Horrible recruiting numbers

[Rythos]

I am in a Pack with around 60 Cubs. We began our recruiting season with flyers passed out at all of the before school open houses, and flyers were brought into the offices of all the schools in the area and distributed to teachers mail boxes by on of the leaders spouses.

 

Last night was our recruiting night and we had a grand total of three people sign up. One of the kids brought a flyer, one came from the open house presentation, and one came because myself and one other leader ran into them at the public library before the meeting and began answering their questions, which led them to stop by and sign up. We ended up getting one Tiger, one Wolf, and one Webelos.

 

Has anyone had experience with a situation where a recruiting drive has failed to generate any serious response? Are there any other successful methods of mid year recruiting you have utilized? We have only have about 12-14 tigers this year split between two dens (mine has 4-5 (one has signed up but has not come to any meetings as of yet) and the other leader has 8 or 9 kids, and I'm worried without more interested folks the pack will slowly fade away.

 

Any help would be appreciated as I may be in the position of Cub master within a year or two and I'd like to be overseeing a healthy program, instead of trying to rebuild one.

 

Ry

 

[Lisabob]

Hi Rythos,

 

Sorry to hear it turned out poorly for your pack. I have seen that happen before, and sometimes a little digging around unearths a good explanation for why (insufficient prior notice, unclear language on the flyers, flyers weren't uniformly distributed by some/most teachers, conflict with other community events, bad weather, etc.). Sometimes there is no obvious reason why and it just flopped.

 

In both cases, we've held do-overs for packs, and sometimes we've also done a community-wide round up for all packs in the area. For do-overs, packs have often used their upcoming pack meeting or have held a separate "fun" event (depending on your resources and timing) to use as a draw and we (district membership) have simply helped make sure the word got out in an effective manner.

 

For community round ups, we've done these in late Oct/early Nov, well after the pack round ups are complete and when fall sports like Soccer are about at an end (for parents who felt they couldn't sign up for both scouts and sports at the same time). The local park, library, rec center, etc., works for these and packs are invited to set up a display and/or have an activity for the kids. We brought maps of the community so parents could see where kids from their neighborhood typically go. These events are rather successful, but require more work on the part of both your district staff and your pack to organize and promote. If you do something like this, make sure you either include all local packs or none of them, so as not to cause resentments.

[beardad]

Could be worse. We do recruiting at our schools curriculum nights, and send out fliers in the weekly school newsletter, as well as Nat'l night out, and our summer parade.

 

in my 3 years with my pack we have never ever recruited one person.

[artjrk]

My two oldest came from a Pack that is seriously dropping in numbers. They started with about 60+ boys to this year after crossover they will have 12. We had issues working with a new principal who would not let us recruit at the open houses. Also cultural shifts in the student population have led to a decline in the popularity of scouting with the youth and adults.

 

This year my youngest is starting as a Tiger in a new school and Pack, we moved. The new pack has almost 100 kids. The two school are adjacent and both Packs are feeders to the Troop I am now SM for. I am going to be watching to see what they do to maintain their numbers so that I can help my old Pack. One thing I have noticed is they try hard to get exposure to the overall student population all year long. For example during the Book Fair they sell and serve Ice Cream Floats and Sundaes. Seeing the boys in uniform and having fun in the middle of all the other activities is a great publicity tool.

 

As was already mentioned. Try having another recruitment drive this Fall. Try hosting a publicity event for all the school.

[shortridge]

What type of activities did you have going on at the recruiting night? Or was it just a show-up-and-sign-up thing, with a chance for parents to ask questions of the adult leaders?

 

To draw parents in, you've got to draw the kids in. To draw the kids in, you've got to have cool stuff - activities, items to handle, other kids to talk to and play with, etc.

 

Check out this writeup on Kudu's site. It's written for Boy Scouts, but is entirely adaptable: www.inquiry.net/adult/recruiting.htm

[ScoutNut]

OK, somehow I can't generate a lot of sympathy when you state you "ONLY" have 12-14 new Tigers. That does not sound to horrible to me. A "horrible" recruitment would be only 1 Tiger in the entire Pack!

