Is there a "Sell By Date" on Cub Scout Packs?

[Eamonn]

Many, if not most (in fact nearly all!) of the Boy Scout Troops in our area have had the same Scoutmasters for a very long time.

While of course all of these Troops have and go through "Peaks and Valleys". For the most part, the better (What-ever that means?)Troops remain strong and the smaller and not so strong Troops remain small. Other than the occasional bubble things remain fairly consistent.

Packs on the other hand don't seem to remain or have this consistency.

I'm not sure if our /my area is abnormal? But, our Packs seem to experience far greater "Peaks and Valleys" Than the Troops do.

While I don't have any hard data to back up my feelings. I think this is due to the ever changing adult leadership.

Most of our Packs, have at one time had a hard-core group of really enthusiastic adults come along and take the bull by the horns. They do a great job of building Packs up and provide an excellent program that the little Lads seem to really enjoy and that the parents really appreciate.

I'm not sure why? But over time this "Core" moves on and some sort of complacency takes over.

Maybe because most of the effort is placed on activities for the Scouts and less and less attention is placed on the Pack Management?

After about 8 -10 years all the hard core adults seem to be gone. Leaving behind a unit that is in not very good shape.

Sadly because this doesn't happen over night, many of us don't seem to notice that it is happening.

Ten years back, our little town had five packs, that served about 200 Scouts. Today we have one Pack, which serves about 60.

This Pack was a new Pack, which started up about six years ago. Many of the people who started it have moved on to Boy Scouting, some have got involved in other areas of Scouting.

The Pack Committee which once met every month, is now almost non-existent. Names on paper have replaced the active Committee members.

I kinda think that the "Rot" has started to set in.

Even the program and the activities that the Scouts used to participate and seem to enjoy has started to be cut back. For some reason the enthusiasm that was once there just isn't there like it once was.

I'm not sure if this is only true in our area?

While I do believe that some things could help make us more aware that this is happening. -Better reporting.

I'm unsure if this is just the normal course of things? Or what can be done to help prevent it?

Ea.

 

[John-in-KC]

E, I've seen it in my neck of the woods.

 

What I don't see is a lot of support from experienced Scouters going back to help Packs. We seem to think a Cub Pack is a breeding ground for Scouters by finding parents who want to play.

 

That's a culture issue that applies to all of us who are several years beyond Cubbing.

 

Lisa and the Beav might have some good thoughts on this...

[DenZero]

Man, Eamonn sure hit the nail on the head for us. I'm involved with a struggling pack that's been around for a while (last time it missed a recharter was 1953). It came very close to folding this year, and still may fold next year, unless things turn around. I spoke with the fellow who was Cubmaster in the mid-1990s, when the pack was going strong. This guy was enthusiastic about Scouting, and I could see why the pack did well then. When his son crossed over, he became Scoutmaster of the affiliated troop, and now volunteers as a commissioner with the district. Since then, the pack has had a string of only moderately enthusiastic Cubmasters, running a one-man show, with only a paper committee (usually the registered committee members are serving as den leaders).

 

When it became apparent that the current Cubmaster was unable to do the job adequately, and the pack had become very disorganized, I offered to be committee chair, to try to actually have a functioning committee, improve communications and work on doing some aggressive recruiting. Of course now I'm discovering that I'm filling in as Cubmaster as well.

It would have been easier to follow my kids to the larger pack nearby (which was small in the 90s, and is very big now) and let the small one fold, but I'm keeping it propped up for the sake of the Troop, which has been around since '28, but is dropping in numbers, in part due to not having any Webelos to recruit. If we don't succeed in recruiting a Tiger den this year, we'll probably pull the plug on the pack.

 

With a turnover of leadership every two years, I suspect that only packs with a functioning committee are likely to survive.

 

 

[Lisabob]

This is definitely a problem I have seen as well. The pack that used to be the giant in our town has been suffering lately. They went from 90 boys (which I always thought was way too big anyway - that's a circus, not a cub scout pack) down to the teens last I checked. What happened? They lost their CM, his successor, and a couple of den leaders to boy scouting. There are many sides to this problem but here are a couple of things I wish could be different.

