Troop Attendance

[bsatroop430]

Hi I'm new, my troop seems to not have good attendance on the outings and the parents aren't involved. The group of parents that go to committee meetings don't even have kids in the troop anymore. I was wondering what's the percentage of scouts that actually go on you troops outings?

[Pack212Scouter]

Hi, and welcome to Troop life! To answer your question, I've heard Troops reporting anywhere from 10%-100%. Our Troop averages 30%-60% depending on the outing and the time of year.

 

The reasons for the variation are manyfold. Low attendance can be the result of sports (ie, football season in a community that really loves football), lack of youth interest in the Troop (usually a result of poor youth leader training or maybe an adult run Troop with adults that don't have a clue), poor communication (are the youth getting the outing info to the parents), lack of interest in the outing (are the youth the ones planning the outings?), and cost of the outing (ie, a weekend skiing out of state). There are of course other reasons, but those are often the culperates.

[Cambridgeskip]

Other side of the Atlantic but I suspect issues are the same.

 

For us it varies from trip to trip and what effects it is very varied.

 

If it clashes with a school trip somewhere parents tend to side with the school and send them on that. Not much you can do about that.

 

Some times it's just not popular. This summer we have a white water caneoing trip. Very popular and we have about 80% turnout and a caving trip which only a small number want to do with only a 20% turnout.

 

It can clash with sport fixtures, or family holidays or all kinds of things.

 

I like to try and get dates of school events well in advance if I can to try and plan our trips around them.

[qwazse]

We get as low as 20% and as high as 90%. Scheduling conflicts with sports and exams are the primary challenges.

 

Sometimes we're intentional about that. 50% attendance gets us at about 9 scouts, which is ideal for most backpacking trips. It gets the boys who aren't into NAND or sports up and moving.

[GKlose]

I don't have a magic bullet, but when my older son joined a troop, it had severe outing attendance problems (lots of reasons, but mostly because it was an adult-led, advancement-oriented troop -- so because older Scouts didn't need to camp for advancement, they didn't go -- they concentrated on attending "Eagle Week" at the local summer camp, to get their Eagle-required merit badges). It was so bad that my son's first year, there were only "6 nights under nylon" for the entire year, not including the six days at summer camp. How were outings chosen? One adult leader would talk to his son, and then report to everyone else, "well, they seemed to like 'X', so let's just do 'X' again". An average outing would have 6 to 8 Scouts, and most wouldn't commit until the last minute, because they weren't sure when, or where, the outings would be, and even if it would be held (a few last-minute cancellations of outings will do that to you).

 

Long story, but it took a few years to solve the problem.

 

Youth leaders had to take back control of outings (and it took some adult poking and prodding to get youth leaders to take back that responsibility). It took some fresh ideas -- it meant having to try some new activities and new locations. It meant scheduling something year-round; scheduling something every month. It meant changing the perception that Boy Scouts was an "academic year" program, with summer camp added. It meant fixing the outing weekend, and going no matter what (for example, we now go the second weekend of the month -- although we've had to shift once or twice). It meant getting rid of the uncertainty -- at one time, we had an "outdoor activities coordinator" that declared an outing was off because not enough Scouts had signed up two weeks in advance. He's no longer the outdoor activities coordinator of the troop.

 

Then it took awhile to catch on. Lately, we've been getting 20+ on outings (in a 28-Scout troop), where the only ones staying home are the older ones that "grew up" under the old system. Then again, they tend to be the multiple-sports, multiple-activities kids (the local HS band is a schedule-killer in the fall!). The PLC is now trying to think of new places to go, rather than just going back to the same places they have been multiple times. One proud moment: the PLC, recognizing that most new Scouts had not been to the patrol-oriented summer camp we've been going to for a couple of years, decided to hold an off-season winter camp there. During the outing, the older guys took the younger guys on an extended hike throughout the reservation, as a kind of tour. To have them see what the camp was like and tell them stories.

 

This last year, I think we had 10 monthly outings, one overnight with Cubs, attended two summer camps, did a 5-day high adventure trip, at least four service projects, and had 7 Eagle projects (and I'm not even counting Courts of Honor). The only "problem" at this point is that we have very few who make it to everything, although we've got a couple that really try. I think we're a healthy and active troop, and we've made great headway at toning down the advancement-oriented nature of the old guard. We didn't manage to wedge in a PL training weekend, despite attempts to do so -- but we had one the prior year, at the beginning of our "take back control of the calendar" period.

 

Still a long way to go, though --

 

Guy

[Engineer61]

One problem I've noticed with my Scout is the "BTDT" (Been There Done That) status of the outings.

 

Not that many different (and approved) places to go that are reasonably close and tolerable, especially in the summer months.

 

[bsatroop430]

Thanks guys, we do some outings every year, and the reason why is that they love them. Yet, this last year they haven't been going. But we have new outings that are fun yet they still don't want to go. My other theory was that it was a money problem, but our last outing was 10 dollars because the troop subsidized most of the outing to see if it would make a difference, and only 3 boys signed up out of the 20plus we have.

 

I just turned 18 a few months back got my eagle and have seen the ins and outs of this troop. We are boy ran, believe me I've been SPL 3 times, but it seems like the boys aren't wanting to do anything these days. Its hard enough to get them to want to run for something like PL and clearly our SPL doesn't want to be it anymore.