 

Numbers fluctuate. That is just the nature of things. It is entirely possible that boys are joining other Packs, or are going for sports, or some other activity. You might just have tapped the max you are going to get in your Spring recruitment.

 

Bigger does not necessarily mean better. You don't have to have 100+ Cub Scouts to have a "healthy" program. What you need for a healthy program is trained leaders who know the BSA rules and regs, and who know, and run, an active, fun, BSA Cub Scout program. You will know you have a healthy program when you retain your boys from Tiger to crossover to a Boy Scout Troop. You know you have a healthy program when the boys get their buddies to join because they are having so much fun.

 

How many more Tiger Cub Scouts do you need to register before you will not feel like your Pack is fading away and needs rebuilding?

 

To try and get more boys you can hold a recruitment event like a kite fly, or picnic. Do fliers, take an add in the local papers, post fliers on bulletin boards around town. The day before the event see if you can get teachers to put stickers on the shirt front of every boy.

[AnniePoo]

We bring "cool stuff" to the school open houses as well. The most important is a mini-pinewood derby that the kids can matchbox cars down. It catches the kids' attention, and they bring mom & dad over to the table. Then they all look at the neat pictures from camp where the kids are climbing the climbing wall, doing archery, and swimming, and we get to talk to them at the same time.

 

Flyers include information about the first pack meeting, and we make sure to point out to parents when and where it is held.

 

You need to talk to the kids, not just the parents, and should be enthusiastic and funny.

 

Also, we bring our old full-size pinewood derby track and a bunch of donated PW derby cars to our school district's family fun night each as well. Kids run cars down the track for 2 hours straight, and we get loud and crazy cheering for different cars to win. It's great - cars fall off the track, wheels fall off, and we don't care because the kids are having a great time. While this is going on, we have a second leader standing around, and the parents start looking at our pictures and flyers, and it goes from there.

 

You need to get infuse energy and laughter into the recruiting, and not just hand out flyers.

[AnniePoo]

Ooohhh - I love the sticker-on-the shirt idea! We'll have to use that next year.

[Rythos]

I understand that numbers alone do not make a good experience or a healthy program ScoutNut. Adult leader training is heavily stressed in our unit and we are working towards 100% trained leadership including an increasing number of Wood Badge trained individuals so I feel like we have the training aspect covered. The boys who attend our activities seem to go home tired and dirty which for me is always a sign of them enjoying themselves (and hopefully learning a few things at the same time)

 

"You might just have tapped the max you are going to get in your spring recruitment"

 

This is a very valid possibility. I guess that previously I did not consider the spring and Fall recruitment as one event. Obviously with our Tiger numbers being what they are we signed up a pretty good number of boys in the spring. I was simply concerned over having only three boys show up for our fall recruitment, and it led me to wonder what we could be doing better to reach more boys this fall.

 

I'm not trying to grow a Super Pack, I just want to make sure we are keeping the pace or growing slightly with our number of boys crossing over into scouts while giving them a great life experience.

 

Ry

[Eagletrek]

We start early and begin our recruitment year in May by holding a Tiger Round-Up to attract new Tigers and their parents. This year we registered 11 new Tigers and parents in May so that they could start their scouting experience by participating in our National Summertime Award program. We just completed our Fall Round-Up and added another 21 scouts to our pack, to include another complete Tiger den. In total, we recruited 32 new scouts this year. Although, it is a slight drop in numbers from last year, its okay, since we had 132 "active" scouts last year and our number will now be 113 scouts this year. Frankly, 113 scouts is a more managable number when you're dealing with pack-level events.

 

Our success can be attributed to:

 

1. Our school and local community have been extremely supportive of our pack. This has been great since our chartering organization has not really stepped up to assist us in any measurable way.

