Your story of turning around a Pack or Troop

[83Eagle 11]

I will admit that the number of "turnaround" stories in these forums, just mentioned in passing in other topics, have surprised me. Not just where leaders were necessarily asked by someone--district, CO, whatever--to fix a problem, but where they simply came into a declining pack or troop with just a few boys and about 0% of the optimal organizational structure, and managed to turn it around and help create a growing program.

 

Those stories seem to happen more frequently at the Pack level than at the troop level, but that's just my impression.

 

I find those stories to be very inspiring. So I'd like to hear more success stories, please...Now's your time to toot your own horn; nobody knows who you are anyway, for the most part.

[SctDad 10]

Our pack was one that was not going to have the Charter resigned by the CO. They allowed us to keep the numbers and that was it because that was all we had.

 

We started with a few new Tigers. Two Webelos and a few motivated parents. That was all that we had. We had 9 boys. 7 Tigers, and the 2 webelos. Today those tigers are now in Webelos I. There are 2 of the original 7 left, but we have an active den of 5, we also have dens of 8 Tigers, 7 Wolves, and 10 Bears. They all have Den LEaders that are trained. They also have the parental support that everyone needs.

 

Our Committee has grown from the 3 that we started with, to 5 that are dedicated committee members, not just wearing multiple hats.

 

Rebuilding a pack or troop takes time and dedication. Motivation, and a will do attitude. There are going to be speed bumps along the way. Their always are. But it is how you and your leaders handle it that helps the most.

 

Outdoor activities and camping are another thing that help a lot. If you have a quality program, then the boys will come.

[Basementdweller 608]

Two years ago I joined a Troop and Pack.......the Pack had less than 10 boys and the Troop had 4. The Pack was one den, four leaders who gossiped in the corner and one who ran the program. They had ZERO crossovers and retention was limited to the direct leaders sons.

 

Outdoor program was our single biggest improvement. Had a graduation campout. then went to summer camp.....they had never gone before. The boys told their friends they had a blast.....resulting in a Pack of 24, actual dens and individual den leaders.....we went to summer camp again last year and the result was a pack of 60 boys and multiple dens at each rank.

 

the troop has benefited from the cross overs, we had three last year and twelve this year, 9 at the blue and gold three will age out.

 

If the pattern continues we could easily have 100 scouts fall of 2011

[packsaddle 753]

When I took on the CM position, I had no idea what I was doing. I also had no idea that the district had such a stratified social hierarchy. At roundup, the DE set things up so that ALL of the boys decided to go to a competing pack, the one his sons were in. I felt blindsided and a bit betrayed. The CO didn't help things when I found out that ALL of the boys in that church were members of other units. Den leaders from the other pack also called the families to try to talk them into switching. I found out about that much later. It was bad.

I had no idea what the history was that led to this situation. But I was determined to turn things around. Next time, prior to roundup, I sent our own fliers out to the local schools and churches, way ahead of the district. If someone called, I had an application to them immediately (no need to attend the roundup, you can fill out the application at your own convenience). I talked personally to teachers and families AND I called for a meeting of the CO church leaders. They claimed, by and large, that they didn't even know they were sponsoring a cub scout pack (sadly, I considered this actually to be plausible). I laid out the recent history for them, explained some simple demographics and informed them that if things didn't turn around the oldest unit in the area (their troop and pack) would fold due to lack of boys. They were even more embarrassed when I mentioned the parable of the fig tree and only the minister had any idea of what I was talking about. I told them my intentions were not merely to shame them but rather to inform them that if they wanted to continue to support the community though the unit they sponsored, they had one year. It was that simple, and whatever happened, I couldn't do much about it.

They made the right decision. And they started communicating in the community. Next roundup, only a few families showed up and this pack took almost all of the boys (we had already signed up a bunch of new families). The DE looked like he had been struck by lightning (he was about as intelligent as a really smart bucket of nails). I terminated my interactions with the district and took the approach that we were on our own...so be it. The pack came back and I eventually turned it over to a really nice guy and a good CM and I moved on to catch up with my son in the troop.

The pack demographics (zero Webelos) had just caught up at the troop level and the troop almost died. HOWEVER, the CO kept things alive long enough for the newly rejuvenated pack to practically start the troop all over.

The social hierarchy is still there although not as strong. The new DE seems to be a good guy but I admit that after a series of disastrous DE's I'm permanently distrustful of both district and council (why do councils even exist? what a waste of money!). We still take the attitude that we're on our own. And that seems to work just fine. As long as we keep sending registration money, BSA seems fine with it as well.

