Crew Size Limit

[Herms]

Our experience with Venturing has been awesome so far!! Great program for older kids and has kept our older scouts interested in Scouting.

 

We started off in March with 7 and are up to 19 with the word getting out and more showing up each meeting. The President and other Crew Leaders (the kids) have told us (the adults) that they would like to put a cap on how many more scouts we accept, because they feel it is getting to big to manage well (hah, welcome to adulthood!).

 

What is the scouting worlds opinion and experiences with capping the size of a unit?

 

[scripter]

Send some of them this way!

Id like to have a crew of 20 active Scouts!

 

I wouldn't see why you would cap the number of members. As long as you got strong leadership, and support from the adults, and the resources to run the Crew, why would you stop it?

 

How are you recruiting these members? Any tips you can offer the rest of us?

[Eamonn]

A pal of mine started a new crew about this time last year. He said that he only wanted 20 youth members to start.

The year went well. They came up with an activity every month. Some activities were well attended while others were not so hot. This year he is taking the membership up to 70.

 

It is safe to say that at this time this is all about him. I don't know if in time he hopes to allow the crew to decide what size the crew will be or not? I'm not sure if this should be up to the youth members?

He is happy working within his comfort zone and from what I'm seeing he is doing a good job and the members had a great time last year.

70 might be too many? We will have to see what happens.

Eamonn

[Backpacker]

Herms

 

Welcome to Venturing. There are no BSA regulations regarding how big your crew can be. My crew started at 15 and we are now 50, the secret to handling a large group is to 1) have a sufficent number of associate advisors to maintain order a 1 to 7 is ideal. 2) with a group this size there will be a variety of different interests so our crew will sometimes break into smaller groups for specific activities, some doing outdoors/conservation, some doing sports, some doing hobbies. So you might say we have sub crews within our crew. For all the larger events and fund raisers we all work together as one crew. All the literature states you allow crew members to pursue their special interests rather than everyone pursuing the same interest. Again the secret is enough talented adults to help you manage and a very strong team of youth officers all working together. This is our fourth year and we keep getting new members every week. I think this is because every teen can find a spot where they feel they belong and can excel.

 

Best Wishes to you and your crew!

[purcelce]

Herms,

 

Don't cap! Advise the kids to see where it goes. My crew started out with about 10 kids and we exploded to over 35 in the first 6 months. Here's the story. This might be long but I'll put a "moral' at the end if you don't feel like reading all stuff.

 

I started a crew last Oct with a core group of older Scouts that were in different troops but wanted to do more high adventure stuff together, yet not become overburdened with more meetings. This talk around the campfire happened in Jul of 04. I told them I would get the paperwork side of getting a CO, adults, and all that other Jazz.

I worked with my DE and we had a CO with some cash for us, plus enough adults to have a committee.

 

The basics of the crew would be some type of event once a month, no weekly meetings, and if you can make it to an event great, if you can't that's great.

 

Last Oct we had out first meeting. I figured there would be about 8 -10 males to show up. We had 18 kids show up (2 female). I picked an interim Pres and we would have officer elections and plan out the year's events at a campout in Jan (Cabin camping). Between Oct and Jan I was at the scout office each week with a new applications.

 

When the Jan lock in came I was scared to death as we had over 25 kids going (1/3 of them female). Some of these kids I knew and some I was going to meet. We had 5 high schools covering three counties represented. By the end of the weekend the kids jelled, we had officers, and a basic calendar of events.

 

To make the long story short, we've done something each month and the crew is the largest in the council. Our crew makes up 50 percent or more of the participants of the council venturing events.

Right now I have 36 youth on the books. This fall I've had two youth age out (now are on the committee), one youth move, and one youth that didn't want to stay with us (can't win them all). Do to other commitments the youth have (school, sports, jobs, away at college) we have about a 50% or more attendance at crew functions.

The youth run the crew, and I just make sure all Safe scouting guidelines are followed. Every now and then I have to remind the crew officers that a task needs to be done.

 

The things that have really made me proud about this is crew is (youth):

3 Crew members are Lodge chief, Vice Chief program and Vice Chief admin for our OA lodge. 1 Crew member elected as OA Section Vice Chief.

1 Bronze award earned this year (quite a few are close).

3 Crew members earned Eagle (through their troops).

3 Crew members are working on their Eagle projects this fall (through their troops).

6 Crew members are in freshmen/sophomores in college and are attend events when they can.

4 of the crew officers are soph and jr's in HS

12 attended the Jamboree.

14 worked on summer camp staff this year.

1/3 of the crew is female.

Crew has been camping, rock climbing, provided community service project, held a family potluck.

 

Weak areas:

Communications-email and the telephone are how we remind folks about the events.

Planning of events - I like a plan on paper, but the kids do it by word of mouth and we haven't had any problems yet.

Recruiting of 14 year olds - Next year most of the kids will be 16 or older.

 

Moral: Each group is different and will evolve.

You need new blood to keep your unit alive or it will die.

Make sure you can put on the best program you can, stale program will make the kids leave in droves.

Be ready to be confronted by Scoutmasters who feel you are stealing their older boys.

Big groups can be scary, but you have a bigger pool of ideas to keep your program fresh.

Have fun and watch the kids have fun.

 

Cary P

Crew 805 Advisor

(This message has been edited by purcelce)