Recruiting nite- 1 man show

[SeattlePioneer 144]

As District Membership Chair, I'd been watching a pack chartered to a Catholic Church failing for several years. Not wanting to see it fail, I got involved with it three years ago when it had one active Scout --- 1st year Webelos.

 

 

It's doing well enough now that I plan to bow out as a leader at the end of the year.

 

So it can be done.

 

Your idea of concentrating on fall recruiting is good. The second step is to convert new parents into signing on as leaders. The methods I described in my posts can be effective in doing that.

[shortridge 184]

The DE has told me he wont come,"someone local should do it" and is not a salesmen at all ... 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!

 

Call your council office and ask to speak to the Director of Field Service, Field Director, District Director or Senior District Executive who supervises your area. Tell them just what you told us and ask for help. In particular, explain that without more leaders, you won't be able to recharter.

 

That is just inexplicable. It is the DE's job to be a salesman and support units.

[Scoutfish 16]

Here's another thought, althought it might sound a little shady, it is definantly not:

 

Are there other packs near by? Are their parents in that pack who live closer to where your pack is located?

 

If I was not the CM of my current pack, I might be a member of a new pack that just started last year.

 

Let me explain. When my son decided to be a cub scout and came home all excited after the school rally, we had to drive 7 miles to his schoool for sign up. Of the three packs there..all were at least 12 miles to 14 miles away from us. They were the closest opacks too. Not just in the district, but in the next Council's ditrict too. I live about 3 miles from the next council's lines.

 

Anyways, I signed my son up, and got bit by thye scouting bug myself. Went from committee to ADL to DL to CM in no time.

 

Then last year...as I became the CM of our pack...a new pack styarted up that was about 2 miles from my house.

 

Had that pack been there and established when I signed my son up...I might have went that route instead.

 

I say might because while location and distance are factors, they are not the biggest factors. To me anyways.

 

But you may find out that there are parents who would join because you are closer and also because they might like to take a crack at doing something "their " way.

 

[SeattlePioneer 144]

Hello Scoutfish,

 

 

It might be a tough sell to persuade families to abandon a program they like to join an unproven program that's closer.

 

Still, if I had a successful pack and a neighboring start up was looking for members, I'd invite families in my pack to consider joining the new pack.

 

That might not be the sentiment of a lot of packs though, which tend to be proprietary.

[AnnLaurelB 10]

Perhaps slightly off-topic, but we ended up having recruiting nights for BOTH of the schools we draw from on the SAME night. So we said, "Ok. I (CM) will go to School A, and the DE will accompany me, and the CC will go to School B, and the UC will accompany her."

 

Easy peasy, right?

 

Well, I got to looking at the school calendar, and I realized it wasn't just SCOUT NIGHT. It was BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT! They weren't giving us a dedicated evening for ONE presentation. Oh, no. We were put in classrooms, and it was a REVOLVING DOOR.

 

It was bedlam; BEDLAM I TELL YOU! I was running around the room trying to answer questions, explain Scouting, pass out info, interest the boys, etc...

 

My poor DE was over there trying to process apps as fast as he could. The boys (and various siblings) were bouncing all over the room. It went simiarly at the other elementary school.

 

NEVER LET THEM PUT YOU ON CURRICULUM NIGHTS! I'm still twitching!

 

 

[pchadbo 60]

Ann,

I can sympathize as we are only able to get in on open house nights into our school, so this year I as the new CC (don't ask why I am running recruitment other than SOMEONE has to) I am using it to sign up the ones who are ready now and invite the others to a sperate Joining night at the CO. I have me DE on board now if I can just get the other leaders to help. . .I'll let you know

[SeattlePioneer 144]

Ummm. I don't use school open houses to sign up Scouts. 'Way too many distractions.

 

 

I use open houses to invite boys and families to come to our sign up night. In particular, this fall I'm inviting boys and families to come to our simplified Raingutter Regatta to make model boats and RACE them against all their nbuddies to see who has the FASTEST boat!

 

I have some examples of painted and decorated sailboats, and a couple of raingutters so boys and parents will get the idea.

 

Have a flyer to hand out to families with the date, time and location of the sign up night.

 

You need to aggressively solicit the interest of boys and families at open houses. If you are a wall flower, 99% of people will pass you by. When I'm there, I solicit about 90% of families passing by to come to our recruiting event. I missed out on a career as a carnival barker....

[Scoutfish 16]

Yeah, open house nights must really suck!

 

We do our signup nights a couple weeks after school has been started.

 

Yeah, it would be nicer to have it earlier, but you gotta think about all the money mom and dad spent on school supplies, school fees, new clothes, new shoes ( I bet there is a million dollars worth of new shoes in school on the first day), etc...

 

Then the schools want you to buy a yearbook, a school keychange or some other junk, sign you up for parent volunteers, PTA, after school youth programs, help with bake sales, and other fundraisers. My son comes home from school on the first daty with money forms for a school t shirts, school band equipment and uniforms, school pictures, and selling school candy too.

 

Then you ask them to spend how much on council fees, coucil insurance, pack fees, then you sayu : "oh yeah, here's the uniform they need and the books and the necker and thetent, sl;eepimng bag....

 

 

Yeah, waiting a week or two after school starts and letting everybody get settled in sure makes things easier for us by far!

[OwntheNight 10]

The way of school recruiting is slowly fading into the sunset for us. While the administration at the schools appreciates the scouting program and will help us at the community level, the school district administration is tying the principals' hands and making it very difficult for the units to succesfully recruit in the schools. Here are some of the hoops we had to go through this year.

 

1.) School night for scouting was limited to one night across the entire school district (last Wednesday, two days after school started) That was the only night we could use the facilities. so needless to say our District staff burned the midnight oil getting all paperwork in and everybody registered.