[Engineer61]

Well, there is the legitimate possibility that some of your Scouts don't want to be Scouts. You may have more parents pushing than you think.

 

Sometimes, it's a good thing to ask yourself, "Why am *I* doing this?" Maybe some of your Scouts are doing that...in spite of their parents.

[Mountaineer]

Outing participation really varies for us. Seems to me the season and the type of activity plays the major factor. This past Jan or Feb we only had around 40% on a Mtn Biking trip. Maybe it was the season or maybe its because Mtn Biking is very strenuous, Im not sure. Maybe both played a factor. It seems as some of the older guys have aged out, climbing is not as popular as it once was and there has been a minor drop off. Although recently weve had an option for a group to go to a different site during the day and do bouldering instead of climbing. We typically invite another troop when we have a climbing trip since the equipment is expensive and they likely have infrequent opportunities to do this. All in all we always have a large group. The water and backpacking trips are always very well attended.

[dkurtenbach]

We're in a very sports-oriented suburban area, so there are always youth who have games, on top of the ordinary scheduling conflicts families can have. To help with that, we started doing about half of our weekend campouts as "3-Part" activities.

 

Part 1 -- the Friday night campout, at a nearby (less than 1/2 hour) park or campground. Meet after supper, go out, set up, have a campfire, enjoy the evening, get up and cook breakfast. Part 2 -- about 9 AM, depart the camp or park for a day adventure, such as climbing, battlefield visit, hike, etc. Part 3 -- return to the camp or park around 4 PM, cook supper and have other activities in the evening, get up in the morning, have breakfast, Scout's Own service, break camp, clean up, closing circle, head home.

 

The beauty of this is that Scouts can attend one, two, or all three parts. It is easy to get out to where the troop is, so the Scouts can easily come and go. We've had Scouts who could only come out for Friday night, and get picked up early Saturday. We've had Scouts who couldn't camp but came out for the day adventure. And every other combination. Also makes it very easy to get adult help. The key is to have a great day adventure; otherwise, it can quickly get boring going back to the same nearby campgrounds on a regular basis (even with four good ones).

 

The other half of our schedule were campouts at more distant locations (1 hour plus) where you pretty much had to be able to spend the entire time because it would have been difficult to come out later or to leave early.

 

Dan Kurtenbach

Fairfax, VA

[Tampa Turtle]

We have notice much as others:

 

Sports and other conflict. Band seems to be a scout killer.

 

Repeating the same campouts and locations year after year.

 

Mixing newbies with older guys; i.e. watering down the adventure for the older guys loses the older guys. Yeah the older guys help the younger guys but they need time away too. IMHO.

 

Too much emphasis on advancement and MB and not on fun and adventure with advancement and MB a happy byproduct.

 

Cost.

 

Competition with other events. Downtown Tampa does 250 large events a year, plus Pro football, baseball, hockey, concerts. And we have beaches, fishing, and boating nearby. Some guys are off on a fishing trip in the gulf with their families.

 

Poor Patrol cohesion.

 

Bossy or overbearing adults.

 

As many have said before to grow attendance work on the quality of the program, add fun, get the patrols to do as much work as possible, be boy-led.

 

Parents are a whole other story.

[Oak Tree]

Ditto to what everyone says above.

 

Our attendance varies a lot, from as low as 10%, up to something much higher.

 

A couple of observations I'll add. As our troop grew much larger, our participation percentage dropped. This, I'm guessing, has to do with several factors. One is that the Scouts feel less personally responsible for planning and executing each trip. When it's a small number of boys who are making the plans, they tend to feel much more buy-in.

 

Another thing is that as the troop has aged (and we now have almost 50% of our Scouts who are 14 and up), we find that the older boys have a much lower participation rate than the younger guys. They tend to choose just a few trips that interest them and don't conflict with their other activities.

 

We do try various things to get the participation up, but in another way, I'm not too concerned about it. If the Scouts continue to re-register, it means that they are finding the program effective. I'm much more interested in the recharter rate than I am in the participation rate. If we have a trip where only eight boys sign up, we go and have a good time with those eight boys.

[Kudu]

 

To make the date more rememberable for potentially popular outings we further boost the attendance percentage by collecting a first come, first served, "non-refundable" $10 deposit six (6) weeks in advance.

 

Trips like climbing, 50 mile bike trips, canoeing, shotgun, rifle, archery, scuba, unsupervised backpacking, etc., also bring in athletic parents with serious outdoor skills who never attend the Webelos III campouts.

 

Yours at 300 feet,

 

Kudu

http://kudu.net

 

 

 

[Cito]

Somehow I ended up in the wrong thread, multiple windows open. Good luck with attendance.(This message has been edited by Cito)

[bsatroop430]

Thanks again guys for the ideas, I seem to have figured out the problem. Our parents aren't showing any care for scouts it seems, they act like if it is a baby sitting service, which it is not. If the parents show that they care and be involved with certain things like committee meetings it will show the scout that this is actually important for him, so important that his parent(s) are taking time to help the troop.

 

I just came back from a committee meeting that had 3 adults, 3! You can't have a committee meeting with just 3 adults. I care about this troop, I'm 18, yet I put in more effort than any adult that has a kid in the troop. The scout can't achieve if he doesn't think it is important. Its a shame for the scouts that do think it is important because if we cancel outings because poor attendance, then he can't go.