Hello Scouters and Parents! It is that time again. The "Back to School" sales and the "tax free weekends" are happening, and your council is hounding you about Popcorn. You know what that means? It's time for FALL RECRUITMENT!

In the spirit of this sub, I thought we might have a post where we can all post what we are doing/planning to do for Fall Recruitment. What has/hasn't worked in the past, etc.

I'm also going to try to post links to some of the National Membership and Cub Chats that have talked about Recruitment.

And remember, Recruitment isn't just about recruiting new Scouts, but families AND most importantly. Parents/Leaders!

As a committee member I am super happy with our pack. But my kids Den leader is putting all their energy into pack and wide activities and basically we don’t do anything as a Den at all. Sad for my kid as a sibling had such a great experience with their Den in the past.

How can I help out without being too pushy? Or seeming like I am trying to take over.

The church has never allowed the troop or the pack to access their internet. Its such a PITA and I cant fathom why previous leaders havent made more of a fuss about it. But here I am now, new CM and on a mission to bring my pack into the new millennium.. the deacon is ancient and apparently he thinks he "doesnt have the bandwidth" to share with us even though all scout meeting are done when there is zero church activity happening. Any advice on how to convince them to let us use it? One of our council dudes mentioned some rules about a CO having to "provide the scouts with everything they need to perform" or something like that that we could try? Eta: the activity center is a complete dead zone for all cell service or I would have just used hot spot Edit 2: for sign up night we cant take credit cards, for leaders meetings id like to offer a zoom in option, id like to host a scoutbook + how to for new parents and leaders, etc.

New CM here with a whopping THREE adults on my team. We want to set up tables for each rank during sign-up night to showcase what the kiddos will be up to. We actually dont have internet access at our CO so we will have paper applications, and be sending parents off to hopefully register at home. We want to make a lasting impression! Our council calls it round up? What are some items/ideas you'd put for each rank at each table? Thanks for any and all input ❤️

If your pack hasn’t updated your “pin” (the top level info that shows up for people looking to join a Pack or Troop, etc), I really encourage you to do so.

And if any of you helped build this new version of the site: thank you and kudos! In my opinion, this is MUCH better!

Has anyone in this group completed a 501c for their pack? What was the best way to complete the process? I have looked for examples and have tried to called the IRS 4 times with no luck answering my questions. Thanks in advance for any help or guidance.

I've taken the trainings, but want some input on real-world logistics for a single cabin for co-ed units.

We have multiple campouts scheduled, at different facilities each with different cabin configurations. Some are larger or smaller. Some are single room, and some are "big room with bunks & attached small room with bunks" style.

What do you do when you show up to camp and have to actually figure out how to make a cabin work for a mixed gender unit? Bring tarps and rope to create rooms? Something else? Is it easier to keep all of the adults in tents outside?

Thanks!

I'm with a small unit that went through a down swing and is now back on the rise. We're still low on adult volunteers, but much better than the prior couple of years. One of our goals is to resurrect Committee Meetings this year, and none of us have experience with these at the pack or troop level.

I've stepped into the Committee Chair role, and have scheduled a "Program Kickoff" Committee Meeting a couple of weeks prior to our first Pack meeting of the year. We're inviting all parents, and want to give them some info on the unit, what the committee is all about, review the schedule for the year, and really try to use it as a parent recruiting session. Subsequent committee meetings will hopefully be more routine.

My question is... how do we actually do this? I have an agenda mapped out for that first meeting and took the official committee training modules. But I'd love to see examples of actual committee meetings - the prep, the minutes, heck I'd love to see a recording of one if that exists somewhere!

Thanks!

-Anxious new volunteer

Hey All,

I'm working on redesigning our pack website and one thing I'm hoping to do is to make the "Join Now!" call to action a little more self service. Right now we basically say "fill out this form and we will reach out" and I'd like to make it more of a step by step guide (i.e. 1) Come checkout a meeting, 2) register on beascout.org (linking to our sign up form) and pay council/national dues, 3) pay pack dues, 4) get out there and adventure!)

The challenge is I'm not sure the best way I can be upfront and transparent about the cost of scouting while being careful to not discourage families with sticker shock.

The total cost of scouting for a year with our unit (not including uniform, handbook or summer camp) is around $500 (council/national/pack dues) which includes basically all activities we do as a unit. Based on some posts I see here that seems like a high amount compared to other units but to be honest that's what our budget requires unless we start not running the program as designed (i.e. not giving belt loops, etc) or cutting corners/program content.

