Recruiting for rural troops

[SMT376Richmond KY]

The toop is looking at recruiting ideas to get some more boys involved. The troop serves a rural area as was reactivated this spring. Started with 12 and now down to 8 (1 moved and has joind a troop in his new town, 1 quit "didn't like camping", 1 guit dad said "he didn't like it" (dad didn't want to bring him to meetings etc.) 1 didn't come back after three meetings and didn't answer mail or phone calls as to why). Being in a rural area in a large county I doubt we will ever be a very large troop, but I think 10 to 15 would be attainable. Any ideas from other rural troops would be appreciated. Planned open house and challenged the boys to invite 1 boy each to a campout. School night is scheduled in March by DE target 5th graders going to 6th.

[dsteele]

I've been a DE trying to start new troops in rural areas. What you want to do isn't easy, but it is do-able with some work.

 

Find someone (perhaps that's you) who know where the youth of Boy Scout age live in the county. Go with another person -- preferably a Scout or two -- to their homes and have an impromptu, informal conference with the prospective member. Ask them to join the troop and try to find ways to work through whatever issues are stopping them -- whether it be transportation, finance, schedule, etc. Build up your membership one family at a time and you can make it work.

 

Best of luck.

 

DS

[ozemu]

Our rural area has lots of small holdings and little villages. Lots of people but very segmented. I find that I get Scouts from the feeder pack (thats the long view and very worth the effort of developing and maintaining good involvement) and from existing Scouts. All my other efforts yield very little.

 

Run bring a friend activities. Go door to door. Use local papers and school newsletters but most importantly run an excellant program that is exciting and spectacular. That gives the cubs something to look forward to and your Scouts something to get their mates interested.