 

1) Recruiting leaders: Our strongest leaders do seem to "get it" when it comes to the need for replacements; it is often their successors and/or the ones who just scraping by who don't. Consequently you end up on a downward spiral for a while, until either serendipity occurs and someone with the right skills just emerges from nowhere, or until the pack is on life support.

 

With the pack I mentioned above this is part of their current problem. The very dynamic CM recruited and cultivated a replacement, but that person didn't stick around for a very long time and didn't have a successor in line. The person who is the CM now is a nice fellow but he has attended so few pack activities (due to work schedule) that his den leaders don't even know his name.

 

2) Lack of cross-over between programs among adult Scouters. I know that this is not always possible. But rather than having yet another committee member with nothing to do, or yet another ASM in a troop with 15 active ASMs already (I'm not exaggerating, I know troops in that position), wouldn't it be nice to see a few experienced adults going back to be cub leaders again? I know there are a few people on this board who are doing that - but they're rare I think. If more people did this, then that "peaks and valleys" cycle could be evened out at least a bit and this would benefit everyone in the long run.

 

In particular - the pack I mentioned at the top of this post is desperate for a competent CM and a strong Tiger den this coming year. Their CC, who has been run ragged by doing practically everything, just like DenZero describes, probably would love some help too. More than half the older boys in my son's troop (and almost all who have recently aged out of the troop) are from that pack and we have several former DLs and CMs from that pack. Trying to get just one of them to go back and lend a hand though...almost impossible.

 

 

 

 

[Eamonn]

Maybe I'm sticking my neck out?

However, if we kinda/ sorta accept that in many areas /Districts that Commissioner Service is not as good as it should be??

Maybe we need to take a long hard look at the role of the District Membership Committee and the role of the DE?

Most DE's do seem to put a lot of time and effort into working with and forging relationships with the "Program Leaders", While for the most part ignoring and at times having no idea who the Management Team are or what they are up too.

Rechartering would seem to offer a great opportunity for the Membership Committee to see what is really happening.

Sadly, at least in our area the opportunity is missed.

DE's don't seem to have the time to sit down for a face to face meeting with the Executive Officer from the CO or meet with the COR.

Ea.

[DenZero]

Eamonn has a good idea there. AFAIK, our district doesn't have a membership committee, but it would be wonderful if the DE could audit each unit every year or two to see if it is organized in a way to be sustainable. It would be a lot of work, but it's work for them to help out struggling units. They are building up the commissioner program in our district, so that could be a way of spreading out the work. One trick would be to require the quality unit award application be submitted for all units with recharter, even for those units that know they don't qualify. Those scoring near the bottom would get advice on how to improve their organization.

 

When our pack started building back up 5 years ago, the guys running it did go to basic leader training, but mostly they just improvised. It would have been obvious to someone with experience that the leadership was too shallow, and things could have been fixed before we became desperate, where the departure of one person brought the pack close to collapse.

 

Paul

 

[Lisabob]

Interesting point Eamonn. That's more or less what our district membership committee (ie, me and about three other people) have started doing this year. We looked at the longer term trends and saw that it didn't make sense to push recruiting every year when there was almost no focus on retention. In one door and out the other isn't what we want to see. Nor do any of us want to play slippery numbers games. Membership should be about helping units provide such a great experience that boys (or girls for crews and ships) can't wait to join and don't want to leave. Or anyway, that's our take on it.

 

Of course, one problem with focusing on retention is that we may identify a problem that is causing scouts/families to leave a given unit - say, a pack with very weak or shallow leadership - but we can't necessarily fix it. We can make sure they know when training is coming up. We can make sure they know what resources are offered by the district. We can even offer an occasional, unsolicited suggestion. But we can't make them do anything and in the guise of "membership committee" we can only offer so many "friendly suggestions" before we might be considered to be intruding.