 

2.) We could only put signage on the school property on the day of SNFS, and all signage had to be down that night.

 

3.) Boys could only hand out APPROVED material, before school, after school, and during lunch. Also, Boys could hand out to other boys, Adults were not allowed to hand anything to a boy. The school district sent our district a letter approving our flyer, and we had to have a copy of it in case anybody questioned it's verbage.

 

Our pack has 3 official schools we are connected to. There was no physical way, I was going to be able to be at 3 seperate locations at the same time. I told my DD in so many words, that I wasn't going to do the District SNFS, but I would have a Join Scouting Night at our CO. Even got into a power struggle with our District membership chair, as she tried to tell me I couldn't do that. I had to remind her that I didn't work for her, I volunteer for an orginization that my CO charters. I also had to remind her that the DD approved our plan in advance. Good Times!

 

How did we get around some of these rules? Like I said, local principal's were sympathetic to our situation. I was able to ask nicely and they let me put signage up for a few extra days. We will volunteer some flag ceremony efforts for them. Our CC is still on the local PTA board and is a former Board President, so she was able to ask for some favors to get our recruiting event put on the PTA website, and included in a mass email to members. That's another thread in itself. Considering most PTA members now opt out of having their information posted in school directories.

 

We've really had to change our strategy to get boys in the door. One that we're experimenting with this year, is targeting the after-school programs that pick up the kids from the schools. Our CO has one of these programs, and we've gotten some traffic from it.Just need to keep pushing the word out about our Pack.

 

So for all our efforts, we added 11 boys. Went from 22 boys to 33. It is progress.

[Jeffrey H 25]

I use open houses to invite boys and families to come to our sign up night.

We do the same.  We promote Scouting and our Pack, answer questions, and inivte them to our first meeting.  Those that are interested and accept our invitation will show up to our first meeting in September, which is our sign-up night.  We have applications available if they want to fill them out at Open House, however that's not our goal.

For our Pack, Open Houses have proven very effective for our Pack.  The traditional  "School Night For Scouting/Join Scouting NIght" was not effective for us because very few boys were showing up and a huge waste of time for volunteers.  In our community, we have to go to the people and tell them about our Scouting program.  We cannot expect them to come to us. 

Our recruiting efforts have worked so well that other Packs in our District started doing similar recruiting efforts.

[noname 10]

Thaks for all of the help so far- quite a range as well. School nites- Sorry my family comes 1st. The Senior executive at council told me that he wont come- someone local should do it. I have 5 kids in elemtary school and they come 1st. The Senior exec also snowballed everyone at the valentines day party for YPT so we could recharter. The only leader we got stepped down as mentioned. Please remember we are in a town of 1200 with the total school population of 300. I will do my best as I teach the cubs. So if you were me- what kind of 1 man show can I put on to impress the kids and parents???

[Jeffrey H 25]

"...what kind of 1 man show can I put on to impress the kids and parents???"

 

noname,

 

It's good that you have learned to say "no" and yes to your family. Scouting is stronger when we keep our families first. To answer your question, I plan to do recruiting tomorrow night and I may turn out to be a "1 man show" depending on who can help. That said, I have nothing planned to impress anyone other than to smile and be there to promote the program. I have limited space to work with and not much I can do inside the school building during our Open House. I do have a couple of cardboard props with pictures of past Pack events and campouts that will serve as visuals. I will lay out a few handbooks and other Scouting material that prospects can look over. Other than that, I will be there to answer questions, share the aims of Scouting (Character Development, Citizenship, and Fintess) and share why I believe that Cub Scouting is a great program and the 12 core values it teaches.

 

If you have the space, you can set up a game area for prospective boys to play. Have your cub scout son with you in uniform to keep them occupied. Ideas for simple indoor games can be found in the Cub Scout How-To Leader Book or you can go online and do a search for "cub scout games." Keep it simple and fun and that should make a good impression.

 

[KISMIF_Works 10]

Hi noname,

 

I admire your willingness to promote your Pack when it's at what appears to be a low point organizationally. I read back through your posts to get some history on your situation, but still have a couple questions.

 

You mentioned that you are a Pack of "1 leader(me) and 8 non family cubs". Does that mean you don't have any of your own children in the Pack? Just curious.

 

When and where do you anticipate holding this recruiting nite? It doesn't sound like it will be done as part of a school function (i.e., open house), correct?

 

Honestly it sounds like unless you are able to recruit more leaders then you are already at capacity (1 leader to 8 cubs). That's how I would focus my recruiting night. Be open about the fact that you are re-launching the Pack and are looking for some enthusiastic adult volunteers who are interested in "getting in on the ground floor".

 

[noname 10]

"getting the pack off the ground", I love it!

I have 2 tigers(the largest den of 3)and 1 bear of my own.

We are simply handing a flyer out at school and having a sign up nite at the pack meeting. I love the - off the grounhd idea- will try and will post results as well. Parents dont want to do anything, last pack master would pick up the kids! Now the kids crosssover to a troop where someone will pick them up as well. 1 dad told me that he cant drive as it is on his golf nite! Hate to bother dad on that nite for the sake of his only son...

[SeattlePioneer 144]

Hello NoName,

 

 

That sounds very tough.

 

I think I'd be inclined to try having only a few activities, but making those activities really special so that parents would be attracted to participate and help. At least that might be an option to consider.

 

Especially when you have no help, you are probably overwhelmed with meetings and such, so you may wind up with routine activities that don't attract parents.

 

Are there district or council activities that you can lean on?

 

Are there parents who have a special hobby that they do? How about asking the golfing parent to take the boys golfing?

 

You can give the boys an opportunity to talk about fun things they do with their families and gain valuable intelligence on the kinds of things you can ask parents to do!