Author: Jeffrey Heck
District Information for Venturers
Since Venturers are expected to handle many of the logistical issues that adults handle in Boy Scout Troops, the question arises about district information for Venturers.
Should Venturers keep themselves aprised of district newsletter and blog updates?
Not every Venturer may be interested or have a need to keep current on District affairs. It may be highly worthwhile to have Crew Presidents and Vice-Presidents subscribe to the newsletter.
They will get one email per week about news in the district. They can find Cub Scout and Boy Scout events that the Crew may wish to volunteer to staff. This can help the Venturers progress on advancement from Venturing Award to Discovery Award to Pathfinder Award to the Summit Award (Venturing’s highest award). Each award has substantial service hour requirements.
Service hours are not strictly defined on who can benefit. This is from an FAQ on Venturing (2015):
Q: What is the scope and definition of service hours? Does service to the crew count as service hours, or does the service have to be outside the crew, or outside of scouting and does the crew member have to have advisor approval (for personal service)?
A: The Handbook for Venturers offers this definition of service:
A service is a valuable action, deed, or effort carried out to meet a need of an individual, a group of people, or an organization. An act must be both valuable and address a need of the recipient to qualify as an act of service. The variety of service project ideas is boundless. And, with your capabilities as a young adult it becomes your responsibility to choose those opportunities which best fit with your personal and crew values and to to bring about significant positive change for the individual or organization that you serve. Service is a great place to stretch your leadership muscles.
In counting service hours, service provided as a member of the crew and as an individual are both expected. There is no expectation of Advisor approval for service provided on an individual basis. The “how and why” of the service provided by the individual is a great topic for discussion during an Advisor conference.
Service to the crew (such as for Pathfinder Award Requirement 5) is a separate service requirement for the benefit of the crew and its members and does not “count” toward accumulating service project hours as described in the handbook extract above.
Within this definition, a crew can choose to serve a Cub Scout Pack or Boy Scout Troop or District Activity. The only requirement for crew service is that the crew has to decide to define and plan its participation in advance.
Many scoutmasters express concern in having a Venturing Crew associated with the Troop. The fear is that older boys will leave the troop in favor of the crew. By offering service back to the troop as part of the crew program, not only is this fear not realized, but additional troop staff is suddenly available.
Having crew officers aware of what is going on in the district, neighboring packs and troops allows the crew to choose service hour opportunities back to those units. So does Pack 358 want Venturers to help with the hayride or other offerings? Posting the request through the district website can help.
Let your venturing officers know that they can subscribe here.
Reserve a Spot at Fall NYLT
Our District’s highest performing units put a heavy emphasis on the senior members of the Patrol Leaders Council having complete National Youth Leadership Training.
The fall course is less than 30 days away. Encourage your scouts to participate by signing up on the reservation page. (Informational flyer for 2017 courses.)
This course is open to Venturers, too. The Spring 2018 NYLT Course Director Brian Spellman of Del-Mi Troop 199 told me last week that he will be putting a heavy emphasis on recruiting Venturers. Put a bug in their ear for Spring, if they can’t go in the fall.
For future planning, remember that NYLT students are highly encouraged to complete Introduction to Leadership Skills for Troop or for Crews.
Final Details of Inaugural Venturing Round Up Come Together
Scout Troops have had Camporees since the dawn of the BSA.
Venturers need their own event. To that end, Council is holding its Inaugural camping event for Venturers called, “Venturing Round Up,” this weekend Friday, August 18, 2017 to Sunday, August 20, 2017 at Camp Krietenstein.
If your crew is able to attend, see you there. See the Round Up webpage for schedule and reservation information (initial headcount due Wednesday, August 16, 2017 at 10:00 pm).
If your crew is not able to attend, but you can have a representative at camp on Sunday morning, the crew officers will be getting together at that time to discuss if they want to have future inter-crew events and what that might look like.
When does a Venturer Need to Take VYPT?
In Venturing, you have three categories of members: Youth, Adults, and Venturing Participants. Youth are anyone 17 and younger. Adults are anyone over 21.
The hardest category is Venturing Participants.
Venturing Participants are anyone who is over 18 or will turn 18 in the calendar year. For new members, that means their birthday is in this calendar year. At rechartering for existing youth crew members, they will turn 18 in the following calendar year. Confused yet?
Sometimes knowing the goal is easier than knowing the rule. The goal is that an 18 year old legal adult has completed an Adult Application and Venturing Youth Protection Training. Why wait until a birthday? Those happen all year long? You have better things to do with your time.
Just look at your Venturers. If anyone turns 18 before the next time you do paperwork, have them complete an Adult Application and Venturing Youth Protection (Y02). Then the rules are not as important. Compliance is already complete.
Resources on Boy Scout Recruiting from Roundtable
At the Boy Scout Roundtable on Thursday, August 10, 2017 we discussed Boy Scout Recruiting. If you are sitting in the Roundtable now, you can watch the slide presentation live here.
I promised to put the links shown on the presentation up on the blog. Here are the links.
- National website on year round recruiting: http://www.scouting.org/Home/BoyScouts/YearRoundGuide/recruiting.aspx.
