been running the pack single-handedly since February, but it looks like we will have enough kids recruited to have a couple of dens). The District Exec. should be able to help with recruiting, and if they are the only pack recruiting at that school, they ought to be able to get at least a handful of boys, and maybe some wil

What I''ve been doing is calling all of the families in the PTA directory with boys in 1st and 2nd grades, as we want to build up a Tiger and Wolf den. It''s rather tedious, and I''ve only managed to contact about half the families, but I''ve generated a few good leads. Our Dist. Exec. will be able to talk to the boys during lunch at school, so he will be sending them home with stickers and flyers.

You might try to find a pack that has folded recently. I got a nice track from a defunct pack nearby. It was in storage at the school where they used to meet, the school was closing, and they were cleaning everything out. It was homemade, and is probably better than our pack's track, but since we have a scoring machine for ours, I'm passing this one on to a new pack that is trying to start up. Ask your District Exec. if he has contact info for ex-leaders or chartered Orgs. for defunct packs.

Is the Whittling Chip something that can be taught at a pack or den meeting? Where are the requirements for it defined? Paul

Thanks for the advice so far. At this point, telephone recruiting is our best hope. We are a small pack and don't have the ability to spread out the recruiting work over multiple families. We are too small for word of mouth to work, and we need to overcome word of mouth recruiting from the larger neighboring pack. Throughout the school year, the District Exec. helped us by passing out flyers to the boys at school, inviting them to events, but it was unsuccessful (no response). The PTA decided to have a policy not to allow outside groups to set up a table at the school carnival and w

I'm planning on telephoning the families of all of the boys who will be entering first grade at the School Where We Traditionally Recruit, in a attempt to recruit a Tiger den. Has anyone come up with a script that is effective in persuading parents that the Cub Scouts would be good for their boy? I also want to be prepared with good responses to the likely excuses, such as, too busy with sports, disagreements with BSA "inclusiveness" policy, BSA religion policy, etc. Any advice will be appreciated.

Eamonn has a good idea there. AFAIK, our district doesn't have a membership committee, but it would be wonderful if the DE could audit each unit every year or two to see if it is organized in a way to be sustainable. It would be a lot of work, but it's work for them to help out struggling units. They are building up the commissioner program in our district, so that could be a way of spreading out the work. One trick would be to require the quality unit award application be submitted for all units with recharter, even for those units that know they don't qualify. Those scoring near the bot

Man, Eamonn sure hit the nail on the head for us. I'm involved with a struggling pack that's been around for a while (last time it missed a recharter was 1953). It came very close to folding this year, and still may fold next year, unless things turn around. I spoke with the fellow who was Cubmaster in the mid-1990s, when the pack was going strong. This guy was enthusiastic about Scouting, and I could see why the pack did well then. When his son crossed over, he became Scoutmaster of the affiliated troop, and now volunteers as a commissioner with the district. Since then, the pack has ha

As SWScouter said, Assistant Cubmaster or Assistant Den Leader positions are open to 18 y.o. There are probably some small Cub Scout packs in your area that would love an Assistant Cubmaster (I know we would!). Your District Executive could point you to some. Paul

I was thinking that when we send home flyers, brochures, etc., if they actually make it home, they probably end up in the trash in a day or two. If we were to send home some promotional swag with some intrinsic value, it would be likely to hang around longer. When my older boy was recruited about 5 years ago, he was given a CD with computer games and videos promoting Cub Scouting. I asked my DE about these, and he doesn't think they are available any longer. Does anyone know how to contact the organization responsible for production of this sort of thing to see if another run could be

Instead of starting a new unit from scratch, why don't they join the small troop, which is probably in desperate need of some fresh leadership. They've probably already got equipment, structure, traditions, chartered org., meeting place, etc. If a new troop is truly successful, the small unit will likely fold anyway from the increased competition for boys.

You say you are a small pack - it sounds like you will have a Webelos den consisting of one Webelo I and one new Webelo II. Do you have a Webelos Den Leader? Without one, it will be hard to get the advancement done. I was in a similar situation with my son becoming a Web. in a small pack, where the other Web. I had no interest in advancement, so we had a den of one. It looked like advancement would be a lot of work, so we started going to den activities at a nearby large pack to work on advancement. We went to winter camp, which nocked off two pins and a good part of a third. The boys in

We are in a well-defined neighborhood of a city. There are 2 packs and 2 troops in the neighborhood. One chartered org. hosts the Large Pack and the Large Troop; another chartered org hosts the Small Pack and the Small Troop. All have been established for several decades. The Large Troop gets plenty of recruits from the Large Pack (all of their Webelos II's this year), and probably doesn't care whether the Small Pack and Troop exist or not. The Small Troop recruits mostly from out of the immediate area, as the Small Pack hasn't had any Webelos II's for about 5 years. I don't know if it w

