New Unit Organization Incentives & Recognition

The organization of new units is one of the greatest legacies that a professional Scouter and/or a volunteer can give to a neighborhood or community. To do right, organizing a new unit is also a very challenging task to complete.

The BSA has an excellent method established for unit organization as outlined in the Membership Committee Guide book. Our process is built on a foundation of year-round unit organization including ongoing prospecting for chartering organizations and following the twelve step process. This is all excellent.

However, for many years, our recognition of unit organization for professionals has revolved around CSEWC/High Five on June 30th and Quality District/Council on December 31st. I believe that the pressure placed on professional Scouters to organize new units around these 2 deadlines has contributed to the problem of professionals doing most or all of the unit organization with little or no involvement by our volunteers. Professionals often feel compelled to do everything within their power to have new units organized by these two deadlines. This often results in taking shortcuts, not following the twelve steps, and not involving volunteers (feeling that it is easier to do themselves and don’t want to rely on volunteers to meet their deadlines which have a major impact on their performance reviews.) Plus, since volunteers are not evaluated based on their completion of new units by our two deadlines, they are not motivated to work with our professionals to meet the deadlines.

We should consider a different incentive and recognition of our professionals (and volunteers) for unit organization.
When a new professional organizes his or her first new unit following the process and certified by his/her staff leader, he or she should receive immediate recognition from the organization. Maybe a letter from the regional director or the chief, plus some other recognition. Then (like in the real estate and insurance business) have a level of “clubs”: the “Five Unit Club”, then the “Ten Unit Club”, “Twenty Unit Club” etc. and there should be significant recognition for professionals that achieve these levels of accomplishment in unit organization.

This would be a useful tool for a staff leader to coach his staff towards. The leader coaches the brand new D.E. towards organizing his/her first unit in order to be recognized. Then coaches toward the next 4 units in order to be further recognized etc. This would be a more long term approach to unit organization, would tie in well with our new SMART goals and the PDS system, and would complement the W.D. Boyce New Unit Organizer Award for volunteers.

All units that count towards the recognition should be certified by the staff leader to have included volunteers in the organization process and to have completed all of the necessary steps to help that unit have a solid start. (It should not recognize, however, instances when a professional is sometimes “handed” one or more new units as can sometimes happen in a LDS ward split, for example.)