Youth-Led Program and Recruiting

[Liz]

I'm so frustrated right now. There are only two female Troops in our city. Most of the Webelos girls are choosing the other one. I suspect they have a more put-together look and feel compared to our Troop, as theirs is entirely adult-run and ours is run by a bunch of novice Scouts who have not been at this Scouting thing very long. 

We have a great group of girls, but they are learning as they go and, within reason, we let them make a fair number of mistakes along the way (and they are doing AWESOME at learning and doing better each time). I'm very happy with our Troop and I'm excited to cross my own daughter over into it next year. But in the meantime, I am at a loss as to how to adequately convey the value of a youth-run Troop over a possibly sleeker, more well-oiled adult-run Troop. 

Ideas? 

[fred8033]

"Youth run" is often in the eye of the beholder.  The simple fact is the other troop is marketing better or people have a perception that the other troop offers better options and experiences.  The issue is changing perceptions or building better relationships.  

IMHO, the troop shopping choice when "FINISHING" cub scouting is one of the most destructive things in scouting.  It should be a continuum with each year having more and more experiences and more growth.  No need to emphasize a big choice.  No need to pit unit against unit.  It's one of the reason we have mega-troops while many other troops are starving. 

Perhaps one of the best things that could happen in scouting is treating the units as one unit under a charter org and not separate units.

[Eagledad]

I think your problem is the Webelos parents, not their daughters. We had several parents that didn’t care for our more chaotic appearance, but their son Insisted our troop was the one they wanted. Are these girls at least visiting your troop?

Barry

[qwazse]

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's troop, nor her Crossovers, nor her helicopter parents ....

[MattR]

An idea for a great service project: help a girls den, or two, run fun meetings. Make them all den chiefs of a AOL den and invite them to scout events.

Point is create a relationship between the den and the troop. Whenever we do that we get lots of recruits. When we stop, things dry up. If it's appearance that counts then there's no relationship.

[Beccachap]

 I'm cautious with a response here because I've heard this same argument from a small troop that's a mess. Youth lead does not mean all planning happens the week or two before you want to go somewhere. Although I know many adults live this way (our society is largely composed of families living paycheck to paycheck), it's a reactive, painful existence that no one will gravitate towards. 

Leaders need to instill an expectation that it is paramount to pre plan months and sometimes years in advance, depending on the goal. Once the lesson is learned and a calendar is established, long term planning doesn't seem so daunting. I'd even argue that it's much easier. 

Now I'm clearly projecting on your situation here. The fact that you've come to the forums, that you've stood up a girl's troop when that's a difficult chore, that you've retained girls, and are fresh out of the gates making it youth lead are all indicators that you are doing everything right. 

So I recommend some reflection. Are they not joining after visiting, or are they not visiting? If the former, perhaps you could reevaluate the problem with the youth and brainstorm recruitment strategies for improvement. How welcoming was your troop? Did you host special activities for their visit(s)? Did your scouts explain the importance of youth lead leadership and how it could benefit new members? 

If they didn't visit, brainstorm how to find local girl Webelos and how to reach out to them through invitations to every Campout, hike, service project, etc. Teach your scouts that they should court them, starting now, for next year's crop. 

[qwazse]

Like my Pakistani buddy tells me, "You Americans won't believe anything unless it's on a piece of paper."

So, that youth-run troop needs to put something into the hands of those Webelos. So, that might mean:

• A calendar. Ideally, it would be one with the dates of the entire year printed on one side AND scheduled activity days and meetings circled or stamped, then the names of the activities, hand written, by the scouts on the other side.
• A follow-up card hand-written by a scout mailed to each prospect who visited the troop. It doesn't have to say much: "Thanks for visiting. I hope you had a good time. Please join us on our next campout."
• A picture post-card of everyone at the last event. (One of your scouts should know how to produce this.)

But, @Liz, if you're talking from the perspective of a cub parent to other parents, you don't have much control. Either those girls in the troop are friendly, looking up your Webelos at school and on the bus, and taking a sincere interest in them, or they aren't.  If they aren't, "polish" will win the day -- especially with most modern American females. Just look at the covers on the magazine racks and tell me it ain't so.

[Liz]

On 2/18/2020 at 6:49 PM, fred8033 said:

"Youth run" is often in the eye of the beholder.  The simple fact is the other troop is marketing better or people have a perception that the other troop offers better options and experiences.  The issue is changing perceptions or building better relationships.  

IMHO, the troop shopping choice when "FINISHING" cub scouting is one of the most destructive things in scouting.  It should be a continuum with each year having more and more experiences and more growth.  No need to emphasize a big choice.  No need to pit unit against unit.  It's one of the reason we have mega-troops while many other troops are starving. 

Perhaps one of the best things that could happen in scouting is treating the units as one unit under a charter org and not separate units.

 

Well, I happen to know the leadership of the other Troop as we had the experience of being in a Pack with them earlier and determining then that there was zero chance I ever wanted my child to be in a Troop that had those leaders. I was willing to stick it out for the Cub Scout years until they ran off our Cubmaster and, actually, all the other kids in the Pack except their own child. We jumped ship when everyone else did. Which is also a main reason why we have two Troops in our city instead of just the one. 

