Commissioner Service
Making My.Scouting.Org Useful
Over the next several days, BSA is going to continue moving more and more of its access to ScoutNet database for its volunteers from myscouting.scouting.org to my.scouting.org.
One of the most important benefits of the new system is that it delegates more control over data to the volunteer corps.
This means that it is important that each unit be aware that it can update information. Once aware, the unit needs to update the information.
To begin the process, you need to know your username and password. It is the same one that you used on myscouting.scouting.org. (If you do not have an account there, you will need to register there first.) If you have never logged in to my.scouting.org, you will have to complete the registration transfer process first. Once you are logged in, continue with the instructions below. (For a slightly older video showing the process, click here.)
District Training Problems: Committee Challenge
As I have described in a previous post, our District’s position with the least amount of training is our unit committee members. Ironically, they are among the easiest to train. All of their training (Youth Protection, This is Scouting, and Troop Committee Challenge) is online. The entire process can be done in about an hour for a fast reader. 
They will need a login username and password. They will also be better served if they enter their BSA Council Number andMember ID in the system’s Profile. When you ask a Committee Member of any unit to get their training, please look at the Rechartering paperwork, the training reports on either my.scouting.org or myscouting.scouting.org. Then give them their member number, preferably by email for easy retrieval. You will save everyone headaches.
You can also send them a link to this article. I have attached at this link to a step-by-step guide for logging into the system and taking the Troop Committee Challenge. The same process is used for the Pack Committee Challenge and the Venturing Committee Challenge.
Please give us your feedback on how to improve these instructions.
We would like to have 100% of our committee members fully trained by Recharter time in October.
Training Report Updates
Over the last several years, our District’s training records have not been kept at the highest quality. Consequently, many scouters have reported to me that their records are incomplete.
Please make sure to login in to the new http://my.scouting.org to review your training record’s completeness. If you have training completed that is not reflected in the record, please contact your unit commissioner listed on the same website. If you are not sure who the unit commissioner is after reviewing the website, contact District Commissioner Jeff Heck for a referral.
We are still beta testing the extent of our ability to update the records without the Council Registrar’s intervention. However, if we are aware of the specific problems that you are having, it is much easier to figure what we can do for you.
For us to be able to make any updates, we will need some documentation to support the training being completed. Most instructors issue the required Certificate of Completion. We can accept those. If you do not have such a certificate and you attended University of Scouting or the old Cub Scout Pow-Wows, you can give us a transcript of those classes taken.
Please be especially attentive if you have taken Wood Badge, position-specific training for the position you now hold, your current Youth Protection Training class, and the Train-the-Trainer class called Trainer’s Edge.
These training records are important for facilitating Rechartering and maintaining a quality experience for the youth in our district.
Troop Committee and All Pack Training Now Online
Remember the old days (like last month), where Pack Committee Chairs had to tell new parents that to be “Trained” as a scout leader, they needed to go to a class to obtain their Position-Specific Training? Isn’t it nice that we don’t have to do that anymore?
What you didn’t know that?
Yeah, at the end of June 2015, MyScouting.Scouting.org now offers online Position-Specific Training. This isn’t just limited to Fast Start Training anymore (which is still available).
Now your Pack can be fully entitled to wear the “Trained” patch from online training. All major positions are included: Cubmaster, Committee Members, Pack Trainer, and Den Leaders of all types. They are even available in Spanish.
District will be asking all Chartered Organization to make a special emphasis on having newly recruited leaders attend training during the first week of September. However, this online offering will have nearly identical content.
Consequently, when your Unit Commissioners coming visiting in August, they will want to be sure that your current leaders have their training done, online if most convenient. Otherwise, they will ask that the existing leaders set a good example and attend the live training when it is scheduled for the first week of September.
All Packs should have a Pack Trainer. This person is responsible for doing live training (if necessary) and making sure that all Pack Leaders at all levels are properly trained and reported to the District Training Committee and the Council Registrar. When reporting live training, the Pack Trainer should use these Training reports.
For our Boy Scout Troop Leaders, only one position has the equivalent online training available at this time: Troop Committee Challenge. All other Troop Leaders must still do their training live with an instructor or make arrangements with an instructor to do self-study. Self-study consists of reviewing the material alone, then speaking to a qualified instructor to insure that the material was learned. The instructor still issues the certificate. Troop Leaders are discouraged from self-study except in the most dire of situations. The value of conversations and interactions are deemed to be an important part of the regular training practice. Leadership Training Committee Guide (#34169) pg. 12 (2010). Personal coaching with a qualified trainer is preferred over self-study.
This training is important for Rechartering.
Service Hours Reporting to Council
UPDATE 7/21/15: In July BSA open direct access to this reporting from within my.scouting.org. Now there are two ways to access the national database: my.scouting.org and servicehours.scouting.org. There is one way to access the local database, described below.
Like any business, Crossroads of America Council wants to be able to understand what is happening in its territory. Since the Council cannot have a person at every Pack, Troop, or Crew activity, Council seeks to learn what is happening by asking its units to report their various activities. We are all familiar with recharter reports, JTE reports, advancement reports and summer camp reports.
What we are not as familiar with is Service Hours Reports.
Council seeks to learn information about unit service hours for many reasons. One is to be able to better market scouting in our Central Indiana territory. When scouting was in its infancy, newspapers such as the Indianapolis Star ran reports about the activities of Boy Scout Troops all over the Indianapolis area. For nearly 20 years, these newspapers ran a column entitled, “Star’s Column for Boy Scouts.” It was the blog of its day.
During World War I and the Liberty Bond Drive, reports about the troops’ bond sales and other service activities took greater prominence in the columns.
In addition the newspapers general News Department would run stand-alone stories about the scout troops service to others.
