How Many Schools Do You Recruit From?

[SeattlePioneer]

I've been recruiting from three public Elementary Schools and one parochial school.

 

I counted up the number of schools in the area I could recruit from, and it totals seven public elementary schools and two parochial schools.

 

More, really.

[Troop185]

I send information out on our troop, to at least 14 packs in the area. This year, our new scouts came from one parochial school (our feeder pack), and six public schools. Two new scouts are home schooled.

 

Every year we get scouts from different packs, but the last two years, four packs product most of our new scouts. Last week, we got a new scout from a school district about 10 miles away. He said he goes to church with one of our other new scouts.

 

We have not got a new scout from the closest pack to my house (the cub master lives acroos the street), in seven years!

 

I will send recruiting information to any pack in the area, I can get a e-mail for.

[Eamonn]

Our District covers 3 school Districts.

I live almost dead center of the Scout District, which has the smallest School District.

Only one elementary school, one Jr.-High and one Senior High.

The School District next door has one more elementary School.

The other District covers a very large area, going up into the mountains it has more schools, but the schools tend to be smaller, being as it's very rural.

I've had Sea Scouts join the Ship from this large district and it's not unusual for kids to be on the bus for two hours each way!

That makes for a very long day!!

Where I live we used to have as many as 5 Packs recruiting from the same elementary school, now it's down to just two.

We had a really good percentage of the available youth from this school, almost 28%

Ea.

[Scoutfish]

We recruit from 3 public schools and have had flyers forwarded by email to a coupe home school parent groups.

 

The 3 schools are as such :

 

S.Topsail Elem - 1/2 mile south of our pack.

Topsail Elem - 1 mile Norh of our pack

N.Topsail Elem - 2 3/4 miles north of our pack.

[John-in-KC]

We've got so many Packs in our District the SE had a sit-down with the CORs.

 

Clear and unambiguous message: This is the school you may recruit from. If you poach, we will not renew your charter.

 

He meant it, too...

[kari_cardi]

One. I just looked on beascout.org and we have 16 packs in a five mile radius. That feels like a lot. Every pack gets assigned one school for recruiting, but we can accept boys from any school. About two-thirds of our pack is there by word of mouth from other schools or home schools.

[Jeffrey H]

We have three nearby elementary schools where we traditionally recruit during Open Houses.

[Basementdweller]

We redid the whole school assignment thing a couple of years ago. Prior to that it was a gentlemens agreement as to who recruited from where. The original Pack that my son was recruited into was half way crossed the city from the school. Unbeknownst to me we drove past 6 packs to get to the unit we were recruit to.

 

Mistakes and selfish behavior like that has cost scouting dearly in our district.

 

We recruit from 3 public schools, our membership includes 8 public and private school members. I am worried a little as well......We are getting a lot of refugees from other packs. We recruited 40 new boys and 12 refugees from other packs......They come for the program, but it is getting almost too big for our church.

 

At 80 members now, I would like to see another Pack form and split the group. The problem is adult leadership.

[aszalan]

this year we recruited from 2 grade k-3 and 1 grade 4&5 schools. ended up with 12 new tigers, 5 new wolves, 6 new bears and 1 new web. we had another elementary school nearby that didnt have any recruiting done, but we decided to hold off. pack has 35 boys right now and our biggest problem is retention (ie 25 tigers last year, only 4 are wolves now), and the need to focus on den programs and not on fundraising.(This message has been edited by aszalan)

[qwazse]

Our troop is changing it's recruiting stragegy from focusing on the one middle school, to visiting several private schools and youth groups in a 3 mile radius.

 

We actually have boys from school districts 10 miles away. But we don't recruit from there. They just like our program. I really would like to see the adults from that area pull together a program, but I'm afraid they don't esteem themselves highly enough.

[SeattlePioneer]

Hello qwazse,

 

 

Can you describe the groups you recruit from in more detail?

[Scoutfish]

I want to be more clear on my post:

 

While my pack recruits at those 3 schools, so do the other four packs in my area. The DE actually runs the signup event, and each pack gets a few mins to talk a little about themselves.

 

WE are on the coast of NC, but the population isn't just spread evenly. There are 4 packs along the edge of our district. Then you have a pretty good gap between the next area of population and other packs. WE have creeks, rivers, inlest and bays as well as a HUGE amount of protected gameland that splits the county up in different areas.

 

The 4 of us who share the schols are okay with it as there are 3 schools full of kids. The population is huge in our area...so if your pack isn't pulling kids in ( which is happening with one pack) you are not doing something right.

 

Our pack is the biggest and draws the most new scouts in...but that's not bragging. Matter of fact, we worry about getting to big again like we once were and hope that the day doesn't come when we have so many scouts that we have to set maximum quotas of scouts or a membership cap

[qwazse]

SP, we are just starting this strategy this year because all of the Webelos from our sister pack crossed over to a spin-off troop. A couple of our committee have taken this up on their own and have developed a presentation that focuses on our troop's activities.

 

The two private schools in our area (one Catholic and one Protestant) have also benefited from Eagle projects of scouts in our troop, so there is a lot of goodwill there. About half of our boys (including mine) go to the local public school, which has a strong academic reputation.

 

The youth-groups (both protestant, but pretty non-denominational) are ones some of our boys attend anyway.

 

We also got the list of packs from our DE so we can make sure that the ones not partnered with a troop get an invite from us to any Webelos open-houses we may hold.

 

This is a very small slice of our district, and we are focusing on the groups that are geographically closest to our CO than any other troop. We also are not worrying about stepping on the spin-off troop's toes. If some school gets two presentations from different troops, that's a good thing.

[Austinole]

We go in to 2 schools. There is one other pack that also recruits from these two schools. There is a private school we also get some kids from but that is word of mouth.

[Austinole]

I have no problem sharing the schools with the other pack. In fact, I tell the parents and kids to check both out and pick the one they feel most comfortable at. Both packs are great. I thing most kids just go where they see most of their friends going.