Where Are We Going Wrong?

[Bob White]

There is no shamme in selling scouting. Selling is a noble profession and Scouting is a quality product. Just be an honest salesman.

 

Do not make promises you do not intend to keep. If the pack doesn't have fun hands-on activities and do neat things do not say that they do.

 

If the troop isn't rock climbing, canoeing, hiking, swimming, don't say that they are. If the scouts aren't really scouting then yo are not selling a product you are scamming the customer, and there is no honor in that.

 

If you tell the boys the promise of scouting and keep the promise, the boys will come to you year round.

 

So go ahead and sell scouting, but deliver on the product you promise.

 

Bob White

[Eamonn]

I didn't do such a great job of explaining myself in my last posting.

I do not have a problem with recruiting or starting new units. As we all are aware anything that isn't growing is dying. It just hit me that day that we were making a pitch and all of a sudden I felt like the kid who found out that there was no Father Christmas (Santa.) Then again maybe I was like the kid who knew all the time and didn't want to hurt his parents by telling them.

As it so happened the Nit we have as a FD. had set us up for failure.

We were meeting with a local high school in an effort to start Venturing in the school. My idea was that we could work with some of the in school clubs offering the use of the advancement program along with the benefits of Scouting facilities and insurance. The school has a Tie and Fly fishing club that rents the council camp a couple of times a year. I thought that this would be a goood fit. The FD. wanted numbers. He had gone through the advancement books and said that we would herd a couple of entire classes into a hall and have guest speakers talk about First Aid or some other topic that he had selected from a book. I said this is what we used to do with the old Exploring program and Career Awareness, but he said that as it came from the Venturing books it was Venturing. Needless to say we did not agree.

I went to the meeting with the idea of planting the seed and seeing where we as the BSA and they as a school could pair up and do maybe some things together. He wanted at least 100 members to this end without telling the DE and myself he had faxed his plan to the school ahead of our meeting. They looked at it and said that his idea couldn't work as they were doing most of this stuff as part of their curriculum. We were then left trying to explain that the stuff that he had sent wasn't really the entire program. While all the time I'm thinking that a slow painful death would be too good for him. Between the two of us we did everything that we could but we just were unable to get away from that darn fax. We were trying to sell sand in a dessert.

I asked why he wasn't at the meeting and was told that he had to be in the office to "Crunch Numbers." I left the meeting wanting to do some crunching of my own and it wasn't numbers.

Sure enough if we had managed to get what he wanted we would have been a Quality District and I feel that somehow someway he would have worked this into the council being a Quality Council and yes we might have been able to pass some knowledge onto the classes that attended the presentations but it would not to my mind have been anything like the program that we are supposed to offer.

By the way we have a Kirby Sweeper which the Boss loves, we could have bought five Hoovers for the same price. We didn't take the paint sprayer or the sanding attachment or the other parts that the salesperson thought that we couldn't live without. At the end of the day it does work.

Eamonn

[Hunt]

A few things in this thread have reinforced my view that Scouting's ability to recruit and retain may vary greatly by the kind of community you live in, and maybe the part of the country. I was amazed to read that Boy Scouts have a 20% market share--to me, that sounds huge. I could be wrong, but I'll bet it is much, much less where I live in the DC suburbs. Could it be that those of us who live in suburban areas, where these new youth sports leagues are so strong, are seing more competition from sports than those in smaller towns or rural areas? In this area, it would be virtually impossible for a boy to be on a select or travel sports team and simultaneously be very active in Scouting. My daughter, who is 9, had to choose between soccer and ballet, because both made demands that made it impossible to do both. She didn't choose the one with the stronger program--she chose the that more of her peers were doing. Another insidious element of the sports commitment is that the demands are constantly ratcheted up year by year, until the kid and the family are in sports bondage. This makes it very hard to cut back.

I guess for me the bottom line on this point is that Scouting either has to actively compete with these activities and earn the primary allegiance of boys over them--or it has to allow for fairly low levels of participation by boys who are doing other activities.

