Recruitment
Scouts at Speed
Who is quick at the track? The favorite question of May.
The answer is the BSA sponsored car!
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
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Work now so that Fall issues are easy!
Recruitment: Task #1 – Community Event Calendar
Last year in recruitment, we were late in starting to plan due to the administrative state of the district. Now we are starting planning for the August 2016 recruitment campaign. We need your help quickly.
District Vice-Chair for Membership Sharla Merrick and District Executive Con Sullivan are working hard right now to develop a detailed district recruitment plan to support your units‘ recruitment plans.
Part of this planning requires gathering data. Since we are a large group of talented and dedicated scouters with different perspectives, we are hoping to pool information about recruitment opportunities. We think you have the data. Let me illustrate what we are trying to do.
For example, last year, Con Sullivan reached out to his one of his counterparts in Girl Scouts of Central Indiana Tashianna Avery to discuss her recruitment efforts. (Tashianna has worked with Con and me on several projects and has become a valued colleague.) Tashianna shared with Con several of the community events that she was participating in and invited North Star District to come alongside. One of these was the St Luke’s United Methodist Church Backpack Attack. As a result of networking with Tashianna, we gathered a list of over 50 prospective members of North Star District.
While we did not do a good job of converting these prospects last year, we know that we can develop prospect lists easily at community events. In fact the BSA literature on recruitment emphasizes the importance of these types of events for exposure to the community, relationship building, and identifying prospects. It can serve as more than one of the necessary “7 Contacts” to recruit a new scout.
Sharla and Con want to build on this lesson learned. We would like to find as many events in the communities surrounding our units as possible. Then we will prioritize the events with the greatest likelihood of helping us develop prospect lists and community relationships.
Some of these events will naturally staffed by the home unit. For example, Pack 35 and Troop 35 at St Joan of Arc Catholic will naturally want to staff their parish’s French Market in September, if there is a booth there. Even so, we would like to have it on the district list to help develop a district-wide view of recruiting. The hope is we will minimize the number of good opportunities to make scouting connections.
If you have community events, please contact Sharla Merrick or Con Sullivan through your Membership Coordinator or Committee Chair.
Also don’t forget the Cook Out on the Circle on June 16th as a way to contribute to a Council-wide marketing effort. Many of your best prospective volunteers or families work downtown. Your unit’s presence can generate surprising results.
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
Scout Executive as American Ninja Warrior?
You may have heard that this small event called “American Ninja Warrior” wrapped up filming recently in downtown Indianapolis on the Circle.
In past years, a Eagle scout turned adult competed as the “Boy Scout Ninja Warrior.”
Now we have news that a Utah professional scouter is throwing his hat in the . . . uh . . . hang his hat on the door knob challenge.
When the show airs this summer, look for ideas for camporees and personal challenges to offer your scouts in a COPE spirit.
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.
Training through adaptation to stress
Have you ever had one of those experiences in life where you’re studying or working on something completely different and you start seeing logical connections with everything else you’re doing? That is happening to me. Recently I finally made the commitment to do weightlifting in training while my son was preparing for high school sports. I was trying to make sure I kept up with the teenager. (It has not been easy for me. Aches and pains. Blah blah blah.)
Original Mission
The goal was to help him get stronger. I needed to learn more about barbell training to help him. University of Tennessee Law School Professor Glenn Reynolds had been praising a gentleman by the name of Mark Rippetoe. The professor had talked about how much Mark’s strength training methods had helped the professor improve his back troubles. I have found the professor interesting about other things, so I took an interest in what he said about this.
I listened to a podcast where Mark was the interviewee. I was instantly hooked. It was passionate, logical, and well informed. I bought Mark’s book Starting Strength. I started to listen to his podcast. I watched his YouTube videos. I bought his app. The more I listened to Mark, the more I learned.
One of Mark’s running themes is the importance of training as a process. Training, as opposed to exercise, is the process of applying repeated stresses to a biological system to create predictable and programmable results. If the technique is properly used, for example in weightlifting by increasing weights in a predictable manner, the body adapts to the stress of greater weight by becoming stronger. The strength comes from the body creating more muscle.
Principles Learned Applied to Scouting
As I have looked at Scouting, I have learned more about Green Bar Bill Harcourt and his theories of the patrol system. I have read Baden Powell’s literature on the patrol system and the intentions of Scouting.
Both of these gentlemen would have seen the logic of Mark’s weight training system. These gentlemen would’ve gone further and suggested that the same principles apply to developing and promoting character in young men and women.
Scouting is a system of intentional stresses placed on boys at strategic moments to create predictable results. If you take a tiger cub into the woods, he will be stressed that he is not in his home environment. He will have fears that he has to overcome with the new noises and smells. The presence of animals may give him trepidation. Yet he walks out of the woods having experienced a game that promotes curiosity and a desire to cooperate. While he may have been yelling at his peers, the den leader offers him the opportunity to be quiet to listen for animals.