 

By the way, right now every person on the membership committee also helps with either cub or boy scout leader training too. Actually it is a good match up - we know their units better than they do when they come to training sometimes, and we can be sure to focus on the things their units need to do more of strengthen their program and to retain scouts.

 

The other issue is size. In our district there are between 35-40 packs, about 20 troops, and 3 or 4 crews (depending on who is counting!). As a membership person I have probably gotten to know more about most of these units than most folks in the district. However, I can't possibly know them all. That's the whole point of having UCs, if only the UC system actually worked.

 

But I think the two big pluses I see to having a very active district membership committee - which we do right now, and which is unusual for us - are that 1) It helps the units to know that SOMEONE is looking out for them, and 2) If we do spot a problem we can make sure the UC staff is at least aware of it long before it gets to the crisis point. Then, MAYBE, a good UC will be assigned to the unit to do a little rehab and a crisis can be avoided.

 

 

[Lisabob]

Eamonn, I'm curious. Are you suggesting that the District Membership team ought to be doing the annual CO visits around recharter time, rather than the DE? I know in our area the DE rarely does these due to time constraints and other job pressures. (In some cases it could be for less noble reasons I guess, but our DE works very hard and I don't fault him here - he just has too much to do to make these visits, I think.)

 

I suppose this is something we could discuss in the future. I'm curious though. What is supposed to be covered in these annual meetings? And is this one of those situations where it is better to let sleeping dogs lie? After all, while most COs are oblivious, at least they are steady and not causing problems.

 

Just curious to know your thoughts on this.

 

[MarkS]

I've been through this before too. The pack my son joined as a Tiger Cub had a nice string of three strong, enthusiastic, Cubmasters who motiviated Den Leaders and made the program fun for the adults. Each took on the job for a couple years so strong leadership was established and demonstrated well before my son joined the unit. When my son joined there were probably 40 to 50 boys in the Pack.

 

However, about the time my son was a Bear they all had moved on. Two took on leadership positions with the Troop chartered at the same school and had arranged for a smooth transition to the third but after a year he abruptly quit as Cubmaster because his employer transferred him to another state. He had no time to transition the Cubmaster position to another adult and help him get familiar with the job.

 

I was asked to be Cubmaster but turned it down. I didn't know what to expect with that. Instead I had a better idea of what a Den Leader needed to do and volunteered to be the Den Leader of my son's den.

 

Unfortunately, the Cubmaster that finally volunteered to take over was little more than a warm body--the same thing happened with the Committee Chair. Before long I was a one man show, planning the Pack meetings for the Cubmaster and organizing the committee meetings for the Committee Chair. Before long I also ended up being the Pack Advancement Chair, Membership Chair, and Trainer just to keep the program going. The other Den Leaders were better but some still didn't meet weekly (which I found was less work in the long run but couldn't convince them) nor did they ever take their boys to council sponsored resident camping for Cub Scouts (Dad & Lad, Webelos Mini-Camp, or Webelos Weeklong Camp).

 

All along pleading and begging for help from our UC and DE which was never forthcoming.

 

By the time I finally took Wood Badge the summer before my last year in the Pack we had about 20 boys left. It gave me some insights on what needed to be done to save-the-pack. Three of my five Wood Badge ticket items were of a "save-the-pack" nature. I planned a Fall recruiting drive to supplement the drive conducted by Council at the beginning of the School Year. I prepared a one hour orientation training session for new parents and leaders to show them the ropes and encourage them to take training offered by our District Trainers. I planned a Pack overnight campout and campfire (by myself after three attempts get the Pack committee together to do it failed). The ticket items were designed to recruit, train, and retain. I HAD A PLAN. IT DIDN'T WORK.

