Preaching to the choir?

[Eamonn]

The fact that some units are doing well and growing in size shows that the program can work.

 

Some parts of some of the programs do need looked at.

In my opinion the Tiger Cub and Venturing Programs could do with a large amount of tweaking. - But I'm willing to admit that is just my opinion.

I have visited a lot of Pack and Troop meetings of a lot of different units.

No two of them have ever been the same.

Somehow, someway someone has made a few changes.

Some units seem to specialize in a certain activity and steer clear of other activities. Some are focused on advancement, some seem happy to just trundle along from week to week.

It's all too easy for me to have an opinion.

It takes no effort on my part to think that one is better than the other.

The truth is that I really don't know what the yard stick is when it comes to measuring success in a Scouting unit.

Membership,advancement, participation in events all come to mind.

I really dislike the Troops that seem to dwell on advancement, offering weekly Merit Badge classes. But I'm not a kid in that unit and maybe the kids in that unit really like doing merit badge classes?

I think the ideal size of a Troop is about 30 Scouts. But there are some Scouts who like belonging to a much smaller unit.

 

We know that membership is on the decline. (In a lot of areas.)We know the drop in Cub Scout membership is going to mean that there will be a drop in Boy Scout membership.

We don't know how big a drop this will end up being?

While maybe I'm completely wrong?

Somehow the message that everything isn't wine and roses hasn't filtered down to us -The people who do the work.

We seem to have been happy to allow a few misguided professionals come up with "Out Of The Box" ideas which at times are far away from what we the rank and file seem to accept as being "Scouting" and at times have been pure fiction: Pretend kids in pretend units.

Due to this professional interference and what have you?? Membership seems to have become a dirty word.

The Powers that be seemed happy to allow and ignore things that were just plain not right. Some of us (Me) started to lose the faith.

"Membership" seemed to no longer be about bringing more youth in to enjoy and benefit from what we do and in most cases do well, it became about making "Them" look good.

Young DE's new to the job were so busy trying to "Fix" membership numbers and bring home more dollars, that they had no idea how to inspire us the rank and file.

The time spent telling lies, cheating and fixing numbers has come back to bite us in the tail.

 

Membership really isn't about more numbers.

Membership is dependent on the programs we offer.

No two units offer the identical program. Hopefully in all of our areas and communities that is a Pack or a Troop that is a good fit for every kid that can be recruited.

Just as important is that once we have our grubby little paws on him or her we can provide a program that is fun and offers adventure and new challenges.

I believe that working within the BSA we can offer all sorts of activities and different ways of holding the interests of the youth. I think we might have to be a little flexible and maybe be willing to accept that not everything in the BSA is exactly as we might like or want.

It would be nice if the "Powers That Be" came and asked us what we needed in order to help us bring more members in?

But I'm not holding my breath.

Eamonn.

[Lisabob]

In addition to serving in a minor role on the troop committee, I'm on our district membership committee. This is my second stab at membership, as the first time around (briefly, as district membership chair) I found that I was the wrong person for that job. I just didn't have time to attend a million and one district and council and "special" meetings that seemed to go with the job, and I'm not a very good counter of beans. Or heads. I'm with Eamonn that you can spend all day long recruiting or playing numbers games but if you don't have the goods (strong unit programs) at the end of the day it's useless.

 

These days I'm back on the committee (long story) but thankfully not the chair. And almost the entire membership of the committee has changed. While I don't want to say that previously everyone was solely number driven, I think it is at least fair to say that right now, everyone on the committee agrees that units have to have a good program, aided and supported by the district, in order for the membership aspect to make any sense. Of course, half the time our membership conversations end up being conversations about how other district committees need to do x, y, or z to support our plans! For example, our DE - who is not the typical "move on, move up" kind of DE by the way - was pushing the position of pack trainer a while back. He wanted us to encourage packs to have pack trainers, who would then somehow or other be involved with helping packs build their webelos-scout transition program, fall round-up, and spring Tiger recruitment (hence, the membership tie in). Problem is, as a district we don't have, and haven't had for at least 5 years, any support or training for pack trainers! So we (membership) nixed the whole idea of making pack trainers an important part of anything we do, unless/until district training team gets things together here. Another example, we're talking about doing boy scout recruiting in the fall. Now that's a LOT harder than cub recruiting. One idea is to host a Scout-o-Rama, open to the entire community, or some other "big" event to raise attention and hopefully, get attendance. Great, but you know, that's the program committee's territory. We keep coming back to the role of Unit Commissioners, which are scarce commodities in our area. WOnderful, but we need the help of the district commissioner corp there.

 

My point is that there's only so much membership can do without those linkages to other district support teams. And in the meantime, there are an awful lot of troops and packs in our area who want nothing to do with anything district-related, which I can understand on one level - but then if things aren't going well or there is no district committee to provide support/service to the units, guess who they blame?

 

 

[Beavah]

Yah, boy Lisa'bob. Does that sound familiar! I think I've watched the same dynamic in a dozen different councils and even more districts.