As the same boy grows in Webelos, he goes back into the same woods to learn how to work in a small group of boys with one of his peers as the leader. The stresses are more focused on the social aspects. The boys become each others’ teachers. One boy may have taken a great interest in raccoon behavior. Another one may be more interested in trees and leaves. Yet another may be fascinated with mushrooms. Each one of them offers the others some lessons. All of them have to learn how to work together under stress. All the stresses are not necessarily self created. There may be rain or cooler weather than expected. They have to learn to adapt. They have to learn how to put up dining flies or tarps as walls.
As they move into Scouting, they take some of these lessons working together and start to work toward the future. They take a greater part in planning and developing what they want to do. They become more involved with teaching each other the basic skills they need to do camping and cooking in the field. Many of the other scouts will be reluctant students. The teacher must learn patience and creativity in trying to teach his ideas.
Each one of these stresses of working in the field together and teaching one another is a part of the character building system. Each boy will suffer his own stresses. Each one will grow stronger for having faced the stress and adapted to it. Just like a weightlifter must put his body under the stress of increasing weight. He pulls the weight off of the floor in the hope that the additional stress on his muscles will create new muscle fiber; so, too, the scout will face mental stresses and challenges of character that the scoutmaster, the teacher of scouts, hopes will grow the scout’s ability to withstand pressure and stresses in the future while still making moral choices.
So what are the stresses that the scout faces that create character? It is not strict organization and military discipline. The troop that does not suffer chaos and conflict is not doing scouting. A troop that does not take advantage of the chaos to teach lessons of life in the scoutmaster minute or impromptu patrol leader council meetings, does not teach the lessons that are available. The chaos and conflict are our teachable moments. They are what we are waiting for — not trying to avoid.
You know you have run into a masterful scoutmaster if he is both quiet and is keenly observing his troop. He is studying what is going on for his next opportunity to give a scoutmaster minute that is full of lessons of the moment. He is watching to see if there is a vision that he can draw from his senior patrol leader and patrol leaders. He is the master of the Socratic method. He asks strategic questions at strategic moments. In this way he is like the strength coach. He is present and offering tidbits of information. As a coach and teacher, he is not undergoing the stress of lifting the weights. He is offering ways to improve his student’s efforts in the moment. He helps the student articulate his own thoughts about what feelings the student has and what lessons he can learn from those feelings.
So when you see a scout under stress, be aware and think about when you might have a strategic moment to offer a coach’s thought.
Do not remove the stress for the sake of being stress-free. You may be removing the lesson that the Scout needs to grow into the man of character that you seek.
New Facebook Page
In an effort to make the District current in its social media, posts from this website will now post to a Facebook page, too.
We realize that many individuals and units rely on Facebook as their primary communication method. For those units, families, and scouts, distributing valuable information easily through Facebook is highly desirable.
If you find an article timely or interesting, please “Like” the post. This will increase the number of people who can receive the same value.
As we enter the Fall Recruiting season, we will be using social media to push information to prospective families and scouts to learn more about what we offer. Sharing good posts for those audiences will allow us as a district to leverage information shared to persons who would not normally see our posts.
For example, a mother may have a new Tiger Cub in Pike Township also on a new soccer team. She joins a Facebook group for the soccer team. As a result, the new friends on Facebook may see a link to a photo of her son in a scout uniform. The next week, the new friends may see that the Tiger Cub mom liked an article about an upcoming hayride for scouts. The next month, they see an article about how scouting improves a boy’s cheerfulness and trustworthiness.
All of these examples are useful marketing for us. Very few took more than a few “Like” clicks for the young mom.
So, please have your unit’s Facebook page “Like” our new page. We would love it!
Selling Scouting: Teaching Resilence
If you are like me, you are constantly reading random articles on the internet. Most are pop-psychology hogwash: “5 Ways to Become the CEO Tomorrow!” (Never forget the exclamation mark!)
Every once in a while, you find a good article. Generally, the quality of the article is best when it is a summary of monograph a/k/a a book on a single subject. One article I saw fits that description.
It is written for the stressed out helicopter mom that wants her child to be perfect and will stress the child out until perfection is attained.
The article is from Fast Company. It focuses on “teaching your child resilience.” (Which begs the question, how do you “teach” adaptation to stress.)
Marketing Unit as a Method of Scouting
In the last several articles, we have considered seven-touch marketing and social media as methods of marketing your unit and recruiting new scouts. This is leading up to the February Roundtable with Unit Commissioner Andrew Linden discussing social media marketing.
Marketing can be done on paper, on the internet, or in person. Let’s focus on the power of in-person marketing.
The best salesman for scouting to a young boy is his best friend, who is already a scout. Baden Powell set up scouting as an opportunity for boys to naturally gravitate into their preferred social group — a group of 5-7 boys with similar interests. In his book Scoutmastership (1920) he explains that scouting uses this natural tendency to teach character.
As the Boy Scouts of America built its system, it developed a list of methods that scouters are encouraged to use to develop character in boys and girls. One of those methods is “Adult Association,” which is described as “Boys learn from the example set by their adult leaders. An association with adults of high character is encouraged at this stage of a young man’s development.”
Imagine your son has wonderful camping experience and wants to tell everyone about it. You hear him telling his friend within earshot of the friend’s mother. Maybe he is describing rappelling.
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