 

It started off great. We had 23 new boys join the unit (could of had more if the Cubmaster didn't let several parents go home from our joining meeting without collecting whatever cash they had on them--they were short the registration fee and he said they could pay at the first den meeting... they didn't show... you need to get some cash, any amount, and start Den Meetings right way), but only four parents came to my class. Then in October we had 35+ boys and a total of 60 people come to the overnighter, but only 11 boys showed up for the November pack meeting. What happened? Some of the other Den Leaders weren't doing their jobs--the ones that skipped my class. They weren't putting together a quality weekly program. Packs live and die by the Den Leaders. If your Cubmaster is a warm body, you need self-motivating Den Leaders. Problem is it's easier to find one leader to motivate others than to find a bunch of self-motivators. However, that one leader needs to be in the right position. I was the motivator in our Pack but I was a Den Leader, not the Cubmaster. The Cubmaster sets the tone and it's hard to overcome that. The Cubmaster was the wet blanket to my Campfire. Sigh... I wonder if things would have been different if I accepted the Cubmaster job.

 

I learned that if you're not in the right position, you can't make volunteers do things they don't want to do (on some level) in the first place. If you want to try to save a unit, have at it, but remember the goal of scouting is to provide a quality program to the youth. They have a limited amount of time in the program. Instead of spending a couple years struggling with trying to resusitate the unit, maybe it's better to spend that time delivering a quality program to the boys--in another unit if necessary.

 

A year after I left that Pack to serve the Troop my son joined, the Pack was down to 11 boys and not enough leadership to recharter. The Disctrict decided to have the adults from the Pack and another nearby Pack share leadership and they dual-registered between the two units. Now both units have the same adults but different charters. The right thing to do would have been to merge the two units but DEs ARE NOT rewarded for providing a quality program. They're rewarded based on the number of units in their District.

 

Point is. This may sound like a rather specific example but I expect it happens all the time. Inadequate leadership and enthusiasm, UCs that are no better, and no District support results in a failed unit.

 

Unfortunately, I suspect in two or three years, the Troop will be going through the same thing when the boys of those first two Cubmasters I mentioned age out. Those two former Cubmasters are not the Committee Chair and Scoutmaster for the Troop. The adult leaders who persevered after I left, don't appear to have another round left in them.

 

For now, I only want to continue to serve the unit my son has joined as best I can. I have that luxury because there are other units in the area and we'll join one of those if our Troop starts to experience the fate of the Pack. Maybe that's selfish but I'm not sure what I'll do when he ages out. Maybe then I'll give a little back by helping out a Pack or the District Training Committee. We'll see. I've only been serving for four or five years now and this stuff is fun.(This message has been edited by MarkS)

[Eamonn]

Of course if a District is fortunate enough to have a strong, working, active Commissioner staff,they (The Commissioners) will see what is going on and can notify the District Key 3.Who can decide on a course of action.

 

As we see so often in the Forum, a lot of people seem less than happy with the support they receive from the CO.

It's strange that when I was active as a Key 3 member, a lot of CO's (Executive Officers.)seemed to have no idea what support was expected from them.

Of course there is no way anyone can go into a unit like a bull in a china shop -No one except the CO!!

At times it seems to me that when a unit is starting to not be as good as it should be, we (The Scouters/District Team) do everything except contact the CO - Who do "Own" the unit.

Many CO's have lists of people and know people who can be contacted, but we never ask them! In fact we keep them in the dark until the unit becomes terminally ill.

For the most part District Membership Committees, seem to focus on:

Recruitment (School Sign up Night) and Starting new units.

If we can find a group of volunteers who understand that a unit consists of more than just the youth and the Program Leaders and who would be willing to work with the CO,maybe setting up a nominating committee and bringing in the other District Committees(Training?) When and as needed. It would go a long way to help units that are struggling.

DE's can be very busy.

But at busy doing what?

Surely ensuring that we have open lines of communication and a god working relationship with our CO's ought to be near the top of their list?

Our last DE seemed to be good at what she did, the one thing she wasn't good at was starting new units. The best way to not have to start too many is not to lose any!!

Trying to start 5 or 6 units and doing all that is needed to train and support them, is really hard work.

Ea.