carconcad

Seattle: obviously we are not doing enough things, or the right things, to encourage more boys to join. Give me some ideas of good recruiting tools!

Again, we have three boys now and are moving up three more in June. I am the ASM (yes, my son is in the Troop). The SM is an Eagle Scout from way back and his son is one of the three also. Youth Protection is not the issue here. My frustration is not that I think that I am in a dying unit. The issue is that it takes more time than some would think to create a fully-formed Troop. I guess I don't appreciate the council telling me that they are willing to pull the plug when we have just begun to get things rolling. Anyway, lest this turn into a gripe session, I am looking for alternatives and solutions that result in having a working Troop here, rather than pulling up stakes and going somewhere else.

Thanks to everyone for their opinions. True.....an effective Troop should have many more boys (just look at the BSA literature that shows nearly 30 boys in a "small" Troop). Nevertheless, we have what we have and I am not willing to call it quits for lack of numbers. The next Pack or Troop "down the street" is 20 miles away. What we have in our town is it. I can't argue against poor retention other than to say that if you have three boys to start and one leaves, that is a 33% drop (as opposed to 10 and one = 10%). As a new troop with new boys (11 and 12 years old) with new leaders, we are all learning at the same time and developing the program as we go along. We have not had a viable District or Unit Commissioner program for years until just a couple of months ago. I am waiting to see if that will pan out. Therefore, we really have created the troop (and Pack) on our own bootstraps. The Pack went from five boys to thirty in three years. Our Pack schedule is based on the school year (don't get me started on why we have to do rechartering in February instead of June or September). This gives the Webelos time to complete Arrow of Light requirements (especially if a boy joins in the 5th grade). We have our AOL ceremony in early May, the Spring/Summer recruiting night at the end of May (end of school year), and the crossover ceremony and campout the first of June to kick off the summer activities. Other units may "normally" follow a different schedule, but this is what we are doing. Our recruiting consists of the Summer recruiting night in May, another school night in September and a booth at the town Spring festival in April. Any other suggestions are appreciated. Like other units, I assume, we are always competing for boys with sports (football, baseball, etc) and the "fumes" (gasoline and perfume) at that age. I will look at the former Cub Scout list for prospects. Again, any good idea is welcome.

Thank you for the reply. I understand the guideline of a minimum number of Scouts and leaders for the sake of logistics and effectiveness. In a perfect world, and a larger community (our town has 1880 people), that would be great. However, our mini-Troop is one of the most active in the district, if not council. We participate in mulitiple events, are active in the community, and work with the Pack to support their training (i.e. first aid for Webelos, etc). Our Pack has doubled in size every year (we are just waiting for the time when the Troop will do the same). In fact we should be going from three to six Scouts by the first of June. I guess I will just have to cook our own books to satisfy the beauracracy so we can keep our boys signed up and covered by BSA insurance.

What is the official BSA rule for starting a new BS Troop? Our Troop was started two years ago when we needed a place for our single Webelos to move up to. He was joined by two more boys from school, which made three total. Since then those two boys have dropped out, but were replaced by two more rising Webelos (still three total). Our feeder Pack is only three years old and has not supplied a large number of Webelos for transition to the Troop yet. Now our council is laying down the law that we can not recharter the Troop without at least five boys on the roster. Where is this written? and why? They even suggested that we add some of the boys who dropped out back to the roster, even though they are not attending, just to get the number up until there are more Webelos to transition in a couple of months. I was trying to follow the "Scout is trustworthy" law and be honest about the situation. Who is getting harmed if a Troop, especially one that is only two years old, is very small? This is very frustrating as a leader when we are just trying to help the boys and getting roadblocked by seemingly arbitrary red-tape.