tracking advancement of patrols and troops

[RainShine]

How do Patrols and Troops track advancement as a group? Like, to see how many advanced in the last six months or year? Excel spreadsheet or something?

[HashTagScouts]

Troop Advancement Coordinator should be able to run reports to show that.  Scoutbook and Troopmaster I know have canned reports to show that well.    

[fred8033]

We use BSA ScoutBook.   

• Plugs into the official BSA records.
• Provides standard reports and custom tools to report in many different ways.  
• Auto-fills individual reports for purchasing, advancement and EBORs.  

@RainShine  My question to you is why are you asking?  Advancement is not a group activity.  It's an individual activity.  Though PLCs and patrols can create opportunities for advancement, PLCs and patrols should focus on creating an interesting / fun / character building program.  The key is to keep PLCs, patrol leaders and adult leaders away from planning advancement as if it was a group activity.  Yes, it's interesting to know how scouts are advancing as a reflection on the quality of the troop, the patrol and the program.  That feedback can help improve the program.  

[RainShine]

Thanks for the feedback. Was reading about Journey to Excellence and the forms ask about advancement numbers.

[ParkMan]

6 minutes ago, RainShine said:

Thanks for the feedback. Was reading about Journey to Excellence and the forms ask about advancement numbers.

Ahh - gotcha.  Makes perfect sense.  In my humble opinion, JTE is asking us as leaders to reflect on the number of Scouts that advance each year with the theory that regular advancement is part of a healthy program.

We pull our numbers from Troopmaster once a year and do some quick math to see how we're doing.

[Thunderbird]

Units can also use the new Internet Advancement.  It uses the same database as Scoutbook.  After logging in, click on Run Report, Advancement History, then select the dates.  The report will show you the names of the Scouts and the ranks that they have earned during the selected dates.

[qwazse]

Also at a meeting someone could ask for a show of hands of who earned their current oval in the last six months. The better your troop's attendance, the more accurate your count.

[John-in-KC]

Steps on soapbox

Journey to excellence is unit serving volunteers doing metric management for the sake of the professionals. 

Steps off soapbox

[RainShine]

1 hour ago, John-in-KC said:

Journey to excellence is unit serving volunteers doing metric management for the sake of the professionals. 

Okay thanks. Indeed I intend to complete the forms for our own use and not turn them in. I don't want to recreate a method for measuring improvement. I suppose if I thought we were going to get Gold I would change my mind!  😉

[John-in-KC]

5 minutes ago, RainShine said:

Okay thanks. Indeed I intend to complete the forms for our own use and not turn them in. I don't want to recreate a method for measuring improvement. I suppose if I thought we were going to get Gold I would change my mind!  😉

Just tell your friendly unit commissioner that he can do your scut work...

[Thunderbird]

1 hour ago, RainShine said:

Okay thanks. Indeed I intend to complete the forms for our own use and not turn them in. I don't want to recreate a method for measuring improvement. I suppose if I thought we were going to get Gold I would change my mind!  😉

Your troop should be able to get gold.  Conduct 9 short-term campouts, 70% of Scouts attend a long-term camp, 5 service projects (at least one for your chartered org.), get most of your adult leaders trained, etc.

[Liz]

Is there any alternative to Scoutbook for doing this? I'm facing the likelihood of becoming the Advancement Coordinator for our new Troop, but Scoutbook is so badly broken it's unusable. I've gone back to the usscout spreadsheet for my Webelos Scouts because I can't enter any data at all in Scoutbook, either the website or the mobile app. I can't find a similar downloadable spreadsheet for Scouts BSA. Is there one? 

[awanatech]

12 hours ago, Liz said:

Is there any alternative to Scoutbook for doing this? I'm facing the likelihood of becoming the Advancement Coordinator for our new Troop, but Scoutbook is so badly broken it's unusable. I've gone back to the usscout spreadsheet for my Webelos Scouts because I can't enter any data at all in Scoutbook, either the website or the mobile app. I can't find a similar downloadable spreadsheet for Scouts BSA. Is there one? 

We continue to use Troopmaster for this.  We've tried Scoutbook since it became available for free to all units.  However, we just couldn't get past the learning curve to make it work for us.  We couldn't even get the Scout's data to open in the system properly.  After talking to others who have used it for a while, we realized that it wasn't just us, and it wasn't just a learning curve.  Many Scouters around here wish they could go back to Troopmaster, but the new price of Scoutbook (free) has locked it in for many units over the competitors.