[Stosh 3452]

I started with 5 boys and CC with no committee.

 

Boy-led, patrol-method was and is the goal.

 

I have had as many as 24 boys and now I have 14. Within a couple of months, I should be at 18.

 

Boy-led, patrol-method was and is the goal.

 

Every time I interact with the boys I ask myself only one question, "What is keeping the troop from becoming boy-led, patrol-method?" I solve that problem and I'm one step closer to boy-led, patrol-method goal.

 

The committee is onboard now and has CC and 5 members. They are 100% in line with boy-led, patrol-method.

 

Are we anywhere near our goal of boy-led, patrol-method? Nope, but we're closer than most other troops in our area.

 

So, tomorrow at our weekly meeting, what is on our agenda? Influx of new scouts, new patrols might be on the horizon, the boys are going to have to figure this out on their own.

 

Did I mention the biggest reason for our turn around is the goal of boy-led, patrol-method?

 

Your mileage may vary,

 

Stosh

 

[mikecummings157 10]

Last fall, after several years on declining numbers in our affiliated pack (resulting in few cross-overs for the troop), we found out that the CM had decided he didn't want to recruit and was going to fold the Pack after his son's Den crossed over. The entire Pack was six Webelos 2.

 

Several of us in the Troop, with Commissioner guidance, met with him and offered to support recruiting and get the Pack going again. After some resistance, he agreed to accept our help and even stepped down as CM to focus on his Den.

 

One of the Troop Committee Members offered to be CM, another Committee Chair, and several of us Committee members. We also moved the meeting night and location for the Dens to the same as the Troop so we could offer support as required.

 

We were able to attend several school night recruiting events and recruited 18 boys. We got them into Dens with leaders and got them going right away, including a fall Cub overnight. We have since had several boys transfer in from other Packs they weren't happy with, increasing the numbers to 25.

 

Last weekend the Troop participated in the District Klondike Derby and we invited the cubs and parents to be our guests for lunch and dinner. The boys from both units had fun interacting and we had a great chance to explain our program to the Cub parents over lunch, planting the seed for the future.

[Lisabob 13]

I never expected to be a scouter. I got involved as a leader because of a pack in disarray.

 

We joined a pack when my son was a Wolf. The pack itself wasn't the draw - the den was. He loved his den, they did fun things, were very close-knit and made my son's difficult move to a new town & school much easier (ready-made friends). But he really hated pack meetings, which were boring beyond belief (basically, adults talking at each other and telling the boys to hold still). So at the end of the year, the entire den moved to a different pack that had a reputation for a much more active pack program.

 

Well...yes, but.... turns out, that new pack was in the midst of a leadership crisis. The Tiger den went through 4 or 5 leaders in 2 months and we lost all but 2 of them. The Wolf den leader was nuts and we lost all but 1 of them. The Webelos dens were more like parents social clubs and hardly any of them crossed over to boy scouts (or they vanished, even if they did formally cross over). Most of the committee positions were on-paper only. The CO was completely uninvolved, to the point where the pack was choosing the COR for the CO, using the "warm body" method of volunteer selection. There were lots of little incidents, but things culminated at Pinewood, where parents got into screaming matches with each other over the results (which *were* incorrect, but still!) and one of the den leaders challenged the CM to a fist fight in front of the scouts.

 

Sigh. That's how I also met a whole bunch of district folks, in the aftermath.

 

CM quit, Den Leader quit. Lots of families left. The pack looked like it might collapse. CO threatened to drop the pack, on advice from the crazy COR whom the pack itself had selected!

 

I felt like there weren't many other options, so I, my husband, and a couple of others stepped up. Two of us (me and another DL) went to all the training we could get, including Wood Badge. We came back from that experience determined to build up the pack, and we did. I don't know what our lowest #s were because there had been a bunch of "on paper only" scouts to begin with, and then more who left after the Pinewood melt-down but were still technically registered, but I'd guess at one point we probably had only 10 scouts or so.

 

Within a year we had about 40 scouts and at the time my son's den crossed over, we had close to 60 scouts. All dens had trained leaders, the pack had a real committee, there was a trained CM and some ACMs, and the CO knew we existed again, this time for positive reasons.

 

Unfortunately, we didn't do as good a job at building up a sustainable leadership model as we might have. After the core group of us moved on, the pack declined to about 18 scouts over the last couple of years (also hampered by a reorganization of the school district that made recruiting more difficult for this pack). But at least they still exist!