Back to School Night
29 Days and Counting: Cub Scout recruiting report
Hey North Star Packs!
REMINDER: District Committee August 4th
A quick reminder that the District Committee will be meeting August 4th at 7:00 pm at Second Presbyterian Church, 7700 N Meridian St, Rm 407, Indianapolis, IN 46260.
Fall Camporee planning is full swing. Please work on your troop’s event. Some ideas are available on a previous post.
We are also working on finalizing basic information about the Winter and Spring Camporees, so come with your thoughts.
Membership subcommittee is in full swing preparing for Back to School Recruitment. Your packs and troops plans to participate (yes, troops helping packs recruit) is crucial for our success. We already know that some packs are spread thin on manpower. They are small and cover many schools on August 25th. Your help is needed for their success.
Fall also has many special events like a Rocket Launch in support of membership recruitment, Cub Scout leader training, Battle of Belzer, Cub Family Camp and many others. We need your help in planning for their success.
Fall membership Kick-off
Fall Membership: Assignments
When Fall Membership efforts begin, school will be starting back into session and other activities will distract.
Now is the time to make sure your Pack has appointed a person to review the literature that you plan on giving your new prospective families. Information and templates are available at the Council Recruitment webpage. Those documents should include:
- Your annual calendar (updated from any summer long-range planning);
- Your information book or parent guide on pack practices and expectations;
- Your annual cost of cub scouts and how popcorn and fundraising offset the out-of-pocket costs (the goal is that they see the value of fund raising to minimize out-of-pocket costs);
- Your BeAScout.org pin needs to have accurate meeting information and contact information for your leadership.
In your information packs, do not forget that we are introducing Lion Cub/kindergartners into the program this Fall. So everyone will need to update their documents for this addition. Con Sullivan is the council coordinator for Lions, so be sure to address questions to him as you need.
If you know how is responsible for each or all of these documents, you then need to set a deadline for these to be submitted to the pack committee for approval. Ideally the committee would approve these before the end of July. Maybe then the documents need to be submitted to the committee a week or two before the meeting that would meet that July deadline. That way the documents can simply be polished and printed for August recruitment.
Do your homework now: committee chairs, make sure you have these assignments done in May. It will make August just that much easier.
For more information on how to update your BeAScout.org pin, watch this video:
Spring Prep for Fall Recruiting
As we wind down on the school year, minds travel to far away places. Well, at least, situations that are far different than the average school day routine for both parents and kids.
Unfortunately, once we leave for summer break, all sorts of planning for Fall go on break, too. Have you ever tried to find a school principle on summer break? They are hard to find if you try during their vacation.
A great way for your Pack to get ahead for the Fall Recruiting season is to talk to the school principle now about Boy Talks and Back to School Nights.
Simply confirming in person that the principle approves Boy Talks and sign up tables is very powerful.
Two more keep steps to avoid Fall problems are to:
- Send a confirmation email today about what you and the principle agree. When back to school time arrives, you simply re-send the confirmation email to inquire if all is still on track.
- Seek permission to distribute our recruitment flyers to the school. Some school districts require at least 30 days notice of any request for distribution. If you start now, the deadline is easier.
If you are in a large school system, coordinate your efforts with the District Membership Committee Chair Sharla Merrick or her committee Jenny Beyers and Mike Yates or you can contact District Executive Con Sullivan for basic information and flyer coordination.
You can see the entire campaign overview here
.
Work now so that Fall issues are easy!
Fall 2016 Recruitment Campaign
From Sharla Merrick, District Vice-Chair for Membership sends this message:
Hey North Star Scouters!It’s that time of the year — time to work on the yard, take the Cubs outside, and plan for Fall Registration 🙂2016 Fall Registration will be very similar to last year. The mandatory registration night that will be advertised by Council is Thursday August 25th. Each elementary school will need a scouter to staff registration that night. In addition, Packs are encouraged to have an optional earlier Registration Night to better line up with your school calendars.What we are asking from you now is to contact the elementary schools that are affiliated with your Pack and set up your Registration Night(s), Boy Talks, and representation at Back to School Night. Please use the attached Google form to submit the information so that we can coordinate speakers (if needed) and provide you with all signs/packets/stickers/etc. in time. We are asking each Pack to have an adult leader or volunteer with your Pack to speak at your Boy Talks if possible.Please submit the google form by May 15th. If you would rather turn in a printed form you can do that at May 12th’s Ideal Year of Scouting. (Don’t miss the Ideal Year of Scouting Meeting! There will be information available about the New Lions Program for Kindergartners as well as info to help make this year awesome!)
SAVE THE DATE: We will have a Recruitment Kick-Off with supplies, food, and fun on July 15 (location to be determined.)I’ve invited you to fill out the form Cub Scout Membership . To fill it out, visit:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Sqt187BlP7kOcCdLUWE-f5SwE66N_TeGeQlkd_h0-TU/viewform?c=0&w=1&usp=mail_form_linkCub Scouts Have More Fun!Sharla Merrick and Jenny BeyerCub Scout Membership Team
Prototype Unit Handbook: Request for pack and troop forms
I am beginning a project that I want to complete by May 30th. I am looking to design a prototype of a new parent handbook.
I am asking for your help.
First I am asking each unit to email me a copy of their current handbook, annual calendar and handout on costs of membership by May 5th. We will use these as sources of best practices. Documents in a word processing file are preferred.
Second, I am looking for a panel of editors to assist in assessing the result and focusing on simplification and clarity.
Some of the concepts I will be building come from Scouting Magazine’s article last spring. They had to be more generic nationally. Ideally we as a district can put in more specifics in a prototype.
District Rocket Launch this Saturday, September 12th
Sharla Merrick, our Cub Roundtable Commissioner, led a discussion last Thursday about this Saturday’s District Rocket Launch. Here is what she reports from that conversation:
- Firecrafter: fire demo,
- Troops: cooking,
- Provided: Archery and BB gun shooting.
Report from back-to-school night
Thank you to all of our volunteers who actively worked to support our back-to-school night efforts last night. The volunteerism and effort were noticeable, particularly from some of our Boy Scout troops that did not have an immediate benefit from the effort.
We have a handful of units that still have not completed their recruitment and turned in numbers.
Unfortunately we are still 100 new scouts below our target at this moment.
This bad news is tempered with the list of possible scouts that were generated in our marketing efforts leasing up to last night. We had identified families who would be interested in scouts. We have a lot of leads on these particular scouts we could still recruit.
District still is optimistic that we can make our target for new recruits this season. It will require more effort.
CAC North Star Unofficial Website 
You must be logged in to post a comment.