[Eamonn]

Not sure where the numbers are coming from? As of November 30,2003 there were 960,683 total of boys, Boy Scout age participating.I don't have the population numbers for this age group but the U.S. Census is showing a total of 21,316,742 for males aged from 10 through 19 years of age.

Eamonn

[fotoscout]

I do think that kids were more enamored by sports in the past. They had a single team and a hero that they knew everything about. They had time after school or on Sunday to watch the ball gamethe whole game start to finish. Today, they only know about which athlete is beating his wife, which athlete is on drugs, and which athlete is the highest paid. We as parents know a little more. We know about which high school sports teams are allowing their boys to use broom sticks and pine cones as training accessories.

 

Ok, Im done ranting!

 

Bob, your choice of words brings home the point. Years ago, a kid could be play soccer and be in scouting, and be enamored with both. The boy could say, I AM a soccer player, and say, I AM a Boy Scout. Today, with few exceptions, that cant happen. The boy can be one or the other. The exception being the very talented and gifted kid who can do virtually anything without ever breaking a sweat.

 

Although I believe that sports has had a huge impact on Scouting, I dont believe that it is the place where we went wrong.

 

Scouting went wrong when it allowed the public perception of scouting to shift from the center. Shy of charging each family $1000.00 per year for scouting, we cannot make up for the revenue losses that this perception has created. Large national foundations, small national foundations, corporate charity programs, private foundations, small and local business ALL think twice about supporting and giving to BSA. Without the revenues we simply cannot support an outstanding program. Sure we could scrape by for a few years until all of the dedicated volunteers are thoroughly brunt out.

 

On top of it, we startup new units that cannot be supported, those units fail and all of the people involved in those units develop a bad taste for BSA. Look at the Venturing Crew that Eamonn is talking about, another recipe for failure with extreme potential for more bad taste.

 

[Bob White]

"Today, with few exceptions, that cant happen. The boy can be one or the other."

 

I don't see that to be the case at all. Right now we have scouts in my son's troop that participate in wrestling, football, basketball, soccer, track, band, and speech/drama. None of those sports last year round. They come when they can during the season, and when the season is over they come back. They enjoy the program, they miss it when they are gone, but they know the door is open and that they are welcome to come back whenever they can.

 

My experience has been it's only an issue if you choose to make it one.

 

Bob White

[fotoscout]

Its been mentioned the location has something to do with this particular issue. In this area most of the activities you listed extend thru multiple seasons:

 

Wrestling two seasons plus extensive summer camp

Football one season plus captains practice all summer and summer camp (big bucks)

Basketball two seasons

Soccer year rounds and then some

Track three seasons

Band year round, extensive in the fall and spring, fall commitment for no other activities

Speech/Drama speech?? Drama, year round with many local theater groups

 

Unfortunately, the kids that do not make the complete committed to these activities are not accepted as part of the group. Not by the coaches or by the participants. It has become all or nothing. The kids that choose to only participate during part of the year do not get the attention of the coaches/instructors.

 

Lets not forget that the adults running these programs demand a 100% commitment. Now lets go back to the I AM a _______ statement. Can the kid who attends on average one meeting a month, doesnt attend summer camp, and makes maybe 2 outings though the year make the statement I AM a BS . More so, and I have a couple of CS that show up about once a month, are these kids a hindrance to your program? Ill answer my own question. One kid no, two kids perhaps, three kids definitely.

 

Sure we keep the door open, in some cases from year to year. But they are without question affecting the program.

 

[evmori]

Well, basketball and soccer are year round in my area. Volleyball is getting that way, too. If they want to play & not ride the bench or maybe not make the team, the kids need to be there as much a possible. I don't think this is a good thing but that's the way it is. I suprised this doesn't occur in your neck of the woods, Bob! Or either it does & you just don't know it!

 

A blessed Christmas to all!

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[Eamonn]

I don't know and can't speak for anyone elses son but OJ is a busy little fellow. He plays soccer and is captain for the school team. He is on the track team, is in the school play and the chorus as well as being in the troop as the new SPL and the Crew. He is a Vice Chief in the lodge and still turns his homework in on time.