 

On 2/18/2020 at 6:49 PM, Eagledad said:

I think your problem is the Webelos parents, not their daughters. We had several parents that didn’t care for our more chaotic appearance, but their son Insisted our troop was the one they wanted. Are these girls at least visiting your troop?

Barry

They have visited our Troop. They appeared to have a really fun time. Our girls enthusiastically welcomed them, played games with them, and involved them in their activities. But the parents later tell us they picked the other Troop. No idea why, really. The other Troop has more experienced Scouts in that the older girls have been in Girl Scouts together since they were little. They are all working on their GSA and BSA requirements together. So I have no doubt that their kids are proceeding in their "Trail to Eagle" faster than ours are. If an Eagle Factory is what you want out of a Troop, yes, the other Troop is probably a better fit. Maybe that really is what these Webelos girls are looking for. 

23 hours ago, MattR said:

An idea for a great service project: help a girls den, or two, run fun meetings. Make them all den chiefs of a AOL den and invite them to scout events.

Point is create a relationship between the den and the troop. Whenever we do that we get lots of recruits. When we stop, things dry up. If it's appearance that counts then there's no relationship.

We are really working on that.  But there aren't a lot of Webelos / AOL girls in our city to pull from. 

12 hours ago, Beccachap said:

 I'm cautious with a response here because I've heard this same argument from a small troop that's a mess. Youth lead does not mean all planning happens the week or two before you want to go somewhere. Although I know many adults live this way (our society is largely composed of families living paycheck to paycheck), it's a reactive, painful existence that no one will gravitate towards. 

Leaders need to instill an expectation that it is paramount to pre plan months and sometimes years in advance, depending on the goal. Once the lesson is learned and a calendar is established, long term planning doesn't seem so daunting. I'd even argue that it's much easier. 

Now I'm clearly projecting on your situation here. The fact that you've come to the forums, that you've stood up a girl's troop when that's a difficult chore, that you've retained girls, and are fresh out of the gates making it youth lead are all indicators that you are doing everything right. 

So I recommend some reflection. Are they not joining after visiting, or are they not visiting? If the former, perhaps you could reevaluate the problem with the youth and brainstorm recruitment strategies for improvement. How welcoming was your troop? Did you host special activities for their visit(s)? Did your scouts explain the importance of youth lead leadership and how it could benefit new members? 

If they didn't visit, brainstorm how to find local girl Webelos and how to reach out to them through invitations to every Campout, hike, service project, etc. Teach your scouts that they should court them, starting now, for next year's crop. 

Our girls have a plan that goes through this Fall, and the next yearly planning meeting scheduled for June. We are actually not doing too badly in terms of recruiting NEW Scouts. We started with 3 girls signing on with the charter in July and we are up to 9. But the only Webelos girls we've been able to attract are either our own children or the younger relatives of other girls in our Troop. I think what's going on is that our girls look, and are, still new to Scouting for the most part. The other Troop is linked to a long-established Boy Troop, and as I mentioned earlier, the older girls in the Troop are experienced Girl Scouts who have been together for years. We can't really pretend to be something we're not. The question is how to convey to the families that what we have to offer is worthwhile even if it isn't as flashy as theirs. 

 

10 hours ago, qwazse said:

Like my Pakistani buddy tells me, "You Americans won't believe anything unless it's on a piece of paper."

So, that youth-run troop needs to put something into the hands of those Webelos. So, that might mean:

• A calendar. Ideally, it would be one with the dates of the entire year printed on one side AND scheduled activity days and meetings circled or stamped, then the names of the activities, hand written, by the scouts on the other side.
• A follow-up card hand-written by a scout mailed to each prospect who visited the troop. It doesn't have to say much: "Thanks for visiting. I hope you had a good time. Please join us on our next campout."
• A picture post-card of everyone at the last event. (One of your scouts should know how to produce this.)

But, @Liz, if you're talking from the perspective of a cub parent to other parents, you don't have much control. Either those girls in the troop are friendly, looking up your Webelos at school and on the bus, and taking a sincere interest in them, or they aren't.  If they aren't, "polish" will win the day -- especially with most modern American females. Just look at the covers on the magazine racks and tell me it ain't so.

I love this idea. You are right. We should put together a written calendar to give to all visitors to the Troop so they can see what's coming up. I also love the hand-written card idea for visitors. 

Our Webelos aren't going to be in the same schools with our Scouts, or riding the same buses. They come from all over town and Middle School here starts in 6th grade. 

[Eagledad]

10 hours ago, Liz said:

They have visited our Troop. They appeared to have a really fun time. Our girls enthusiastically welcomed them, played games with them, and involved them in their activities. But the parents later tell us they picked the other Troop. No idea why, really. The other Troop has more experienced Scouts in that the older girls have been in Girl Scouts together since they were little. They are all working on their GSA and BSA requirements together. So I have no doubt that their kids are proceeding in their "Trail to Eagle" faster than ours are. If an Eagle Factory is what you want out of a Troop, yes, the other Troop is probably a better fit. Maybe that really is what these Webelos girls are looking for. 

