What do you want the District to do for you?

[Hawkwin]

As primarily a parent and secondarily a volunteer, I would like to see more and better communication from my district. I want to know about other events in the district by other troops (help build the esprit de corps) as well as meeting and training opportunities. For example, I might actually attend a Round Table or two if I was able to sign up for am email reminder as opposed to trying to look such up on either the district, troop or council calendar (and often the published dates on the various calendars don't even match). It would also be very cool to be emailed the minutes from any such event to read what I missed. I might be more engaged and involved in my district if didn't hunt and search for relevant information.

 

I would also like more consistent communication.

I understand we are all volunteers but if I send an email to someone with a specific responsibility then I would appreciate a response, even if it is only to acknowledge receipt of my inquiry and that it will be a while to respond, in a timely manner. I feel like it has been a week or more at times when I inquired about one thing or another in my volunteer capacity.

 

I also have some issues with when we schedule activities. For some reason (and I have asked with no response), we always hold our Fall Camporee the 1st weekend of every school's fall break (we have 2 weeks). This forces a choice on the parents - do we skip family vacation so our scout can go to the Camporee or do we skip the Camporee? Easy choice, we skip the Camporee. Other neighbor districts hold their camporee either before or after that week so their scouts and parents don't have to make that choice. My son actually went to another district's camporee his first year as a scout because we didn't want him to entire miss out on the experience.

We also hold our Spring MB workshop in April. Why in the world we would chose April - when it is nice outside and outdoor sports have ramped up their outdoor activities - to hold an indoor workshop over February or even March is beyond me. My son often misses that event too due to outdoor soccer tourneys or other family commitments.

[mashmaster]

I ama district vice-chair for communication and I started a thorough newsletter and most find it very useful.  Front page contains a calendar for the next three months, the rest is pictures and articles of interesting information.

For your position, make sure the training is offered, staffed with quality instructors, and at a convenient time for volunteers.

[AVTech]

 RT needs to rotate days. Our District RT is the same night as our Troop meetings. That makes it hard, unless BSA has some new cloning technology that I don't know about.

Unit leaders need more face time with the DE and other District officers. I have met our DE once, at an annual meeting that our Council's camp holds to distribute their new (mostly recycled) camp guide to all the units. I asked him questions that required follow up, and have heard nothing back, despite emails and phone messages being left.

Someone in the District needs to "own" a web page (or pages) that are easily found through the Council website, and make sure it is kept up to date. That person needs to talk to all of the other District leaders to make sure that the Units have access to as much information, as soon as it is available. If this doesn't happen, District events will never be as successful as they might be. Easy to answer general questions can be answered there, and all the resources available to Units form their District officials can be spelled out.

[The Latin Scot]

On 7/11/2018 at 8:48 AM, AVTech said:

 RT needs to rotate days. Our District RT is the same night as our Troop meetings. That makes it hard, unless BSA has some new cloning technology that I don't know about.

AMEN. Our district has had its Rountables, OA meetings, and all other key district meetings on Thursday nights exclusively since FOREVER, and they REFUSE to budge on it. For those of us with work or regular Thursday night events, this makes attending RT impossible for the entire school year. I wish we could get them to try something new. 

[DeanRx]

1) I echo the thought of rotation of RT nights.  I get that for consistency sake the 3rd Thursday of the month works well... unless that is your unit's meeting night... or you work late shift every Thursday, etc...

2) As hard as it might be... go VISIT units !!  My largest pet peeve with district folks (both vols, but especially some DE pros)... is the ONLY time you see them all year is when they want to show up at your Blue and Gold or a Troop COH to pitch FOS.  If you can get there to ASK volunteers who are already giving both time and money to the organization for MORE money... you can get there to see what the needs are.

3) Be observant.  I've had too many well meaning, but often old school DC's show up and try to take over a meeting or espouse to the unit adult leaders how something should or should not be done in the unit.  Look, unless it is violation of YPT or G2SS... the unit is THEIRS.  Learn how THEY do things, instead of telling them how they should be doing it.  You might pick up some tricks you haven't thought of before