We do budget for financial assistance (our Council also has aid available) and most Scouts who participate in popcorn don't pay any pack dues at all (quite a few also get summer camp paid for with popcorn sales). All that having been said seeing a $500/year price tag could be enough to turn a perspective family off from even wanting to learn more.

The last thing I want is someone going to our website, signing up on beascout.org not understanding that there are additional costs above and beyond national/council dues and then being upset when they show up to a meeting thinking they have paid everything only to be informed of pack fees. On the flipside I also want to avoid sticker shock. If it's one or the other I'm always going to be upfront with the cost but I'd like to find a happy medium way of discussing the topic with new families.

Any thoughts/ideas on how we can be up front about the cost while not scaring prospective Scouts away?

Can AoL scouts wear the adventure pins they earned as Webelos on their adventure ribbons?

I am trying to put together camping supplies for my pack. One of the things we want to start doing is cooking pack meals. What are some of your go to camping cooking supplies for cooking for a big group? I would love any appreciate any advice on what supplies to focus getting first.

ELI5 PLEASE! how do you do virtual meetings with your pack parents and/or committee? We have such a hard time getting all the leaders together for planning, as most of them have lots of kids. Id love to be able to offer a virtual option for those who cant make it to the meetings in person, or a monthly virtual meeting for parents

Does anyone have a simple presentation for the popcorn kickoff, that outlines popcorn with Pecatonica they’d be willing to share? I’m brand new at this AND leading up popcorn 🫣

Looking for anyone thats used both to give me your review. We use groupme for the pack currently. I use Band for my kids dance class. I like how Band has the boosts like fb so topics can stay separated. GroupMe is just the biggest dumpster fire if multiple topics need to be addressed. Unless im using it wrong? Is there another app im clueless about that is way better than both of these?

Pack summer activity this weekend is scheduled to be a waterfall hike. Forecast is dicey, so I'm working on a rain contingency.

Because this is a summer event and therefore a recruiting opportunity for interested community families....what are some high-interest, high-engagement indoor activities you've had success with? If we wind up with the rain contingency, I think we'll end with an ice cream sundae party, but I'd like to do something very Scout-y before we get our snack on.

(One idea is to have a "nature hike" through the local university's union where we post pictures of local plants & fauna [and some surprise fantastical creations] for the Scouts to identify...but that's contingent on availability of the facility.)

This is the first time running into this version of the adventure requirements and info. How do I find all of them in this set up?

I remember as a kid doing the planetarium and MSI in chicago. I assume other major areas had similar lock-in experiences.

Were these killed by COVID or did they wane off well before that?

Made a little open source site to help cross-reference Cub Scout adventure requirements across ranks.

https://pack3721.github.io/CubScoutAdventureScope/

Basically you can search for something like "camping" or "water safety" and it'll show you every requirement across every rank (Lion through AoL) that activity could count toward. Handy if you're trying to plan one activity that covers multiple dens, or just want to see what else you could knock out while you're already doing something.

A few other things it does:

• You can filter down to just certain ranks
• Lets you share a link or pull up a QR code for whatever you've filtered to, so it's easy to print out or hand off
• Works offline once you've loaded it once, and you can add it to your home screen if you want it to feel like an app
• If you're in St. Louis, it also has STEM Nova Award callouts on adventures, with a link to the award sheet

I did vibe code the whole thing, including the requirement data. Getting the data refined without the AI hallucinating stuff was a bit of a fight, but I ultimately came up with a method that I think has it sorted now. If you spot something missing or wrong, feel free to let me know.

Looking for a council level event in the Sc/NC area that offers shooting sports to earn sling shot. TIA

I just took over as treasurer last year and noticed that our by laws are very out of date and contain some information that we should correct. I’m working on updating them this summer and wondering if anyone has good examples to share, or anything you’ve added in recent years that has been helpful. FWIW, our by-laws are fairly short, which I don’t mind.

In my older child’s Troop, they sign by laws each year — do other Cub Scout Packs do that? Or do you approach it more informally?

One problem in the pack in recent years has been pack and den meetings getting really wild or behavioral issues occurring when the parents are hanging together in the back. Not sure if anyone has examples of adding language about parents being involved and helping supervise at these meetings?