While I have done my stint as both a Cubmaster and a Soccer coach, I have had little guys ask if they could leave early or come late to pack and den meetings I have never had a little guy ask to leave soccer to go to a pack or den meeting.

The problem does not seem to be with Boy Scouts and sports. The downward trend in membership is at the Cubscout level, we just don't seem to be pulling in the boys of this age group. I think some of the changes that we have made to enable more Cubscout camping are for the good. Still there is something that isn't working. At the Tiger Cub level it isn't retention it has to do with recruitment.

I was talking with a pal of mine across the pond in England who serves on the Committee Of The Council, he tells me that their Beaver program is working well (Beavers are the UK equivalent of our Tigers.) They are coed so it is hard to look at them in the same light. But from what he says in a lot of the rural areas there is waiting lists to join. Again this is a sign of not having enough leaders.

Eamonn

[Fat Old Guy]

"While I have done my stint as both a Cubmaster and a Soccer coach, I have had little guys ask if they could leave early or come late to pack and den meetings I have never had a little guy ask to leave soccer to go to a pack or den meeting."

 

Don't you know why that is? Sports are important and Scouts is just, well . . . Scouts is just Scouts. No one is kicked off the team in Scouting.

 

I suppose that I'm guilty of this to some extent as well. My son plays basketball, not serious, crazy, nut basketball, just recreation basketball. They have three practices before the season starts and eight games. If he misses a practice, he's missed a bunch. Missing one game is 12.5% of the season. Fortunately, basketball and Scouts don't conflict much.

[scoutingagain]

A couple of thoughts.

 

As noted earlier, scouting I believe is perceived by the general public as associated with conservative social values and conservative religious institutions. Good, bad or neither, this association limits the pool of potential members.

 

When I was a kid there was a commercial on TV that showed scouts camping, hiking and whitewater canoeing. The only time I see scouting in the media today is when it is involved with some social controversy like the Philly City Council.

 

Bob White has noted the issue isn't the program it's leadership at the unit level. Participation in the Pack I was associated with and the Troop I am currently associated with has been directly related to the quality of adult leadership. Having said that, much has been made of the commitment requirements of youth to sports or other activities. What about the commitment expected by employers of adults/parents. Many adults/parents today are frankly overwelmed by their jobs. Employers expect a 24/7 commitment. I've been in the workforce for over 25 years and only in the last three have I been fortunate to be in a position and have an employer that allows me the time to support scouting. And if it's not the employer, overall commuting time to/from work is up substantially than when it was in the 60s. Not long ago a 1 hour commute would have been considered a long commute to a job, now it's routine for many. This significantly limits the pool of quality adult leadership and the quality of the adult leadership is the single greatest factor effecting the quality of the program that's delivered at the unit level.

 

For some of us it might be tough to admit because we enjoy it so much, but scouting is not for everyone. Not all kids like to camp, hike, etc. Just like not all kids are into team sports.

 

"No one gets kicked off the team." Correct. There is no starting line up, there is no second string, there are no cuts, there is no bench, everyone plays all the time. All they have to do is show up. This is the big diffence between scouting and sports and I think it's a positive difference. I'm not against sports or competition, but scouting gives a kid opportunities that they won't get anywhere else and that's a big part of the message we need to send.

 

SA

[Hunt]

Here's my idea for a commercial:

 

Commercial begins with a split screen. Music with a driving beat (techno?), no narration. On the left side of the screen is a kid holding a videogame controller. His expressionless face is lit by the blue light of an unseen TV. He plays his game through the whole commercial, occasionally reaching into a potato chip bag. On the right side of the screen are quick cuts showing boys kayaking, rock climbing, camping, walking in snowshoes, etc. When the kid on the left reaches for his chips, the kids on the right are cooking over a campfire. Cut to a black screen that says: "Live the adventure. Be a Scout." Then it gives a website--which would let you identify your local troops by entering your zip code.