Committee Chair Stepped down

[Lady_Leigh67]

Hi there. Last night, we had our final Pack Meeting of the school year. Our scouts "graduated" with a wonderful neckerchief ceremony to their next level in scouting. Even had a couple of new families come to check things out. One is signing up for sure and the mom wants to be a leader! Hooray! Not bad for just being up and running since the end of October, 2006!

 

Anyway, we had quite a shock, in that our Committee Chair gave a a formal, written resignation. Stating that she is not receiving proper communication in order to do her job, and some other personal reasons.

 

Okay, everyone. We now need advice on how to handle this. She wants to still be active in scouting through her child, but not in the capacity of a Committee Chair. There are basically four of us that are running everything else right now, and were hoping by our Spring Round-up and the Fall Join Night to get more adults on board.

 

What do you suggest we do in the meantime? Thanks, guys!

[ScoutNut]

Sounds like your CC finally decided to focus just on her GS Troop.

 

The first thing to do is contact your Charter Org Representative(COR). Your Charter Org has the responsibility, thru the COR, to provide appropriate leadership. The COR is also the only one who can register in 2 positions, COR & CC. The COR can pitch hit as CC for a while until someone else is found. Have you considered a member of your CO who is not a parent? Your COR should be able to help you find suitable candidates & help do a face-to-face with them to ask them to volunteer.

 

It will help to have a written job description with everything laid out for the candidate.

 

Good Luck!

[eagle97_78]

Just like ScoutNut said the first thing to do is to contact your COR, but you also need to contact atleast one more person. That other person would be your Unit Commissioner. Whoever your UC is should let the District Executive and Commissioner know what is going on so that they have a heads up. Your UC should be able to get you a disscription of what the position entails and whoever becomes the Committee chair can get almost all of there training at http://olc.scouting.org this site has a lot of good adult leader training. Maybe even one of your current leaders would be willing to step up into the position of Committee Chair.

[Lisabob]

Good suggestions so far. I would also add that you (remaining leaders) may want to give serious consideration to what the CC offered as her reason for stepping down. Of course you may not see eye to eye with her, or her explanation may be a cover for the "real" reason, whatever that is. But is there a kernel of truth to what she said? If so, how can you work with whomever is the next CC to improve things? As a young pack undergoing your first significant leader turnover, this is a good time for a bit of self-assessment. Thorns & Roses, right? And if you're not sure about leading such a discussion, your UC (if they're any good) may be able to help out here as an objective, interested third party.

 

 

[Oak Tree]

Both the COR and UC would be good people to connect with, if they are actively doing their job as described in the literature. That is very often not the case. In our unit, while I might give them cursory notice of the situation, I wouldn't actually expect them to do anything about it.

 

I did have the CC resign while I was Cubmaster. Purely personal reasons. I looked around the set of available adults, considered the set of potential replacements, and approached one about volunteering. If you've spent time getting to know most of the other parents in the pack, you can get a pretty good idea of who might be a good candidate. Then we went back to the COR and said "Here's a new CC volunteer. Any concerns?" And of course, there weren't any and he signed the form.

 

It helps to be clear about what you're asking the new CC to do. And you could indeed consider whether there's anything you might do differently.

 

You'll either need to have one of the four of you step up to the job, or recruit someone else. Perhaps one of the four active adults could step up, and recruit a replacement for his or her other current position.

 

Oak Tree

[Jeffrey H]

Agree with Oak Tree.

 

Our COR is an uniformed Scouter and does attend our major events, however he would not be able to find a replacement for any of our leader positions simply because he does not know the parents well enough to make an informed decision.

 

The reality of recommending new leadership usually falls into the hands of a Scoutmaster or Cubmaster by default. The COR's typically just "rubber stamp" the recommendation unless they know something negative about the adult that would cause them to pause.

 

As a courtesy, do inform your COR of the "vacancies" and solicit his/her advice.

 

 

[John-in-KC]

Remember that a vacancy does not have to be filled from the ranks of the parents. It's just as right to fill a vacancy from the ranks of the Chartered Partner!

[Lady_Leigh67]

Thank you all for the wonderful responses. We are going to contact our UC, DE, and our COR. I don't see that other than being concerned, our COR will have much input. Most of us, as leaders within the Pack, have a better idea of the type of parents we currently have.

 

We also thought that possibly, having one of us hold the position temporarily until our Fall Join Night to see what other new parents become involved and may want (keeping fingers crossed) to take on the CC position.

 

The CC's reasons were personal/career for leaving. More that she does not have the time to put into the CC position and Girl Scouting. She is going to focus on GSing more. We had a feeling that this would happen, but we expected her to hold her term for the remainder of the Charter Year, not to leave now.

 

Again, thanks for the advice guys! Will let you know how things go!

[Lisabob]

If I can offer one other piece of advice from a "been there, done that, wouldn't do it again" perspective, it is that you don't really want a brand new parent as your CC. This is a position that requires someone who knows at least something about cub scouts and about your pack, to do really well. And it is not a position that you want to give to someone who might not be all that committed, and might vanish on you in 5-6 months time. You want someone whom you know and trust, and who knows the program.

 

Might it be better for one of your more experienced folks to step into the CC position for the year (with an eye toward selecting and training their future replacement) and then put the recruiting efforts into other, less demanding positions for the fall?

[Lady_Leigh67]

Lisabob, thanks for the advice. We discussed this point also. We are also hoping to get someone that is willing and would like to attend trainings and roundtables. The person that just stepped down felt that training and roundtables were a "waste of time."