- http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts/YearRoundGuide.aspx
- New Member Coordinator: http://scoutingwire.org/marketing-and-membership-hub/councils/new-member-coordinator/
- Scouting Wire’s Membership Hub (recruiting ideas)
- Scouting Wire’s BSA Brand Center (customizable flyers and web logos)
From Bill Buchalter for the Cub Scout Roundtable: http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/CubScouts/Leaders/DenLeaderResources.aspx.
Pack 358 Invites You to Amazing Race
Chinese scouting unit visiting from Shanghai, China
This summer, Ransburg had a troop from Shanghai stay for a week. I got to talk to them and take pictures with them.
Their English was very impressive. They were all very friendly.
I asked each one their names. They gave me very American names. One boy bashfully introduced himself as “Samantha.” I think he had taken a lot of ribbing for his choice of names. I told him that it was very “creative.” His leaders liked this description.
Then I had them introduce themselves with their Mandarin names. I am ashamed to say that I could not begin to repeat them back.
Scouting lives up to being a Messenger of Peace.
Scout and Venturing Open Houses
Now is the time to put an “Open House” or “Joining Night” on your calendar for your Troop or Crew.
When you do put it on your calendar, please send me an email with a copy of your flyer and other meeting information. We will put it on the district website. Tell us when you want your article to post (e.g., a week before the event, a month before, etc.).
This can be especially useful in letting Webelos Dens know how to join your troop or troop members about your Venturing Crew.
YPT Renewal time
Rechartering opens in 50 days. Nows the time to make sure that you have everyone in your unit up to date on Youth Protection Training.
Remember it is North Star District’s policy that all Youth Protection Training renewals take place between March 1st and October 1st of any given year. This prevents YPT from being any form of barrier to rechartering.
As of this morning, we have approximately 301 offices that have persons in need of updated Youth Protection Training, either for Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts (code Y01) or for Venturing (code Y02). This is by office, since many scouters serve in more than one office simultaneously.
This is the first time that we have had units recharter with scouters who have previoulsy complied with the March 1st to October 1st cycle. Consequently, we have many to renew.
To make this as easy as possible, please consider offering a Youth Protection Training at your unit meeting. You can use the video from council and follow the facilitator notes or you can have a leader pull up the training on their my.scouting.org account and play it for everyone. Pause the program at the right times and discuss. Then a member of your Unit Key 3 can enter the attendee’s completion in the Training Manager.
We will also be offering the YPT before Roundtable at the August, September, and October meetings beginning at 6:30 pm at St Luke’s UMC.
If you have scouters who have already left your unit but are still on your roster, you can clean up your records very simply. Have your unit committee chair or chartered org rep send an email to the Council Registrar Sharon Cone (scone@crossroadsbsa.org), asking her, “Please enter the membership of {INSERT NAME} as {POSITION} as expired as of {EFFECTIVE DATE}. {OPTIONAL: This person (does/does not) remain a member of the unit.}” This will cause the YPT report to be more accurate within 48 hours of her entering the expiration date. This will reduce later confusion and make rechartering smoother. Remember you cannot move a person to a new office without an Adult Application except through rechartering but it will only take effect January 1, 2018. But you can expire memberships with a simple email.
One of the big improvements this year is that YPT can now be done on mobile devices. You can have a scouter go over in a corner at your meeting and complete the training right now. They will not be able to print the certificate. Have them take a screen shot at completion. It is not as good as certificate, but it is a step. If they are already a member of the BSA and their member id is in their my.scouting.org profile page, it will log the training automatically. If they are not yet a member of the BSA, they will need to log in to their my.scouting.org account and print the certificate before they can join.
Cub Scout Recruiting
We are now in the midst of Cub Scout Recruiting. Some quick reminders to all Packs and Troops.
(1) Make sure to send your list of names to Con Sullivan from any list of prospects. This list will allow Con to get those prospects on the Council email and text reminder system. The goal is to make sure your prospects show up at your recruitment nights. Photograph your list and email to Con before you leave the ice cream social or other recruitment activity. They may be blurry and need follow up. Sometimes they don’t. To improve success, use an app like CamScanner to change photos into PDFs. They remove background noise and darken written words. You can see the preview before you send it.
(2) Take something to give to kids. You can get a large bag of candy from Sam’s Club or Costco. You will have flocks of kids around your table. Cub Scout pencils and the frisbies from Council are good, too.
(3) Make sure that your prospect has the date, time, and location of your joining night.
(4) Have prospects sign Membership Applications wherever you can. If they want to sign up at an Ice Cream Social, give them the application. Have a credit card reader (like Square.com) on hand to allow immediate dues payment.
(5) Have as many adults in uniform at your recruitment night as possible. If you don’t have many adult leaders in your pack, ask your most supportive troop to send leaders. Troop leaders want to help, but they don’t want to step on pack leaders’ toes. If you ask, troop leaders will be there. Uniforms help re-assure prospective parents that your pack has solid leadership and support.
(6) If you don’t have enough pack parents to cover a school, make sure to ask troop leaders to fill gaps. Make sure they know your program’s basic’s well: cost of dues, annual calendar, recruitment night logistics, proposed den and pack meeting times. Remember most Troop leaders have never dealt with Lion Cub or the current Cub Scout Advancement program, since the programs are so new. Bring the leaders up to speed.
Good luck!
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