 

So if da structure is gettin' in the way, why don't yeh change it? Forget havin' separate committees for this and that. Have just one "Unit Support" committee and then break out into subcommittees as needed. That way commishes can talk to membership and to program, etc. So many times I see council's and districts locked into a dysfunctional structure because they think they "have to do it that way." Bah. Service first. Everything else is negotiable.

 

Yah, I wouldn't wait on Pack Trainers either. Experience matters as much or more than doin' a 1-day "Train the Trainer" class. Find your best cubmasters and CC's from your best packs, and recruit them. Limited time, one "partner pack" only, no need to come to district meetings if they don't want to. A reward of free support resources from district for both their unit and their partner unit as a small incentive (a few free manuals, a small discount on cubworld, whatevah).

 

Eamonn's got the right of it. Diversity is a good thing. Small troops, big troops, car camping troops, high adventure troops, active religious CO's, absent secular CO's. But that means we can't do "generic" support, eh? It's got to be highly tailored and creative. What the small troop with the new SM needs is very different than what the big troop with the 20-year vet is lookin' for, eh? That's why I'm always a bit amused by generic "follow the program" advice . Nuthin' worse than some one-day-of-trainin' wonder comin' in and messin' with a situation he doesn't understand.

 

Service first.

 

Beavah

 

[Eagledad]

>>So if da structure is gettin' in the way, why don't yeh change it? Forget havin' separate committees for this and that. Have just one "Unit Support" committee and then break out into subcommittees as needed. That way commishes can talk to membership and to program, etc. So many times I see council's and districts locked into a dysfunctional structure because they think they "have to do it that way." Bah. Service first. Everything else is negotiable.

[Eamonn]

Lisabob

a week or so back I posted that when I became District Chairman my Vision was that our District wasn't going to remain the smallest district. (Yes I know all about my ego!!)

 

Membership wasn't sold as "Hey we need more members" in it's place we talked about "More Happy Smiling Faces"

While Council wide campaigns do have benefits: Better press coverage, more public awareness.

We found that the more localized we made it the better.

Our District covers 3 school districts. Breaking things down into School District size only made sense.

We looked at the Tiger Cub Spring recruitment, which did seem to bring in a lot of new applications. Sadly most of the new recruits never seemed to be there in the fall when most of the Packs became more active again. So we were in fact hurting ourselves.

Troop open houses seem like a good idea. But most of the adults in our area don't know how to stage one.

Because Troops know that they are going to or hope that they are going to see a large number of new faces each spring, they tend not to bother recruiting. Sadly the truth is that within 2 or 3 years most of these new faces along with a few more have quit.

Many Boy Scout Leaders seem to ignore what is happening in "Cub Scout Land" as if what does happen isn't going to impact what they do or are doing. This is really very foolhardy.

Even the goal of Quality District can be very misleading. As the goal is only to improve on last years membership.

One year we did a really poor job and missed our Cub Scout goal by 125 Cub Scouts. The next year we were happy to have made Quality and were plus 10 Cub Scouts -Sadly still 115 down than where we should have been.

It takes about five years for that big loss to show up in Boy Scout Land.

 

Of course units can and sometimes do tell the District and Council to stick it in their ear. They have every right to do so. But this is where having the right people in the right positions (Leaders??) comes into play.

Training's have to be worthwhile and user friendly. This includes R/T meetings.

District Events have to be well planned and above and beyond what most units can do at a normal weekend camp out.

Commissioners in our area are a dying breed and most spend more time doing stuff that isn't really Commissioner service. The strong units have a named commissioner who has been with the unit for a very long time. Not having to do very much. Mean while the new and struggling units are very much on their own.

Still with all that isn't working as well as maybe it should or could be? I feel if we can find a way of making each and every leader in each and every unit take ownership of bringing new members in and keeping them. We can fix the decline.

The Ship has planned several events that we hope young people in our area will want to try.

I'm guesstimating that we will do well if 25% of the kids who come and join us for an event will join. But we will have fun doing the events anyway and 25% is better than doing nothing.

Eamonn.

[Stosh]

If the program isn't working, one can have all the recruiting efforts they wish and as soon as the boys find out the program isn't there, they're gone. If one has a good program, the boys will seek the program out.

 

I have a program where I presently have people from 3 different councils involved in. Our recruiting is minimal, but once the person checks us out, they generally will stick around.

 

Adult leadership must support the program of the boys. It's the key to boy retention. If they find ownership in the program, they'll stick around, if they don't, they're gone.

 

Stosh

[scoutldr]

Sometimes I wonder if we're practicing "truth in advertising"... What if we advertised a restaurant with the best steaks in town? Then when you're in the door, you find out that the steers are out back, the tools are in the kitchen, and you have to do everything yourself, including cleaning up when you're done? I think when scouts and parents sign up, they expect everything to be provided for them...when the secret is revealed that they have to boy-lead (including planning, execution and paying for it), and the parents realize that if there's going to be a program, THEY have to participate, a good many say, "forget this"...it's too hard.

 

I had a parent once who thought that being Cubmaster was my full time job...and that since she had paid her $10 registration fee, I had an obligation to please her as a customer.

 

Just a random thought...