howto District Membership Chair ?

[qwazse]

I think @@MattR hit on a key point: youth recruiters.

 

Your council might even have generic "recruiter" patches. But ideally, there will be a two-way system. Scouts who recruit friends get patches/premiums, but also you read out their names and unit numbers at each round table, and post them on a board that you maintain. How this happens in a district depends on what folks in that district generally respond to (e.g., E-mails, visits at unit meetings, name in lights, etc ...).

 

But, at the end of the day, this all assumes you all have trained your boys on how to be friendly to complete strangers.

 

There is no Personnel Management merit badge. So you have to teach boys to think about being good "big brothers".

I have to do the same for my venturers. When, they fail to show strong friendship, our crew shrinks -- even if we're up to some fantastic adventures. When they work at fellowship, even fiddling with ropes from the knot box feels like the greatest thing in the world.

[RememberSchiff]

 

 

 

There is no Personnel Management merit badge. So you have to teach boys to think about being good "big brothers".

 

Ugggh, you're killing me here. Scout law, Patrol Method.

Edited April 8, 2017 by RememberSchiff

[qwazse]

Ugggh, you're killing me here. Scout law, Patrol Method.

Ten PM troops with 4 crack patrols is not automatically gonna get you 50 crack patrols the following year.

If each of those boys only applies the fourth point of the Scout Law to their circle of 8, it might not even get you enough recruits to maintain the existing 40 patrols across the district.

[David CO]

When I was in Aloha Council, it seemed pretty standard to get access to some room after school hours, usually the cafeteria, where we could put on our dog and pony show for maybe half a dozen families, after having had fliers passed out to the students, or maybe announcements made over the PA.  This was all arranged, AFAIK, by someone on the professional staff, who secured volunteers at Roundtable to do the actual presentations.

 

In South Florida Council, I've seen a much wider variety of access.  One woman has been committee chair for a local Pack for decades, and has a relation with a few schools where she, or one of her minions (including me), had the opportunity to actually enter each classroom of 1st to 5th graders and give a little 5-10 minute sales pitch / show'n'tell.  It was awesome!  Much more common is a table at an Open House, but even that level of access seems to be based on "who you know", for instance, the President of the PTA would be a good friend to have..  By contrast, at most of the other schools I've tried to approach, I can't even get anyone on the phone, or to return my calls, or to email me back.   the exception being my son's school, when I had to see an AP for a familial reason, she permitted me to sales pitch their after-school program.

 

So, it seems to vary greatly "what is possible", given the right people and the right relationships.

 

Back in the 1980's, there was a lot of advertising taking place in the schools.  It wasn't just on scoreboards and concessions stands.  Advertisers were offering all sorts of free stuff to schools if they could put their logo on it.

 

McDonald's was hugely into this.  About half of my Health Class handouts and worksheets were designed by McDonald's, with the "Golden Arches" logo on every page.

 

All this free stuff was great for our budget, but many parents started to feel that their school children were being unfairly used as a captive audience for clever advertising campaigns. Schools like mine had to rethink their policies.

 

Parents and teachers were also complaining that too much valuable instruction time was being given over to assemblies, rallies, pitches and presentations to promote extracurricular activities (both in-house and outside organizations) and their various fundraising efforts.

 

Things were getting out of hand, and some changes needed to be made.  It is not easy now days for anyone to get access to our students during the school day, for any purpose other than instruction.  We feel that instruction time should be used for instruction.

Edited April 8, 2017 by David CO

[Stosh]

If one has 5 boys or 50 boys, if they all recruit one friend the number of boys in the troop will double.   As much as I hate math, even this makes sense to me.