 

I like to tell this story to show the perspective of what Webelos are looking for; at our Blue and Gold of my first year as Cub Master, I asked our Webelos why they chose the troop they were about to join in a few minute at our crossover cerimony. They all said because that troop had the best game during their Troop Meeting. The Webelos leader told me six months later that only one of all those Webelos was still in scouting.

Make no mistake about it, parents drive what the sons (and daughters) are looking for. I gave the example of scouts who bucked their parents opinion and joined our troop, but those stories are rare compared to the ones who obeyed their parents. Our troop grew from 17 scouts to 100 scouts in six years. That isn't as amazing as the fact that we average 28 new Webelos crossover scouts every year in a district with 22 troops. We could have been a lot bigger, but because we grew so fast, we had to relearn how to run a patrol method program every year for the first few years and as a result, we lost A Lot of scouts. That is why I know A LOT about working with new first year scouts. 

ANYWAY, we had huge crossover groups because we sold the Webelos Leader our program. If you sell the Webelos Leader, you sell the whole den because the leader will tell the parents where they are going.

And one thing else we learned, if you sell one Webelos leader your program and they like it, they will sell the next year Webelos leaders. Once you get that going, you won't want have to market your program, they will do it for you. 

And I agree about putting it on paper, we develop a visitors guide that was all about the fun we were going have for the next 12 months. I would say that out of all the information that we gave visitors (Parents) to sway them toward our troop, a fun agenda was the top motivator. So, while you are developing patrol method program where the girls do all the planning, the adults need to push a fun fun program agenda. There are ways to influence scouts decisions without being intrusive to the patrol method program. Marketing is very important.

Barry

[Liz]

That is super helpful, Barry, thanks. 

My daughter is in 4th grade. Her Pack only has 1 Webelos Scout ready to cross over soon, but for the 4th graders there are several; including two other girls aside from my daughter. I'm really hoping our place in the Pack will really help. This fall my youngest daughter joins the pack too, so we'll have an in with this one Pack for years to come. The Webelos den leaders are looking to me for guidance already because they are both very green and I have been a den leader for a while now (although I'm not currently in that role in the new Pack). 

I think getting the girls to go sign up as den chiefs will really help. Some of them have already expressed an interest in this. I know with my son, he ended up following his Den Chief pretty much everywhere he went - to his Troop, the OA, whatever - for the rest of his Scouting years. 

[Eagledad]

I found that mothers are the hard sell. You will have to explain the reasoning to me, but moms are very skeptical that patrol method does anything toward character growth. So, I learned to develop my sells pitch to mothers. Still, in most cases, they weren't sold on Patrol Method until they saw the results in person. They were Type A converts that were so passionate of what Patrol Method could do for scouts that they went out and marketed the program to their packs. We never had to go look for Webelos visitors because they called us to get our moms off their back. I have several experiences like this. Two of those skeptical mothers became the two best CCs I ever knew. 

So, since you are a mother who has proven yourself on this forum a passionate believer of this program, you are probably the best marketer for your troop as well. 

Barry

[yknot]

The patrol method works in troops where the behind the scenes adult leadership is good. If it is, the scouts learn how to lead and manage their affairs through osmosis and observation of good leaders without a lot of direct influence. If that background doesn't exist, however, the patrol method doesn't work as well. If leaders aren't organized,  planning ahead, or resolving interpersonal issues well among themselves, then the scouts will have a harder time figuring those things out because they have no one to learn from. The patrol method isn't an absence of adult leadership or mentoring but to some women I think that's what it can sound like until they see it working well.

[MattR]

Just to add another way of what @Eagledad and @yknot seem to be saying, scout led doesn't mean adult ignored. Ask questions. Keep them out of ruts. Keep them about the law and oath. One size of adult participation does not fit all, it really depends on the maturity of the scouts.

[Mom2Scout]

We have linked troops and our girls haven't yet gotten a female AOL to join.  Mostly, it has been friends convincing other friends to join.  I imagine that it will take a while for more girls to join Cub Scouts and matriculate up.

Our Webelos activities are also done as a linked group.  Our girls are out there showing off their skills.  Maybe what you need is some good PR?  Hit up the newspaper for a interest story.  Have them show off skills at a community event.  Recruitment is really a year long process and not just a few months before bridging ceremonies. 

One activity we do every year and invite Cubbies to is flag retirement.  Perhaps do more than court the Webelos, but invite Lions, Tigers, and Bears to events too.

 

[DuctTape]

On 2/20/2020 at 12:57 PM, MattR said:

Just to add another way of what @Eagledad and @yknot seem to be saying, scout led doesn't mean adult ignored. Ask questions. Keep them out of ruts. Keep them about the law and oath. One size of adult participation does not fit all, it really depends on the maturity of the scouts.

Agreed. And to add one other aspect, the oft quoted "Train them, trust them, let them lead." has a specific order to it beginning with training.