Not playing fair

[sandim]

Our district wants all Packs/Troops listed on one flyer to be given out for recruitments. This year, the distribution was split between the packs in the area. Some of the schools in the District did not recieve the flyers ( per school staff). A recruitment was held this weekend and three of the schools did not recieve the flyers. The recruitment event held today, went okay, but not nearly as many as we had expected to get with nearly 5 thousand flyers going out in the district.

One of the Packs that was supposed to distribute the flyers was also the same one that was responsible for these three schools. Something smells a bit fishy about why the flyers didn't go out when they were supposed to.

It is not going to go over well if those "missing" flyers turn up on Monday or Tuesday after school resumes and just in time for their recruitment.

Just venting a bit and looking for some advice. How would you handle it and what would you think if those flyers turned up on Monday, right after your recruitment?

Thanks,

Recruitment person for a Pack(This message has been edited by Sandim)

[ScoutNut]

What does your DE have to say about the whole thing? Was the Pack at the recruitment event today? Did the DE speak with the folks from that Pack?

 

Flyers with old recruitment dates on them aren't going to be much use to anyone. The listing of area Packs and Troops on the flyer might be helpful, but not just to the one Pack.

 

You do realize that you are not limited to ONLY the District recruitment dates?

 

Peer to peer recruiting is one of the best tools. Have a bring a friend event.

 

Have a Pack recruiting picnic, Raingutter Regatta, rocket shoot, etc.

 

Is there a school that most of the boys in your Pack attend? Work with the Principal to allow your boys to wear their uniforms to school.

 

Make up your own flyer and have the school pass it out.

 

Stand outside the doors and put stickers on each boy coming out with your Pack info and info about it's recruiting event.

 

Advertise your Pack's recruiting event in the community event area of your local paper (usually this is free), and in the newsletters of your local churches

 

 

[Basementdweller]

Scouting and trust are pretty thin when it comes to recruiting and fund raising. I never understood why leaders are so heck bent on high recruiting numbers? Well that's not true it is an ego thing.

 

First off, I would never TRUST another Pack to do anything for our Pack, especially something as important as recruiting. Would you trust another Pack to manage your popcorn sale? I would hope no. Go camping with another pack ok, loan our pinewood track, ok, But Cub Scouting is very different than Boy scouting in that it is run by well meaning Adults who don't really have any previous scouting experience. Scouting does weird things to normally reasonable adults. I have seen normal, decent women turned into a fire breathing tyrant as a Cub Committee Chair. I have seen a soft spoken mild manner fellow transformed into Vlad the impaler the second they put on the uniform.

 

 

Rant off

 

We have printed our own flyers since I have become involved in scouting again. I would never trust a DE to provide me anything. I have been let down by Professional Scouters too many times.

 

 

As Scout nut suggested..... The Fall recruiting is a district or council thing. We run spring/summer recruiting event and a Christmas/New Year Recruiting drive.

[scoutldr]

If I'm wrong, the former pros here can correct me. You have to understand the Pro motivation. They are given a TAY (total available youth) number for a given school and for all schools across the District. Their only goal during roundup time to get as many of the TAY registered in Scouting as possible. They don't care where or what your unit goals are. They even get extra credit if they ignore your unit and start a new one.

[sandim]

There are 9 elementary schools in our school district, plus 4 private elementarys as well. That is why the distribution of flyers was split between the 4 Packs. All but one of the Packs distributed the flyers as they were supposed to. The Pack that did not had the three most populated elementary's, where most of the kids are drawn from. Those schools are where the flyers were not dropped off as the rest were.

I did let the DE know that it appears that the flyers were not dropped off at those schools. It just seems a bit underhanded to me that those flyers were not dropped off in time for the first recruitment date but I can almost guarantee they will show up on Monday when the kids go home from school and just in time for the Pack in questions own recruitment.

We will do a peer to peer , and do some community programs coming up to give us some more exposure and hopefully pick up a few new Scouts that way, as well as sell some popcorn at these events.

The boys in our Pack come from various schools in the area, so we don't have one particular school to draw from. Our home school is where we meet but our school district is weird in what they will allow and what they will not when it comes to doing open houses, etc. We used to be allowed to set up a table and pass out information in person, but they don't allow that now. We can't make up our own flyer and pass it out in the schools, the district insists on one flyer with all packs on it and we are lucky that they allow that.

[sandim]

We aren't looking for high numbers but we are looking for each Pack to play fair. The problem is that the membership person is also the head of the Pack in question and it seems to be that they draw an inordinate amount of the available potential scouts. Last year, something similar happened and now again this year.

I guess my feeling is that if the person can't play fair, and leave the decision which pack to join to the parents, by making sure that all of the recruitment info is out on time, then maybe you shouldn't be the membership person....if that makes any sense??

I am just frustrated with having to deal with this in the first place.

[Basementdweller]

I sounds like you are assigned schools for recruiting night. It isn't like the went in and recruited from the schools you were assigned right?????

 

Stop whining.

 

Call the School and Schedule with them

 

Does your DE do boy talks or does one of your Pack members? Get it arranged.

 

Print your own flyers and go recruit some Cub Scouts.

 

Have your Fall recruiting.

 

 

Empower yourself and stop being the victim.

 

 

Sometimes adults need tough love too.

 

 

 

[sandim]

No, we were not assigned schools to recruit from, but were assigned schools to drop flyers off to before any of the scheduled recruitments took place. We are supposed to recruit from all of the elementary schools.

Thanks for being so rude Basementdweller. I don't think that I will be back. It seems that some of the adults in Scouting could learn some better manners, not just playing fair.

I suppose that if I had gone and deliberately not given out flyers so that your Pack's recruitment date was missed by the time they went out, I would be just doing my job? I don't view it that way. I teach the Scouts that I work with to be fair, to do the right thing, but I guess that only applies to the little guys, not the adults in Scouting. At least now I know what I was doing wrong.....

Again thanks.

 

[Basementdweller]

Well sorry to hear that.

 

I still stand by my suggestion. Go or call the school yourself and make arrangements to get in. We have some schools that will not let us do boy talks, but will let us put flyers in the teacher mail boxes for distribution. Then we hold the actual event on the lawn in front of the school.

[ScoutNut]

OK, maybe I'm just not getting it.

 

Do you have one, mass, District/area wide registration event, with flyers distributed listing the District/area registration event info, and all of the area units contact info?

 

Or, does each unit have it's own registration event, separate from everyone else, and these controversial flyers have unit contact info and unit registration event info, for each unit in the area?

 

If it is the former, then late flyer distribution should not be more beneficial to one unit over any other. If it is the latter, then contact your DE about having the other Pack's in the area, including yours, attend this Pack's registration event. Or perhaps have the DE do another flyer for this one school and you, and the other units, can add extra registration events to it.

 

IF there is such nasty competition among units, it might be better to switch to one mega event that every unit attends.

 

I still think you should be pushing recruiting on an ongoing basis all year round. If you have boys in these schools have them tell their friends about your Pack.