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Feel like I need a cheat sheet to do District Committee Staffing training!


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Online training at BSA National - a new course appeared that I never saw before - staffing the district committee. Anyone ever done this? I have tried twice and both times I go on and on and on finding prospects, recruiting prospects, moving them around their different sub-committees within the cyber-district and I can't seem to get all 3 of the tables to be GREEN. I can get TWO and then the third gets close, but close gets me no cigar!

 

 

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I've done it. It took me about an hour to complete. I've recommended it to our DE, District Chairman, ASE, and anyone involved with responsibilities to filling positions in the district.

 

It's a nice idea, but the idea of going into the community and finding leaders that have little to no Scouting experience is a stretch. That might have worked 50-60 years ago, when 9-5 was your day. Not when you work 9-9, or various shifts, etc.

 

The process in the training took me about "9 months". Not unrealistic to actually get several people involved and trained, but TOTALLY INSANE to believe one person could do this with 3 committees - staffed, trained, and properly functioning. It is a continuous task to recruit and replace leaders. Then when those that are responsible to do this are also working full time, it honestly doesn't get done.

 

Our district is trying to restaff by word of mouth, and person to person recruiting. We have a new DE, District Chairman, and myself (new District Commissioner). We've picked several key leaders from throughout the district to develop a list of candidates. (Yeah, I know it's the Nominating Committee's responsibility. Right! Again, works for one or two positions, but not to restaff 1/2 the district committee, and 3/4 of the commissioner staff - all at the same time.)

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It took me 57 months and I still did not have all green, although I was pretty close too

I thought the lesson was do your best and you may or may not ever have a full fully functioning committee as people are always moving or having changes in their personal life and that is a reality in the real world

or Maybe I should not be a district chairman LOL

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When you're doing the simulation you have to remember that the person on the left side of each table is the chairperson. They need to have a strong connection to their positon (career wise).

 

I also found that some people don't work on any commitee.

 

BTW, does anyone know where they got the pictures for the community members that you draft? They're too small to be sure, but one looks like my SE.

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Our new(ish) District Chair took the "recruit people from the community" idea to heart. He actually got people in these jobs. Now our challenge is to a) teach them about Scouting b) get them to really do their jobs. The PR chair is getting us ink.

 

http://abcnewspapers.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1991&Itemid=26

http://abcnewspapers.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1951&Itemid=26

 

I have yet to see anything from the membership chair, but to be fair, there hasn't been much chance. The Finance chair did a good job with community FOS, and the family campaign was already well in hand. The rest of the jobs are filled with "double hatters" like me - unit leaders who are also doing district jobs.

 

It took me two sessions and about three hours to finish the District committee staffing course. I didn't notice the "month" counter, so don't know how long that took.

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  • 10 months later...

Ok, so who do I put in the chair for the advancement committee? I got like, 3 eagle scouts, a US judge, a former mayor as the chair... I cut the dead weight when I could find it...

Help!

Anne in Mpls

week 54 and counting (What are these months y'all are talking about??)

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Well the online training took me over 2 hours with lots of interruptions, i.e. read stories, feed baby, etc. probably would have finished faster if a) I didn't have the interruptions and b) i didn't use un-scoutlike language on when the thing would end. I thought that the recruiting sim was just part of the training and not the test.

 

As for where they get photos and videos from. A lot of times they use national staff for training photos and some videos,especially if all they are doing is reading a teleprompter. Yep national has a small studio for that purpose, or they did back int he day. When it requires actors, yep they hire them.

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I am a little bit amazed by the reported difficulties.

 

I think I did it in about 25- 35 minutes, couldn't tell you a number of "months", but the key to the thing was to READ the qualifications and THINK about whom you were putting where and to start by shifting people already on committees while recruiting new ones.

 

Thankfully I'm not doing this in real life and only did the course for fun.

Because, IMHO, the people who have to do this for real have a much bigger job than what was presented by the course because real people are much more complex than the characters they gave us to work with...

 

For those of you who are doing this in the real world, THANK YOU!

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