Unit Rivals

[briantshore]

I am working on a presentation for our Commissioner meeting. I am in a small town of 6000 or so. There are 3 Cub Packs, and 2 Scout Troops. I have seen some serious rivalry in recruting, that falls on the Roman Catholic sponsored-Protestant sponsored line. The Protestant Pack wants the Catholics unit to supply Den Chiefs to them, even though they have flat out said our boys will not join your unit. They meet on the same night as the Protestant Troop. The Protestant Pack just set up our Fall Roundup for the town at there church, instead the traditional neutral site. Our DE seems to not care about this, even though it has been brought to his attention before. For the record, I am a Protestant serving both the Catholic Troop, and Pack. Have anyone had a problem like this, and how do you resolve this. I am not a commissioner to either of these units, so I cannot effect them in that way.

[croushorn]

even though they have flat out said our boys will not join your unit.

Interesting, are you in northern Ireland? (dripping with thick sarcasm!) The Pack leaders determine where the Webs from their Pack cross over to? May need to remind those that have stated such that is not their call. Maybe this is an attempt from some other den leaders to go around an edict that has no authority? I say provide them, its good for both sets of boys and those building relationships down the road will benefit all. I would imagine many of these boys go to the same schools? Come on, lets be adults here!

 

[Bob White]

Brian

As a Commissioner, what do you see as the real problem here? What is your understanding of the purpose of Den Chiefs? What is the benefit to a Pack and what is the benefit to a Troop.

 

When you say "they meet the same night as the Protestant Troop" who are "they"?

 

BW

[John-in-KC]

It sounds to me like both COR's (possibly even IH's) and you need to sit down. Christian adults not playing nice is wrong. Some appropriate Scripture verses to set the tone of the meeting are in order.

 

Even in an LCMS parish, my Pastor knows who the RC pastors are and how to do things temporally together.

 

Then, the COR's can go back and give appropriate ownership guidance to their units.

[funscout]

Hi Brian,

 

I agree with you that the "Protestant" Pack should not host the round-up at their church. This is unfair to your Pack, as well as the 3rd Pack (my former Pack).

 

I know people at both of the non-Catholic Packs and they are nice people. Have you talked to the Cubmaster about why the round-up got moved to their church? Was the other site not available, or did the CM just not realize that hosting the round-up at his church (which happens to be my church, even though my kids did not attend that Pack) was not fair to the other 2 Packs?

 

When my boys were in Cubs, some of our Pack Leaders sometimes grumbled about the 2 city Packs getting more boys than our "country" Pack. I reminded them that the boys were free to attend any of the 3 Packs. In my experience, most choices revolved around country/city or which night was most convenient for the parents. I didn't happen to see any religious slant on where the kids went. Both of the non-Catholic Packs have Catholic kids in them, and the other troop does, too. Actually, the other troop does not have a church as its CO, and I know there are several Catholic boys and leaders in the troop.

 

So, I agree with you that the recruiting site is unfair, but I guess I disagree about religion being part of the problem. I"m surprised the DE is going along with holding the meeting site at one of the churches. Have you tried talking to the Cubmaster of the 3rd Pack? He might back you up about getting the round-up moved back to a neutral location.

 

As for the "Protestant" pack telling you their boys weren't coming to your troop, could it be because the current boys have siblings/friends in the other troop? There always seem to be last minute switches, so I wouldn't rule them out unless they have family ties in the other troop.

 

Good Luck!

[FScouter]

If the district were to hold a recruiting event, all the packs could take part. If there is no district event, each pack is left to do their own recruiting, and the protestant pack is holding their event at their own chartered org church. Should be no problem with that.

 

Would it be more fair for the protestant church to hold their recruiting event at the Catholic church? Now THAT would be inflammatory!

[Stosh]

Ok, let me get this straight, both troops take boys from the packs based on religious affiliation. Thus they have to have a neutral place to recruit? Why? If the protestant boys go the to the protestant troop and vice versa, what difference does it make where they get recruited?

 

If everyone was competing for the same boys, then I'd say either find neutral ground or do your own thing.

 

There are two troops in my town and 3 packs as well. I plan on heavily recruiting well before recruitment night. Our boys are planning on visiting each of the Webelos II dens and putting on a special program, inviting them to a pool party where they will all take their BSA swim test and the invite to the Winter Camp activity in January. By the time Blue/Golds roll around we will have made 3 contacts with all the packs and make sure we get our best shot in with recruitment first. Until the boys sign on the dotted line, they are fair game for recruiting. Neither of our troops are religiously CO'd so it's annual no-holds-barred. :^)

 

We got all three packs in total last year so I'm sure the other troop is planning on upping their game this year. With 30 new Webelos available, our boys are planning on at least 30 of them for our troop.

