Administrative duties, troop records and the committee

[Buffalo Skipper]

Hey everyone. I have been busy and distracted with issues and have not been around for a while. Our troop is growing and well (for those of you who used to keep up with our progress).

 

I have a question about how your troops handle its record keeping and proceedures: specifically applications. Humor me and direct me through the process of a new scout or new leader, who meets/greets the new member, what happens to the application, who records the information (Troopmaster or other system), takes registration to the scout office, and files the troop copies.

 

Right now, this all is my responsibility as Scoutmaster. It isn't that I am not capeable or willing to do this, but as our young troop is growing, I need to see that someone else is taking care of this for us. Our committee was mostly disfunctinal a year ago, and it is now much better, but there is lots of room for improvement; we have more adults involved now, I am now in a position where I can pass on many of these responsibilities.

 

Please tell me about your experiences.

[The Blancmange]

I would recommend asking your CC to recruit a committee member to act as advancement chair. One of their duties could be maintaining Troopmaster, including entering all the new records.

 

As far as meeting & greeting new scouts, I think that should be a joint effort between the SM and SPL, and then the SM talking to the parents.

[John-in-KC]

In the Troop I served,

 

The Advancement Coordinator (me) was also the membership coordinator. I had an older version of Troopmaster (this was 2002-6) and I had responsibility for privacy of people's data, in addition to accurate records for the youth.

 

I handed off the reports to the SM, because he worked 3 miles from the Scout Office/Shop, and I lived 20 and worked 40 from same. We agreed it was a common sense solution.

 

In a better world, we'd have gotten to the point where the Scribe would feed me update info. As it was, once every 2 months or so I'd get Scout handbooks for a week, take them home, and update the data points to each rank. On MBs, as youth gave me a completed blue card, I cut the advancement and the report.

 

HTH.

[Nike]

I've handled membership for a troop and a pack.

 

For the troop I took the form, confirmed with the treasurer that the membership was paid, xeroxed the form so I had a good copy when it was inevitably lost at Council, and then took it to the Scout shop which was close to my younger ones' pre-school. I kept the boys and adults in separate binders in the troop locker and our Troop master coordinator took care of keeping Troop master updated.

 

Here for the pack I prefer to e-mail a scan down to the council. But I keep all the records at home and enter info onto our internet advancement database which all parents and pack leaders have access to once I've entered them.

 

For both groups I did recharter since I already had all the paperwork. Separating the jobs of advancement from membership allowed the advancement chair to focus on just boys and awards. In no way shape or form was I ever responsible for recruitment. I just move paper.

[GKlose]

B-Skip, we're kind of along the same lines as the others. Our SM does not do anything with applications, or administrative work, and he has a hard enough time remembering names of the new Scouts. I'm kind of amused by it, because any time a new parents hears the term "Scoutmaster", they assume he is in charge.

 

Our CC takes care of the application, and he used to (sorta) keep Troopmaster up to date, until we got a full-time advancement chair. He does take the information from the applications, but otherwise he doesn't do anything with the applications. He's busy enough, I think, just keeping on top of advancement and coordinating boards of review.

 

I'm the membership chair of the troop. I not only try and keep tabs on all the Cub Scout packs in town, and keep in contact with them re: troop visits and an annual outing that we provide for them, I try and greet visiting Webelos (and other prospective scouts) and their parents. I coordinate the troop presence at crossover ceremonies (and the purchase of handbooks, troop neckerchief, etc). This last year, I started new Scout and new parent checklists (one-pagers), and ran a new parents meeting. At times I've handed out applications, but it is really our CC that takes care of that administrative detail. I'm up and running on Troopmaster now, but there really isn't much for me to maintain there. I take care of the troop website, which has accounts based on an export file from Troopmaster, so I can do that myself now rather than rely on the advancement chair to run exports for me.

 

I know this is a side topic, but I wish we had a good outing coordinator. We have one who has that title, but he doesn't really do anything besides organize our annual ski trip. He used to also organize an annual white water rafting trip, but I'm glad that the troop was getting away from big ticket outings like that. Our coordinator, one year, argued that our "high adventure trip" should be an outing to Acadia, so that moms and sisters could come along and go shopping. I tried to steer the troop away from that as soon as I heard it. His son will be an Eagle within a few months, so I think he'll be stepping down fairly soon.

 

So -- to me, there is plenty of work for five adults: CC, Scoutmaster, advancement chair, membership chair and outings coordinator.

 

(we have other parents that step in on other duties, which is really nice -- one dad pretty much handles any event that calls for a parade or a flag ceremony, one dad assists with scheduling service projects, one mom assists with the two fundraisers we do every year)

 

I hope this helps...

Guy

[Oak Tree]

We have a membership coordinator whose job it is to do all of that. The treasurer is also involved, in that we have to take a check from the family and turn in another, smaller check to council. The membership coordinator enters all of the individual's personal information in TroopMaster.

 

We have a separate advancement chair, who is primarily in charge of TroopMaster, and covers advancement, positions of responsibility, etc.

 

We also have an activities chair, who enters all of the trip information in TroopMaster.

[AlFansome]

 

For new scouts, we split duties:

 

- recruiting ASM: contacts packs, makes up recruiting flyers, co-ordinates Webelos visits, informs PLC of dates of Webelos visits, keeps track of new scouts, co-ordinate Troop attendance at bridging ceremonies

 

- new Scout ASM: gets handed the new Scout spreadsheet from recruiting ASM. Deals with parents (not scouts) to get their head around Boy Scouts vs. Cub Scouts, uniforms, adult volunteers, troop structure, email lists, etc...

 

- Committee Chair: paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. Gets checks to Treasurer, gets apps to Council, gets data into TroopMaster. Not sure if we even keep the troop copies for privacy reasons since Council has one and TroopMaster has all the important data, anyway.

 

- Scoutmaster: does incoming SM conferences to satisfy AOL requirements, welcomes the new Scouts, hands them off to the Troop Guides, drinks his coffee.

 

 

Likewise for new Adult Leaders, apps and checks go to Committee Chair, the Training ASM gets them scheduled for training, Scoutmaster welcomes them to the troop and discusses expectations and responsibilities, and then goes and drinks his coffee.

 

 

[Buffalo Skipper]

Thank you all for your great ideas and insights. We have a cubmaster crossing over (who is on the District Committee, and whose wife is still Pack CC, youngest son will be a tiger next year); he has agreed to be our Webelos coordinator (as a MC, not ASM), which is good as our CO has 2 packs. He and I are friends (I am also close with his father, grandfather, and 2 aunts--big scouting family), and he was in scouts with 2 of our ASMs, 20 years ago. We also have a mom whom we have recently recruited to be the New Member Coordinator (also MC position). She is not an experienced scouter, but she sits in the back at every meeting, her son is very active, and she is personable and reliable, so we feel she will be able to fill these shoes effectively.

 

It really boils down to what we expect from each of them and how we divide the responsibilies. We are adding 2 or 3 ASMs this year (plus one who without serving double duty as a WDL, will be more available and involved). All in all, our troop is growing in size, maturity, experience, and organization.