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Recruiting nite- 1 man show


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Yes --- use my recruiting night activity.

 

 

Take one of the boats with you to the school lunch the day of the recruiting night and repeat your invitation for boys to attend---

 

"How would you like to make a model sailboat tonight and race it against all your buddies to see who has the FASTEST boat?"

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You are not a pack yet! You need at least five adult leaders and a Charter Organization to get a pack off the ground and in this size pack your best bet is the parents. Then you need to divide the boys by age to see how many tigers, wolves, bears, and webelos you have to determine how many den leaders you need. Recruiting is a whole lot easier when you have a history of pack activities to show the new boys and parents to entice them to join, if not bring some easy and quick fun games to do with the group. Talk about what you see the pack doing as a group for the upcoming year. Get your DE involved to help you organize and be there for your recruitment night. It really is all in your sales technique to get new members and leaders. Frankly if the prospective parents see this pack as a one man show only it will be a major turnoff, one man shows rarely last very long, usually fall apart in their first year. Good Luck.

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Sounds like your Pack has lost yet more boys since June.

 

As Baden said, with only 1 registered adult in your Pack, you are not a Pack.

 

Contact your District Executive (DE) about doing "Boy Talks" at the school. At less than 120 boys, that is still over 100 more than your Pack has.

 

Contact your Charter Organization Representative (COR). Advertising at, and doing service projects for, your Charter Organization (CO) will make your Pack more visible with the CO that owns you, its members, and their families.

 

Contact your District Commissioner (DC) and ask for help putting on a recruitment activity. Use your current Pack families, and see if you can get some Boy Scouts from the Troop you generally cross your Webelos to. Put the info on the recruitment activity on a flier for the DE to hand out at the Boy Talks at school.

 

Good Luck.

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I might add that I'd do the boat race for the recruiting night.

 

The following week I'd do a den or pack meeting, using the time to plan a weekend hike and marshmallow roast or hot dog roast the upcoming weekend.

 

The following week schedule a parent meeting. Use the parent meeting to plan the following months program and to ask parents who show up to do specific tasks that need to be done during the next month.

 

Don't ask the parents to volunteer. By that time you should have an idea of who can do what. Ask the best people available to do the tasks that need to be done.

 

You want to SHOW parents what a quality program looks like and feels like and then ask them to help you continue to provide a quality program for the Scouts.

 

An important part of your den meeting and outing would be to go over the Bobcat requirements so boys and parents will start to understand the program and the boys will qualify for the Bobcat award ASAP.

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I'd call your DE right away.

 

He should be bending over backwards trying to help you. The number of scouts in a district are the same as a job evaluation or productivity report for you or me.

 

The more scouts in his district, the better his "report" looks. Bonuses and pay raises and such are tied into the number of scouts he has.

 

 

And, while I realize it may be differenty in other councils or districts...in my council,. trhe DE are the ones who go to schools during the day to give the rallys, and the also conduct the sign up nights - but with all pack CM's ( or whoever substitutes) present to rep[resent their pack and help answer questions, meet the potential scouts and parents .

 

Exceptions bein g when you have so many schools, that sometimes sign up nights are double booked.

 

I am running 2 sign up nights for my DE as he will be at another school at the same time and night.

 

But, if not for the conflict, he would be there.

 

Anyways, it is in his best interest and the council's too for him to at least recruit you some help or get you some strong leads for potential leaders for your pack.

 

Good luck!.

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Sorry,Council recharted us as a Pack with a webeloe leader(total control freak and not a team player) and the other leader, tigers had to leave us due to work. I am planning to have the local Scout troop their as well.

 

Leadership is another issue in itself.Recruiting cubs is what I need help with.

 

The DE has told me he wont come,"someone local should do it" and is not a salesmen at all The DC positiion is vacant, COR is football coach- no time.Church- new preacher The community knows we are here, just had a float in the parade and won youth division.

I told Council face to face "I need help" and they looked at me with blank faces, the DE, former DC and Recruiting chair then talked about the weather!

So with no help from council how can I get more kids, more parents to come to the meeting?

 

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noname,

 

It's okay to be a small Pack. It can be discouraging at times but my advice to you is to take what you have and build from that. During your recruitment, show the prospective parents your calendar of meetings, outdoor events, and campouts for the coming year. Show them you have an active program regardless of your size. Tell them how you integrate the 12 core values of Cub Scouting into your active Pack program. While we tend to emphasize recruitment at the beginning of the year, recruitment is really a year-round event because parents are always looking at us during and wondering if they should join.

 

Take the Dens you have and meet together weekly. Basically, you will have weekly pack meetings. Take on only the Den Leader work that you can handle (your son's Den for example) and make it clear to the other parents what Den work you cannot do. The bottom line is you have to show that you have an active program, you meet regularly as a Pack, and you believe that boys will benefit from the cub scout program .

 

You may have already thought about everything I've mentioned, but just in case I offer my 2 cents. Best Wishes and ignore the "control freak" webelos leader. You are unit leader and look for those who are willing to be team players for the benefit of the Pack.

 

 

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I took my laptop and a projector and had a loop running of pics of my current cubs throwing tomahawks, dropping off rope swings over the swimming hole, toasting marshmallows, etc...

 

I chattered about everything fun we did to the boys, while answering questions from the parents about the academic side, etc...

 

It wasn't easy being the one-gal show, but it went okay. Next time I'm taking a grip of popscicle sticks and showing the boys how to make "grendades". Great fun! :0)

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noname

 

The situation you are dealing with is part of what is wrong in scouting today with its continuing shrinking membership. A couple of adults and a handful of boys want to start a pack or troop, they go to council and get no help and they just throw together a recruiting night with no real plan or organization in place, a nonexsistant CO and the usual result the unit falls apart in the first year. In these cases of one man show units they are usually doomed from the start, and why because of DISORGANIZATION and no real SUPPORT. IMO, noname you need to get your committee, leaders, and CO organized, setup and on the same page before you even think about a recruiting night. Otherwise your efforts will be in vain and your unit will fail. For all your new CC's strengths her methodology will doom your unit to failure. Scouting was never meant to be a one man show.

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