 

Stosh

 

 

[shortridge]

Wow. Definitely get the CORs involved. Sounds like it could get quite nasty.

 

Do most of the Scouts involved join a particular unit because of their faith? Or is it more of a geographic or school thing?

 

Glad you included your town's population. From where I grew up, 6,000 people is practically a metropolis!

 

Even now around here, it'd be tough for a town of that size to support a single troop and pack, let alone multiple ones. So remember - it's a good thing the program is reaching that many kids.

[CalicoPenn]

Ok. I was confused but I think I figured it out - it appears that it was the "Protestant" Packs turn to set up the city-wide fall roundup, which has traditionally been held on a neutral site, and where all three Packs recruit. Is that correct? In which case, a simple phone call to determine why a non-neutral site was chosen could go far in reducing angst (as someone else mentioned, possibly the neutral site was not available. Or perhaps the neutral site is now charging money and the roundup sponsoring Pack figured it could save everyone some money by holding it at their sponsor's location - a Scout is Thrifty - and Cub Scouts isn't too early to model that). I don't think I'd be too quick to judge this as being some kind of underhanded trick.

 

On the other hand, if they are advertising it as "Pack XXX's" roundup, then the other Packs better get on the stick and set up their own fall roundups.

 

If this is the roundup for everyone, just forget getting into a tiff over "fairness" - when I hear "It's not fair", I think of 5th through 8th graders - not adults. The adults just need to get over it - and work with the sponsoring Pack to publicize the event and site to their own constituencies. Then next year, the "Catholic" Pack can hold the event at the Catholic Church, and the year after, the (apparently) "Secular Sponsor" Pack can hold it at their meeting place.

 

As for the Den Chief issue - what exactly is the Pack leadership saying? There's a big difference between "We'd like some Den Chiefs from your Troop but are going to encourage the boys to join the other Troop" and "We'd like some Den Chiefs from your Troop but we can't guarantee that any of the boys from our "Protestant" Pack will join your "Catholic" Troop, and we know how Den Chiefs are considered an important part of a Troop's recruiting arsenal and we'll understand if you say no but are really hoping you'll say yes."

 

If the first scenario, I'd be inclined to respectfully decline - if the latter, I'd be inclined to say "Sure - how many do you need and I'll see what I can do" (after all, even if you don't get Scouts for your own Troop, you may still get Cubs into Scouts, and will get leadership positions for members of your Troop - and while the logic holds true for the first scenario too, it comes down to "being used" or "being useful" )

 

Calico(This message has been edited by CalicoPenn)

[Eagledad]

I have been involved in several unit rivalry situations where they recruit from the same source. I learned quickly that when you handle one situation, you automatically become the District expert. I imagine Beavaher understands what Im talking about.

 

Anyway, there are two factors that seem to heat these things up. One is the idea that a unit is competing against all the other units for new scouts and needs to grab all they can. The other is these units dont know how to sit down together and discuss the problem.

 

The first thing I do is bring the unit leaders together and explain the logistics of recruiting from the same pool of recruits. I try to find out how many eligible boys are out there that can be recruited showing the units that there are plenty of boys. Strangely, it is usually the units the give me those numbers, so they already know. Then I explain that while recruiting sometimes appears to be competitive, it is not. Units are not supposed to horde all the boys. In fact competition or the appearance of competition drives families away and reduces the size of the pool. Then I lay out what the unit leaders really already know, recruiting needs to performed in a neutral location and as fairly as possible. Planning must be done together so that the units have the appearance of being a team.

 

It also helps to for both units to lay out the size and number of there dens. Then from there you can see what they really need to balance the packs. One pack my have a ton of bears and few wolves while the other had a lot of wolves and few bears. That is not unusual because a successful adult may have pulled most of the new scouts that year.

 

What I suggest is the adults in both packs work together to figure out what each other needs to have balance. That gets them working as a team and buying into the needs of the other unit.

 

In most cases that plan has worked very well. I did have one situation where one pack bragged that they were seeking to kill the other pack. It really came down to one very aggressive adult. Nothing I could say changed his mind and strangely, I could not get District or Council to help change his mind. Four years later the two packs merge together. Truth was the merge was a good thing. Problem was they aggressive pack drove away so many families in that area from scouting that it took several years to get the pack to earn a good image.

 

I will say that image is everything here and the packs need to understand that. It is hard enough for a parent to put themselves out and commit to scouting. Add to that bickering adults who dont seem very scout like and they arent going to even mess with it. Once you develop the reputation, it is hard to shake.

