Recruiting Adults- A Tough Sell?

[OldGreyEagle 5]

so, at Mondays Committee meeting we looked around at each other. The Committee Chair who has been Chair for 15 years, her youngest is 24. The Scoutmaster who has been scoutmaster for 6 years and is the Council Training Chair, Myself, whose son is now 23, a son 19 (recently aged out) and his father. All in all, of the 12 people there, only 3 have sons in the program. Are we unique? We are an active Troop, but I think we may be a victom of our own sucess. We get Cubmaster and Asst Cubmaster's sons and are told by the parents, wow, I am so burned out on scouting right now, let me take some time off and they never come back. We had our Fall Court of Honor and maybe 5 parents showed up out of 30 youth who were there. What has been your experience with getting adult help?

 

[TwoXForr 10]

I think the biggest selling point in getting Cub parents involved, we tell them right away this is not Cub Scouts, parents are not allowed to do much. Not allowed to carry thier kids gear, not allowed to work around the camp. We get the Cub leaders on one trip, feed them well, actually our Scouts feed them, and I have found this is almost half the battle.

[Stosh 3452]

In neither my Crew nor my Troop do I have a problem recruiting adults. As a matter of fact, I often have too many and they basically are looking for something to do. I have them on a lot of "projects" to keep them busy until the boys have need of them.

 

Stosh

[allangr1024 71]

In our troop we try to get the parents to come in to teach a merit badge, something they have an interest in. We tell them, only a few weeks commitment until the badge is done. I think this can hook parents in to being more active. Just give them a way out if they need it.

[BrotherhoodWWW 10]

About half of the families in our Troop have active parents in the program either as committee members or program adults. We currently have no adults without active youth. This may be changing in the next year or so. A few families have both parents active.

 

Sometimes this is too much sometimes not enough. It's sometimes a matter of perspective and sometimes a matter of fact. We have had at least one outing cancelled in the past year due to not having two deep leadership. So from this perspective we do not have enough involvement.

[eagle90 125]

We have a troop of 43 boys, and a large committee of 27 people. 12 have no scouts in the troop (either aged out or no sons at all in the program); 3 are former scouts; and 3 are college age former scouts.

 

We keep them busy and they have a good time. It's a combination of devotion to scouting and the boys and a good social group.