How did your SNFS go?

[fotoscout]

One of our neighboring packs signed up 14 new scouts last week. Only 5 of them were Tigers! My Pack is on for tonight, well see what happens. I already know that the school did not distribute the flyer to all the kids, so it will be a turkey shoot from the get go!

 

Our local Soccer Club lost 350 kids this year. I am very curious to see if our recruitment numbers are higher than the surrounding towns. If they are, it will confirm something that all of us in this area have been saying for quite some time.(This message has been edited by fotoscout)

[fotoscout]

Our SNFS went very well. We only got 8 Tigers but we got 9 older boys. As I talk to other leaders, this seems to be a trend in this area. Our problem now is what to do with some dens that are already too large.

 

As for my soccer theory, a few of the parents mentioned to us that they pulled their children out of soccer because they didn't like the directon is was going in. I suspect thtat this is why our "older boy" recruitment is up this year.

[Bob White]

We are a little ahead of last year as a district. Currently we have registered 670 Cubs this month. With Packs telling us they have another 150 registrations they have not yet turned in.

 

BW(This message has been edited by Bob White)

[zippie2223]

We registered 23 new scouts and 4 Leader. We still have 6 boy registrations still out there, I expect 4 of those back. We also have one leader registration that will be turned in tomorrow. That triples the scout that we have in our pack, now we just have to hang on to them.

[Torveaux]

Well, we have a small pool to draw from. Our charter org. is a church with an attached school. One class per grade, up to 30 kids per class. If the classes are evenly divided boys/girls, each class would only have a potential of 15 cubs.

 

We are thin on new Tigers as the 1st grade class has only 8 or 9 boys. We have interest from 3 or 4 families, but none have prior scout knowledge and are a bit gun-shy about being the leader.

 

We have been doing well in other areas. Our Bear Den had only 5 boys last year and has added 3 new ones. (1 out-of-state-transfer and 2 recruits) That amounts to about 1/2 of the boys in that class.

 

The Wolves kept their entire group together from Tigers with no changes. (9 boys)

 

Webelos 1 & 2 both held firm with their classes (2 and 6 respectively).

 

The 4th and 1st grade classes are exceptionally small, so the low numbers are at least partially due to that. It seems that if you do not get the boys by 3rd grade, they are not likely to join at Webelos stage.

[sst3rd]

To the original thread;

 

Our Pack had a very successful SNFS. We had a current Pack of 5 Cub Scouts (long story, but this is a very dedicated bunch), and added 27 new Cub Scouts. They immediately recruited leaders and had training.

The program is good, and getting better. However, it's been a month since the SNFS event, and I can see the new membership starting to trail off. I'm the Scoutmaster of the associated Troop. Both Pack and Troop are sponsored by the same church. Several years ago, I started pushing our COR to get the Pack going forward again. I realized that the Troop really needed a vibrant Pack to provided interested new Boy Scouts. Well, after a couple of years of putting the pieces back together, we get this successful SNFS.

How does the leadership reach out again to these Scout families that have apparently fallin by the way side already. Leaders make a phone call to parent(s)? Mail a flyer of some type home? Give up? What is a "proven" method to get these Scouts back to the Pack?

I've been directly working with the Pack for many years, and will continue to encourage the Pack's leaders. We try to provide Den Chiefs, but I never send one over, unless the Pack's leadership is trained to use one. How can we get these families back?

 

Thanks to all,

sst3rd

[ScoutNut]

There is no "proven" way to get scouts back once they decide that they would rather be doing something else.

 

What you need to do is work with the boys from day 1 to provide a fun scouting experience. You also need to be flexible. I have 2 Tigers who are having problems attending Den meetings just now. Because I talk to the parents, I know that both problems are temporary and that they should both be free in a few weeks.

 

I include both in all of my calls and notes to the Tigers. The things that they can attend they do. Meanwhile the boys are working at home with their parents on the activites. This way they are still moving ahead and if they end up repeating some things that's fine.

 

Before the boys disappear completely, the Den Leaders should contact the parents to see what is going on. It could just be something temporary, but if no one works with the families and everyone just assumes the boys are gone they probably will be.

 

.

 

[dsteele]

I'm not sure if anyone has noticed, but I'm not interested in theoretical debate. I'm not interested in what doesn't work.

 

The above has nothing to do with this thread.

 

Now I'm going to respont to 22t3rd's post about what to do about Cub Scouts who don't show up.

 

I was part of a Kiwanis club several years ago. They had not only a membership committee, but also a "remember" committee. The job of the remember committee was to call the members who hadn't shown up to the weekly meeting for a while and say,"Unc, we haven't seen you for a while. Is everything okay? We miss you. Will you be at the meeting next Tuesday? We'd love to see you and catch up with you."

 

I had missed several meetings (three) and was starting to get into the mode of skipping them. I was afraid that my lack of attendance would be criticized. I know that if time had gone by, it would have been easier and easier to not be part of the group.

 

In things like Kiwanis and Scouting, people don't generally quit. They tend to slip away. Other things begin to fill the time and guilt makes the separation fonder (if you know what I mean.)

 

I would suggest this, even in the case of missing Cub Scouts:

 

An adult call the parents.

The denner of the den call the kid.

 

Adult to adult, youth to youth. The adult won't say to the Cub "where have you been?" but the kid will.

 

Is this using peer pressure. Yes. It is. But so is the good conduct candle, the patrol method, and youth leadership in Venturing . . . but in a good way.

 

I know. I always get beat up when I suggest that the BSA uses peer pressure, but the fact of the matter is that it does.

 

Unc.