 

Get the adults talking to each other so you can get them to empathize with the other pack. Then you can get them planning how they will work together.

 

Hope this helps a little.

 

Barry

 

[briantshore]

Let me try to clear a few things up.

1. Protestant Pack and Troop meeting the same nights. If a Den Chief from that troop attends den and Pack meetings, he misses out of the troop meeting.

2. This quote from one of the Protestant leaders that" our boys are going to go to the Protestant troop" was that one person's statment, not necessrily a Pack opinoin.

3. In the past the DE has said to the units, Roundup will be these days and times at this location. There are many neutral locations that this could have been held.

This has been addressed to the previous 4 DE's and they do not want to step in and make peace.

4. This is something that has been going on longer than the 4 years I have been involved in this town.

5. In further discussion, I have found out that Catholic Troop has run a Pancake breakfast in early Feb for the last 25 plus years. Protestan Troop a few years ago then goes and helps out the chartering org with a pancake breakfast the week before the Catholic's, and directly compets against the other unit for the market. Was this a oversight? One can only guess.

5. As a unit commissioner, I am in a difficult possition, since I also am a leader for both Catholic Pack and Troop. I want to address this, but I do not want to appear to be taking sides. As others have said, this is not very scout like, or christian like.

In past sign ups, I have sent boys to the other side, becouse we had a boy looking for a bear den, but we had no boys in the age group, or leadership in place. My goal is to give any boy the best scouting experiance that I can. If it is my unit, or any other unit.

[Eagledad]

>>As a unit commissioner, I am in a difficult possition,

[briantshore]

My units have expressed frustration becouse they feel that they are not working on a fair playing field. Council does not want to step in. As a Commissioner, I am gathering information to present to our Commissioner meeting for discussion on what actions should be done. I posted this to see if others have run into the a situation like this.

[NeilLup]

I've started to write a few times and haven't finished because I just don't handle this kind of thing well. You can probably get much better counsel from others.

 

When I was a SM in the AF, we had four Troop, call them A, B, C and D and three packs, A, B and D. I was the Scoutmaster of Troop A. There were formal "feeder pack" relationships for the other three Troops and the three Packs. Pack A fed into Troop C, Pack B fed into Troop D and Pack D fed into Troop B. We were out of luck.

 

Upon checking I found that a few years earlier, there had been four Packs. However the one that was structured to feed out Troop, Pack C, had gone defunct. I suggested a restructuring of the feeder Pack relationship. The other Troops saw absolutely no reason to change things. Anyone who has played the "Game of Life -- win all you can" will understand perfectly.

 

I spoke to the Commissioner. He was very sympathetic but said that he had no right to change the "formal" relationship when the other three Troops were totally happy with it. If some boy really wanted to come to our Troop they, of course, could but the clearcut assumption was that they would go where they were structured. to go.

 

We recruited hard among non Cub Scouts and created a high level of visibility. We held our own but it was tough.

 

Not that any of this is of help to you. Just that I feel your pain.

[croushorn]

Once upon a time, there once was a community that was served by a number of elementary schools. One pack served each school, by gentlemens agreement even through each were chartered through area churches. All was well, each was a strong unit.

Until one day the evil DE posted a new rule that there was to be a one to one relationship of the packs to troops. He thought it was logical and would make him look like a hero as it appeared to work that way anyhow, as each already had a relationship with matching unit numbers and a couple even had the same CO. Except the evil DE was obviously a phys ed major and couldnt do math very well. There was one more troop than pack in the community. Plus, the community was split down the center by two Districts. So the other District didnt pay any attention to him, you have no authority over us was their cry (not that it mattered anyway, the Webelos went where they wanted). So the plot of the story begins when one year the odd Troop out doesnt get any Web crossovers. Fearing their future viability, they go on a recruiting rampage the following year and nearly get all. Suddenly they were burdened with the results of greatly over promising and under delivering a Troop that nearly doubled in size over night. They have lost many of them since, including some older guys that were lost in the shuffle. This infuriated the community that they all were losing numbers, you dummies! they cried. The year after, the odd Troop out realizes to they need to be more careful with what they ask for and back off the guerilla marketing schemes. Things balance out and each Troop gets a respectful number of crossovers to support consistent growth. Each Troop became a little more aggressive in its recruiting methods instead of sitting back and assuming they would all get the crossovers automatically from their respective feeder unit. All the Troops realized all they had to do was step it up a little and by just promoting their programs a little more effectively they recruited Webelos and families that were compatible with their Troop. All this was accomplished without a lot of discourse or gnashing of teeth and all lived happily ever after.

The moral of the story is that there is no perfect system and no rights to particular Webelos. Market your program and the market will let you know how your program is doing.