Building A Unit Committee

[SeattlePioneer]

I'm the district Membership Chair. 2+ years ago I embarked on an effort to revive a failing Cub Pack that's in a critical area and had dwindled to one Cub Scout. I was Tiger Cub Den Leader to start the pack revival effort then Cubmaster beginning a year ago.

 

 

Early in the fall I had a parent offer to be Pack Treasurer. Since our former Cubmaster (and current unit Commissioner) had been Treasurer, that was welcome. PACK COMMITTEE MEMBER #1!

 

Our pack Committee Chair had left the pack, and beginning in September I began looking for a new CC who would do a good job ---and be the Chartered Organization Rep as well.

 

None of the likely candidates would agree to take the job. I was mainly interested in someone who would make a point of asking families to volunteer to lead one activity per year, rather than mostly leaning on those attending monthly parent meetings repeatedly.

 

I also suggested that that function of recruiting parent leaders could be split off by someone as a ScoutParent Coordinator, a registered Conmmittee position.

 

Late in December the parent who was doing our recharter agreed to be the Scoutparent Coordinator PACK COMMITTEE POSITION #2!

 

With that position filled, another parent agreed to be Committee Chair. COMMITTE POSITION #3!

 

That allowed us to recharter.

 

I've been making a point of deferring to our Treasurer on spending decisions, so she will feel empowered to do the financial planning we need rather than merely being a check writer. That resulted in a delay in getting approval for funding a pack activity, but now she is planning on putting together a budget for the year.

 

Our new Committee Chair got off to a slow start since she was out of town for our end of the year parent meeting, but now she is getting started on the things that need to be done.

 

So I'm pleased to see our Pack Committee start working! We have three excellent people that are starting to learn their jobs and to figure out how we can work together!

 

 

In particular, I'm hoping that the Scout Parent Coordinator position works as planned by BSA. That person has two main responsibilities as I understand them:

 

1) to contact newly recruited families and welcome them into the unit and answer their questions.

 

2) to aim to sign up each family to lead at least one pack activity during the year.

 

 

Too often, I see pack leaders look for people when they are needed at the last minute, which usually means asking people who have already volunteered to volunteer again, and means those who hang back aren't asked.

 

By having a leader whose MAIN JOB it is to insure that all families are asked to help, my hope is that more people will volunteer and we will have more families that make a deeper commitment to Scouting by actually helping, rather than hiding.

 

I'm expecting we will be putting together a list of activities that need leaders through August, and that our ScoutParent Coordinator will be able to start planning to fill those needed positions. That should be especially important when we do our spring recruiting and have a bunch of new families enter the pack at once.

 

How does it sound for the Cubmaster and Committee Chair to be able to identify the need for volunteers and have someone else take the responsibility of finding the parents needed to do those tasks?

 

Anyhow, I feel pretty good right now about how things are going in the new year!(This message has been edited by seattlepioneer)

[Hawkrod]

Are you a parent chartered unit? If you mentioned it before I apologize as I probably was not following. If you are not then your COR should be choosen by the CO not the unit. The COR has a lot of responsibility and their job is supposed to include furthering the CO's program through the Scouts.

[SeattlePioneer]

This pack is chartered by a Catholic parish. Unfortunately, they take only a limited interest in the pack and providing an effective COR hasn't been a part of that interest.

 

One of the things I'm trying to do is to make the pack more of a part of the parish community. To that end I've asked our Tiger Cub Den Leader, one of the two parish members in the pack, to look into finding a service project for the parish that the pack can lead and hopefully attract other chrch families to help with.

[Abel Magwitch]

SeattlePioneer

 

This sounds like its time for the paid professional DE to have a meeting with the institutional head and COR. In fact, the DE is supposed to meet annually with the institutional head especially at charter renewal time. The DE gets paid to be in contact with his units sponsoring institutions. Its not your job as membership chair to organize a unit committee. If the pack is failing, where is the unit commissioner? Where is the district commissioner? Failing units fall in their realm of service.

 

Hawkrod is correct. Its the COR who needs to take action. That is why he volunteered to be the COR. The Pack belongs to the sponsoring institution. If the SI and COR not interested in their Pack, perhaps its time for that Pack to find another sponsor.

 

http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/04-113.pdf

 

The chartered organization agrees to

Conduct the Scouting program according to its own policies and guidelines as well as those of the Boy Scouts of America.

Include Scouting as part of its overall program for youth and families.

Appoint a chartered organization representative who is a member of the organization, will represent it to the Scouting district, and will serve as a voting member of the local council. (The chartered organization head or chartered organization representative must approve all leadership applications.)

Select a unit committee of parents and members of the chartered organization (minimum of three) to screen and select adult leaders who meet the organizations standards as well as the leadership standards of the BSA. The committee chair must sign all leadership applications before sending them to the chartered organization head for approval.

Provide adequate facilities for the Scouting unit(s) to meet on a regular schedule with time and place reserved.

Encourage the unit to participate in outdoor experiences, which are vital elements of Scouting.

 

[Eagledad]

>>How does it sound for the Cubmaster and Committee Chair to be able to identify the need for volunteers and have someone else take the responsibility of finding the parents needed to do those tasks?

[SeattlePioneer]

 

Expecting the District Executive to hold that annual meeting with the Institutional Head is something I should expect him to do. He might be able to knock loose a little institutional support in terms of a COR that would represent the Pack effectively within the parish community. That would be worth a try. Thanks for that idea!

 

I happened to recruit the Unit Commissioner for the pack, who is the Cubmaster I replaced a year ago. After six years as Cubmaster watching the pack dwindle and not being able to reverse the trend, he is occasionally attending Pack Committee meetings but mainly he's off with his son in Boy Scouts. Unit Commissioners don't grow on trees around here. And there was no Unit Commissioner while he was Cubmaster.

 

Unfortunately, the District Commissioner's magic wand seems to be out of order. Waving it doesn't seem to produce the skilled volunteers we could sure use. Frankly, we haven't been doing well at all in recruiting district volunteers, and I'm afraid I threw something of a snit about that a couple of months ago at a district meeting. Writing complaints to the District Chair and District Commissioner doesn't produce a reply.

 

It's all very well to say that it's someone else's job. But standing on that principle merely means the unit would have failed already.

 

My plan is to have the unit working on it's own by the end of the year, at which time I'm outa there. I'm not sure I can make that happen, but there is a reasonable chance. Of course I said that a year ago, too!

 

Frankly, it's been a much tougher job than I planned on.