Actually, I'm the Pack Committee Chair, and, at least on the charter, the COR, though I'm not affiliated with the CO. I'm trying to recruit a COR as well. I found out that the Troop was able to get a replacement COR after a while without one. According to the Cub Scout Leader's Book, the Troop and Pack should have the same COR. As soon as the Scoutmaster finds his phone number, I'm giving him a call. The DE and Dist. Commissioner have been sympathetic, and have been helpful in our efforts to recruit boys, with the hope that they will bring willing parents along. I've been trying

In a thread in Open Discussion - Program, the discussion was about people volunteering for postions in the district or with units. Someone mentioned a Cub Scout pack advertising in a newspaper for a Cubmaster. Has anyone tried something like that, and did it work? Our pack managed to recharter, but we are maxed out for internal volunteers (every boy in the pack has a parent who is a registered leader). Two of the families are leaving at the end of the school year, leaving us with 3 committee members, no Cubmaster and no den leaders. Yeah, the committee can pretend to be Cubmaster and den

You need to ask yourself if you have an interest in keeping the pack around. If your troop recruits from your pack, it will benefit it greatly to keep the pack. If that's the case, you should stick around until you can recruit a competent and motivated replacement. When our previous Cubmaster stepped down, he got another of the dads to take over. Unfortunately, he isn't very competent, and the pack nearly didn't recharter, and I'll be surprised if it's still around this time next year.

I think it depends on what the other boys in the den are wearing, and how important it is to your son to conform. It's different in each of the two packs we attend. In the small pack, none of the (3) Webelos has switched to the tan shirt yet, though one is thinking of it, as his blue shirt is getting tight. In the large pack all of the Webelos except my son have switched to the tan shirt. It doesn't bother my son that he is the only blue weeb in the den. Actually, he just completed his Webelos badge requirements, and I got him a tan shirt, mainly so he will fit in better, and there is no

The situation where this might make sense is for the Webelos II who hasn't finished the Arrow of Light. In our pack, our only Webelos II was invited to the April crossover ceremony being put on by our affiliated troop. He declined, saying he wanted to finish his AOL. Whether or not he finishes his AOL by our Blue & Gold in June, if he decides to join the troop at that time, we can hold a crossover ceremony for him then.

We would also appreciate any advice on spring recruitment of Tigers. We desperately need to get an early start. Last year the nearby larger pack recruited all the eligible boys from the school we traditionally recruit from before we got to them. We got no new Tigers, but managed to add 2 Wolves, one in the fall, one in the winter. Still, it's hard to recruit the older boys, you really need to get to them first. Therefore, we need to put all of the pack's resources into Tiger recruiting as soon as possible. Please keep the ideas coming. Paul

Our pack is in a similar but different situation, the parents are involved, but there aren't enough of them to put together much of a program. And the Cubmaster is too busy with work and family commitments to do much for the pack. When I volunteered to be Committee Chairman, I figured I'd better get up to speed fast, and I don't know when the next time will be that training is offered for our council. I bought the "Cub Scout Leader Book". and found it to be a great resource. It has just about all the information you need to know to run a pack and / or den. I recommend you get a copy.

Concerning our small pack that's having trouble competing for recruitment: Our Chartered Org. (a church) has been pretty much hands-off. They are currently looking for a new pastor, and I'm the acting COR (primarily Committee Chair), but am not affiliated with the Chartereed Org. I'm trying to recruit a new COR from within the CO. We'd been getting pretty good support from the district, distributing flyers, stickers, etc. Once it started looking like we might not recharter, we've been getting lots of attention from the District Executive and Assistant District Commissioner, but the recruit

Let me tell you it isnt fun being on the receiving end. Weve been going to a small pack with a large pack nearby. Having more kids gives the large pack more parents to draw leaders from, and having more leaders allows them to run an efficient recruiting machine as well as run a better program and have backup leaders to provide continuity when leaders leave. Traditionally the 2 packs recruited from different schools. The District will not help with recruiting at the opposite schools, but the large packs resources for community-wide recruiting (for instance we got direct mail advertising

This is how we plan to do it this year. We have 8 boys in the pack, and 6 lanes on our track. We won't bother having prizes per age group with so few. We'll split the boys into equal groups, probably Wolves and Bears and then Tigers & Webelos. Each car races in each of 4 lanes to even out the fast lanes and slow lanes. The top 2 from each then go to the runoff, which will also have 4 heats, making 12 heats altogether. Then we have an open race for visitors. Cubs are asked to bring their cars from previous years for visitors to race. We are trying to promote the race as a recruiting

Sure, Go to the pack meetings, maybe even the den meetings and an outing or two. Just don't bring the whole pack or they might want to stay. I've been doing just that for the last 3 months. The pack my older son has been in for the last 3 1/2 years had a big drop in membership last summer, and our program fell apart when the departing cubs took their den leader parents with them. So I've got my boys attending both the struggling small pack and the nearby large pack, otherwise they'd never get their advancement done. It's useful to see how a relatively well organized pack is run. Both pac