Today, newspapers do not spend any time running regular columns about scouting. There are too many competing youth organization that would want equal time.
The current generation needs to rely on newer technology than a newspaper beat reporter to get the word out about what the scouts are doing every day.
We troop leaders need to be our own newspaper reporters. We need to gather information about the story. We need to write reports. We need to publish the reports. We need to make sure our reports get into the hands of prospective scouting families.
Service hours are an important part of Journey to Excellence reporting, which will be required with this year’s Rechartering.
Informal Minutes of June 2015 Committee Meeting
I was not appointed as the Committee’s secretary, so I did not take notes with an eye to that thoroughness. Nor was I a participant in each break-out session. With those warnings, I will highlight some of the discussions from the Committee Meeting.
Steve James, the District Chair, opened the meeting and emphasized that District needs to be focused on membership recruiting for August 27, 2015. He said, “We are in All-Hands-On-Deck mode. We need all Packs, Troops, and Crews to be part of the process.” Steve introduced our new District Executive Cornellius “Con” Sullivan. Con rapidly covered the points about our Council-wide Back to School Night that Darin Stendl, Con’s supervisor, had covered at the May Roundtable. Jump to the link for a detailed report. The most important part of the presentation for this report is that the marketing campaign’s call to action for the general public is “Sign up at your local elementary school.” This means that we need personnel at all of our District’s elementary schools.
During his presentation, Con emphasized that we have nearly 43 elementary schools to cover at sign-up night, while we only have 35 chartered units and 18 Cub Scout Packs. There is no way that the Packs can man all of the elementary schools. Con also underlined that there is a Recruiting Rally at Victory Field in downtown Indianapolis on the evening of July 16, 2015. (Literature about the campaign is available on the Council website, too.)
In Darin’s earlier presentation he had emphasized that the call to action does not emphasize Cub Scouts. It is a general call to join Scouting. This means that Troops and Crews could receive new members, too.
Con reported that North Star District’s Cub Packs are encouraged to participate in a District-wide Pack Overnight Campout on October 17-18, 2015 (I will need to review my notes to double check dates) at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Other weekends and campsites are available if Packs have fewer conflicts, but IMS is being pushed for North Star. IMS is close to home and exciting. Race cars and another race themed aspects will be emphasized through the weekend.
After Con’s presentation, there was a general open discussion of some of the logistics. One issue brought up is that customarily Packs collect the initial dues from new families on sign up night. Council then asks for a check from the Pack to Council to cover the new recruits’ BSA dues. This lead to some surprise and frustration. In addition, there was confusion about how much BSA dues the Pack should collect the first night to be considered a completely “registered scout.” Con did not have the answer at that time. These topics would be addressed in more depth later. For the duration of the meeting, the Committee agreed to take the issue under advisement and focus on the immediate mission of recruiting. At the meeting Con promised to clarify a few of these issues as quickly as possible.
This morning, he emailed me some clarifications. Read the rest of this entry »
Cub Pack Committee
One of the first signs of trouble in the health of a Cub Scout Pack is that Cubmaster is heavily involved with the parents.
The Cubmaster, like his Scoutmaster equivalent, has the primary responsibility for taking care of the boys and coordinating the efforts of the Assistant Cubmasters and Den Leaders. He is the head of the Operations Department of a Cub Scout Pack.
So who takes care of the parents? The Pack Committee Chair. He or she is crucial to allowing the Cubmaster to provide a good program to keep the boys interested. If the Cubmaster is handling most of the phone calls and emails from the parents, the Cubmaster is going to waste his volunteer time that should be spent on the boys.
July Roundtable Postponed a Week for Holiday
Please note that July’s Roundtable will be on July 9th at the same time and place, not the usual date.
We will hold a general session for all attendees at 6:30 pm. At the close of general session, Cub and Scout Roundtables will be held.
Training for Chartered Organization Representatives and Representatives-Elect will be held at the same time. (RSVP’s requested for training.) This training is mandatory for a COR to be “Trained.” Our goal in North Star is 100% Trained-COR’s by the completion of this year’s Rechartering Process.
District Training Status
One of the key duties of District is to encourage units to improve their programs in order to make the scouting more inviting to boys. BSA offers training for each position in order that adults can better understand the duties that they have accepted. Training is required for Rechartering.
Council records training records to be able to find out where training needs to be encouraged.
Among our units district wide, our training rate looks like this (if you are registered for more than one position, you can be trained and untrained simultaneously, appearing on this chart for each):
The pattern is clear. Units in Zionsville and northern Pike Township tend to have adult leader ship rates well over 50%. Moving toward the south and east, training rates plummet to the point where some units have no properly trained leaders.
Congratulations to our Commissioners
This Saturday, our district chaplain Jim Brinkley, Assistant District Commissioner Stu Bowes, Unit Commissioner Andy Fulks in Zionsville (who serves double duty as Sugar Creek District’s Assistant District Commissioner, too), Unit Commissioner Mat Gerdenich in Washington Township, Cub Roundtable Commissioner Sharla Merrick, and District Commissioner Jeff Heck attended the annual Commissioners College.
Congratulations to Andy Fulks for earning his Doctrate of Commissioner Science, which requires attending three colleges and writing a these.
Congratulations to Stu Bowes for earning his Masters of Commissioner Science, which requires attending two colleges, and Jeff Heck for his Bachelors for attending his first year.
Cincinnati’s Dan Beard Council announced that they would hold their own Commissioner College the first Saturday in August, and they invited our Commissiners to attend. They will be offering the new Roundtable Commissioner curriculum. For those who could only attend some of the courses, preventing a degree completion, the Dan Beard classes can help complete the degree.
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