 

2. Our adults are extremely active and have always stepped up to support our various events.

 

3. Our boys sell the program to their friends by sharing stories about what they done and what they're going to do.

 

4. Our Den Leaders are superb and are full of great ideas to keep the boys motivated.

 

5. Our pack's superb Family Camping Program.

 

6. Our pack's active participation in Cub Day Camp, Cub Resident Camp and Webelos Resident Camp.

 

The bottom line is, if you have an exciting and fun program, the boys in it will stay and others will want to join.

[DenZero]

It looks like youre doing very well with your recruiting. You got three times as many boys at your roundup as we did. Your spring recruiting was outstanding (we got none). We tried everything we could to get boys to our roundup, flyers, stickers, personalized letters, yard signs, newspaper announcements, etc., but they all failed. The problem with these methods is that they are unable to overpower word-of-mouth. If youve got a lot of families in your school telling other families that they dont want to join the schools pack, and that they should join the big pack down the road, youre sunk.

 

We have recruited a grand total of zero new boys in the past 6 months. Our schools demographics are favorable to pack growth, but it looks like we will have to throw in the towel after 65 years. A huge pack is much better able to wow people with a flashy program than a small pack can.

 

 

[Karen_216]

I agree that you need to look at the whole level and not just one event.

You did something right to have all those tigers. Now that we can't publicize in schools we are lucky to have Tiger dens of 6.

I'm stressing now as to what next week will bring. yes we have had some interest.

I drive around putting up signs and my kids say - Lokk that sign is still there". I put 3 adds in community section local papers- one advertised the wrong date and the othersd have yet to appear!! Our whole yeqr is recruiting--always tryingt o talke to interested families.

It's also not just the kids- I;'d be happy with the 3 if you also got 3 parents as leaders from it too(better yet 6)!!

[Pack212Scouter]

I don't think I would worry unless you see this two years in a row. There is some natural fluxuation. This year the school that our Pack draws from raised tuition significantly. This resulted in a huge decrease in their first grade registrations, and a huge decrease in new first graders to the Pack. Luckily we also draw from a large church and got a significant number there. Although we still got enough to create 4 Tiger Dens, our Tiger registration is down almost 50% from last year. What was strange was that we got a significant number of older boys. We had to create a new Wolf Den, we topped off our Bear and Web 1 Dens and had to create a new Web 2 Den.

[packsaddle]

Yes, back when I was CM (I really love the cub scouts) we had a few terrible recruiting efforts. The district did it by distributing one-page advertisements to the local elementary schools. Then the DE held a single event for both competing packs in town. It was common for the whole room of 'recruits' to get up and walk over to the other pack although we had presented nearly identical programs and outings. The reason was the troop that the other pack fed was the strongest troop and that SM had stated publicly that he would not allow any boys from the other pack to join his troop. The DE did nothing to help this situation and, in fact, made it worse. I have yet to meet a DE that offered anything more than an obstacle to the program.

 

So...during my last years as CM, as soon as I found out the date for the upcoming recruiting drive, I prepared our OWN brochures, circulated them independently ahead of the district drive and signed up the boys and their families BEFORE the other drive took place. It didn't make friends at the district level but the pack came back to life and was thriving when I switched to the Boy Scout troop.

 

My advice: hit the streets running, stay lean and mean, show them how good you are, let them make an informed decision, and take no prisoners during the competition. And if you have a district that can actually help, let them. Otherwise don't be shy about going it alone.

[gcan]

Last spring, we went to a boy scout recruitment night with our Webelos. The boys were totally 'wowed' by the 2 troops that had flashy power point presentations, and completely ignored the closer, friendlier troops with people we know in them.

 

I learned my lesson, and have a power point all ready to go for our school open houses this week and next! If at all possible, I'd reccomend you at least have a laptop or one of those $40 digital picture frames that you can run a slideshow on, it seems to really attract the short people.

And i will let ya'll know how it works out for us!