district support for venturing

[emb021]

"Is a paper unit of 50 people more important or more significant that a solid well run unit of 8-10?"

 

Depends on who you ask.

 

Many council are just fine with the first. Their numbers look great with many large Venturing units.

 

For many of us involved in Venturing, we want real Venturing units, ideally solid (regardless of size) using the Venturing program. We don't want a lot of paper units.

 

 

[Lisabob]

Thanks everybody for your thoughts and ideas; I will share these with our membership and program folks. RangerT, the training approach that your council took sounds ideal. I would love to see that sort of commitment of resources and attention/time here as well.

 

Stosh, you're right that this discussion has taken on a membership tone but in part that's because I'm serving on our district's membership committee and we've been asked to do some brainstorming about how to increase the number of youth involved in our area venturing programs. And while I'd be happy to see small, strong crews of 8-10 youth, in honesty I don't think we even have that right now. Still, as I've said elsewhere, I do believe program drives membership far more than any kind of recruiting gimmicks. So as part of my contribution to the brainstorming efforts, I'll be pushing for real district support of a real venturing program first and foremost, with the reasoning that membership is pointless if there's no program to offer the members.

 

 

[emb021]

For me, getting full support of Venturing is a worthy goal, but one that may have to come only once the number of crews in a district grows to a point where its doable. What is that number? Don't know. Half dozen? 8? 10? For me, the solution is to support Venturing at the council level, and only push this support down to the district level once the number of crews in that district is at the right level.

 

The biggest problem with this topic is that so many seem to feel that Venturing should just 'grow on its own' without any special support from district/council. The problem with this attitude is that Venturing is called "scouting's best kept secret" for a reason: too many have no idea what it is, so until they do, why are they going to form crews?

 

For me, the ideal would be that:

*every crew have a unit commissioner who is knowledgable about Venturing, under the leadership of higher-level commissioners who like wish know the program. Having ADC & ACC for Venturing is a must.

*Districts should have regular monthly Venturing Roundtables attended by both Venturing youth & adults.

*Venturing training such as Venturing adult basic, VLSC, and Powder Horn are made available on a regular basis.

*Venturing Crews are present at district/council scout shows.

*Venturing is included with council/district program kickoff events and promotions.

*Venturing events are planned and carried out by Venturers at the council/district levels, ideally organized by district/council VOAs (or whatever you want to call them).

*In the summer, there should be council high adventure programs that ideally target Venturers (Philmont contingent of just Venturers) or which include Venturers.

*Venturing Silver Award & Sea Scout Quartermaster Award recipients are included in Council Eagle Banquets.

*Adult Venturing leaders are included at Council Award Banquets, and their awards (such as Council VLA) are recognized.

*The Venturing program should be recognized and promoted, including info on the council website, council newsletter, etc.

 

Now, as I said, as things grow, some of the above should remain at the council level, some ideally should be at the district level. If you don't have the numbers at the district, you need to start off at the council level with a Council Venturing Committee, working with the goal of establishing a council-wide Venturing Roundtable on at least a quarterly basis and establishing a council VOA. This group should work to ensure that Venturing training is made available, Venturing is promoted and new crews established and Venturers are recruited, Venturing events are available (a lot of Venturers are turned off by attending Boy Scout events where there is nothing for them to do or where they seemed to be expected only to be staff).

 

Some of the things I've seen in my area are:

* Crews need training for youth and adults, and this training needs to be made available on an annual basis from those who understand the program (not some idiot reading from a syllabus).

* Venturing program needs to be promoted and explained, else why should new crews be establish? Promotion needs to include both promoting the general program (via articles in council newsletters, booth at scout shows & other major council events, and event one-on-one by Venturing leaders who attend council events in their greens), and promotions of individual crews by making sure people know what crews exist where and what they do (best with crew-specific brochures available at events, etc).

* Many crews need help recruiting, and the above can help, as well as working to get into large venues that may attract new members.

* Crews need a forum to met other crews and pool their resources. Roundtable are a great venue for this, as well as on-line forums (IF you can get the crews and their members to use it)

 

[Stosh]

Build a good program and the numbers will take care of themselves. Sometimes a crew that spends all of it's time recruiting will never have time left over to do their program. If you have 8 boys/girls that are interested, let them concentrate on the program and forget the recruiting. Once the program gets off the ground, others will find out about it an join up. There is nothing in the world more boring than sitting around thinking up ways to get other people interested in your boring recruiting program.

[emb021]

"Build a good program and the numbers will take care of themselves. Sometimes a crew that spends all of it's time recruiting will never have time left over to do their program. If you have 8 boys/girls that are interested, let them concentrate on the program and forget the recruiting. "

 

If you have a good program, but no one knows about it, no one will come. Venturing is 'scoutings best kept secret', because few promote it...

 

'recruitment' is something that should be on-going and constant. This is something we say in my fraternity, because too many view 'recruitment' as something that only happens during their short 2-3 week rush period at the begining of the semester.

 

But prehaps recruitment is the wrong term. Promotion? Marketing? PR? You have to inform people that you exist and what you are doing. This should be all elements of your recruitment program. As you need to always have these going, otherwise recruitement is forgotten until you group is in dire straits.

 

What do you do?

 

* articles in council newspaper, local papers.

* website for crew, with up to date info (ie, bad enough if you have an event that happened 2 weeks ago listed as 'upcoming', if you have an event from months past as 'upcoming), pictures, etc of all the great things you're doing.

* brochure on your crew (with info on what you do, where you meet, how to contact you), that is available in various places (in your community, to scouts, etc), and which your crew members can give out to interested people (or people you want to get interested in what you are doing)

* Scout show (ok, many too much for your crew to do alone. Team up with several crews)

* Crew open house. This should be your big annual 'recruitement drive', where you go all out to promote yourselve and bring new people on-board. Show who you are, what you do, why they should join. But be sure people don't think that because they missed this event they are out of luck to join.