Board of Review Process

[5thGenTexan]

How do others get adults for BORs?  Our Troop for girls is just over a year old and we have asked adults from other Units to come over on occasion or in one instance we were able to pull enough adults together while on a weekend campout.  Right now we don't have enough adults in the Troop that aren't the SM or ASMs to conduct a proper BOR.  The Troop for the boys that has been around since 1913 has never utilized leaders in the community.  I could see about working on that.  

Just looking for ideas and what everyone else is doing.

[mrjohns2]

When we were smaller, we would usually easily have 2 (CC and someone else from the committee). We would then pull a parent and/or a leader from the boy troop. 

[qwazse]

When you have enough adults, you can schedule BoRs at/after any regular meeting. That gets tough when your committee and available parents dwindles to three or four. In my troop, the committee met upstairs monthly on a troop meeting night, and we went "up" for our BoR after our troop meeting.

The other thing to do is invite folks who are active with your CO. You have to make clear the need, that scouting experience is not necessary, and you'll have a prepared list of questions that they may choose from to ask a scout. Obviously, you have to then have a schedule that the scouts can follow.

Like @mrjohns2 suggested, I would also ask the parents and adult siblings in the boys' troop if any of them would volunteer. When I was a crew advisor, I encouraged parents on my committee to sit on BoRs at the troop so that they could learn what the boys were experiencing during advancement.

[dk516]

I assume from your description that you run the B and G Troop completely separate and not as a linked Troop? We require that each Scout has one adult family member sign up initially as a committee member and be active in the Troop for the 1st year. This gets the adults involved and interested and gives them the time to get familiar with the Troop before they sort of decide if they want to take on other functions on the committee or do the ASM required training and switch to that side of the program. Also, we run as a linked Troop which means that there are enough adults on the committee to be able to support both, B and G Troop.

[yknot]

We usually did Committee meetings at a separate time from troop meetings. Our SMs usually attended Committee to talk about program and some ASMs also had committee jobs. That meant on troop nights we generally had enough people to do BORs. Every parent in our troop had to have a volunteer role and BOR was the easiest for those with constraints. They could just stay a bit after drop off or come early. 

[curious_scouter]

Is there an option to 'remix' the adult roles so you have more in a committee role?  If you're very small and have more than 1 ASM consider asking some/all of them to transition to committee.  You can probably get away with less ASMs (or none) easier than less committee, especially if your SM allows higher rank Scouts to take a lead and sign off on advancement at a certain point. 

If you end up being able to grow the committee more later and people prefer wearing the ASM badge, you can shift again.

[MikeS72]

11 hours ago, curious_scouter said:

Is there an option to 'remix' the adult roles so you have more in a committee role?  If you're very small and have more than 1 ASM consider asking some/all of them to transition to committee.  You can probably get away with less ASMs (or none) easier than less committee, especially if your SM allows higher rank Scouts to take a lead and sign off on advancement at a certain point. 

If you end up being able to grow the committee more later and people prefer wearing the ASM badge, you can shift again.

We are looking at doing exactly this...  We typically have up to 9 adults present, but only 1 is not either the SM or an ASM.  Several have indicated that they are will in switch to committee at recharter.

 

[5thGenTexan]

We are one of those Units with a few Scouts.  9 Scouts / 1 SM, 2 ASM, 1 COR, 1 CC and couple of other committee members we signed up from the boy troop just to have enough when forming the Unit,.  I know I can do the BOR as a CC, BUT I am also a parent so I can't do the BOR for my kid.  I also don't know my place.   Too much Den Leader and Cubmaster in me still....  I know all the girls and I still get out there and act as ASM on occasion.  

So, I have the old problem.  I ask the rest of the parents to help out in any way and they almost run away while saying no.  Then I have the adult leaders in the boy troop act like they don't have time to deal with the girls.  All frustrating.

[Mrjeff]

You could ask local cops, firemen, or even judges to sit on an occasional board.  

[fred8033]

Key to finding adults is it's mainly a chat with the scout.  Encouraging the scout and collecting casual feedback on how the troop is doing.  So, it's really nothing more than a relaxed chat.  One experienced adult and two other adults are enough.  It's really not "asking for help" as much as having someone just sit in.