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Across the country we face various degrees of access to schools and hence to youth. Although I was shocked to learn that less youth are actually trick-or-treating these days due to increasing safety concerns, the fact remains that Halloween is the one day where children literally come to us. In my district I am encouraging unit leaders and parents to simply stick Avery labels or stickers on all their candy inviting boys to come and visit their next unit meeting. This should serve two purposes. First, if a boy missed out on the fall roundup sign ups it should be another invitation to Scouting. Second, by placing the Cub Scout or BSA logo on the candy it is an effective method of creating brand awareness within the target audience. The cost of doing this is essentially nothing more than ink and label paper while you can be certain that 100 percent of the marketing is reaching its intended target. I gave out candy bars with stickers to boys at our roundtable meeting last week and before they had eaten the candy they were already wearing the stickers on their uniform. I saw it as just another unexpected benefit.
I was trying to provide my units a spreadsheet to show how many youth they've recruited each year over the last 2-3 years. From what I was able to find, the data can be found by district, but not by unit. It would be great if we are able to drill down the data to smaller and smaller subsets within ScoutNet or MyBSA so we may provide information that can help inform and educate volunteers.

With boys crossing over into Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts joining a Venture Crew each year, it's hard to get the accurate information needed.
Scouting could reach so many more kids if we tried new methods of recruiting. Since there are traditionally no district wide recruitment events that parallel School Night For Scouting for older youth, our Boy Scout & Venturing Scout youth membership suffers. I was thinking that our district's Scout Troops & Venturing Crews could host an open event that would attract young people to try something fun, free, exciting & new.

In an attempt to solve this problem, we are trying some new ideas for recruiting Scouts & Venturers. In October we're hosting the first "Massanutten District ScoutClimb" at a local university rec center's climbing wall.

* The objective: Host a District Wide recruitment event for Boy Scouts & Venturing Scouts in the Massanutten District.
* The plan: Reserve the Climbing Wall on a Saturday Morning
* Climbing would be FREE for those that signed up with a troop or crew that day. (Pay for membership & complete the application). Parental supervision will be required for climbing safety & signature needs.
* To pay for the facility rental, we're asking units that wish to participate to chip in. Also, we're seeking funding amongst district volunteers.
* Marketing:
1. Contact Middle Schools & High Schools in Harrisonburg/Rockingham & Pendleton requesting permission to send out invitation flyers to the event.
2. Give invitation flyers to Scouts & Venturers to invite their friends. Scouts that invite their friends are also invited to climb for free.
3. Make a facebook event for Scouts & Venturers to invite their friends to.
4. Have an article written prior to the event in the local paper.
5. Have local television news coverage prior to and during the event.
6. Radio Advertising.

Hopefully it goes off well.
I would like to see our engineering division design 3 types of quality signage that charter partners can purchase or councils can purchase for them, that they can post on or near their charter partner sign that has the BSA corporate logo and "Scouting meets here". The signs will need to be three different sizes, post in three ways, made from long lasting material and be professional so that both the charter partner and the Boy Scouts of America can be proud of the look.

This will help solve the issue that many people have with us regarding visual exposure. If our tens of thousands of charter partners will help us kickoff the next 100 years of scouting with signage, we will become very visible overnight. Since people think we do not exist much and we know that it takes 7-10 hits for a parent to think about joining our program, this will allow key exposure as people drive through neighborhoods etc
I know that many of our Cub age prospects enjoy computer based learning games. What if we created a CD game with animation that allowed a young man to virtually participate in a few activities. Making a paper airplane, building a bird house, sending a morse code message. We could weave in intermittent activities where the animated cubs would line up and say the Pledge of Allegiance or the Cub Scout Oath. The end would encourage them to visit a local pack. The sleeves could be individualized to the council with a place for packs, using a template, print their information on it as well.

Similar things could be made for the other programs, but I don't think they'd be as effective.
BSA's Licensed and Custom Products team has had a number of requests in recent years for fun, temporary, tattoos with Scouting and related symbols to support recruiting. To date, we have not created these items due to public perception of tattoos; however, as our culture changes it seems to be time to rethink this position.

These would be temporary, water-applied tattoos, available only by special order. It would wash off within a few days. The tattoos would not be stocked in the Scout Shop. Designs would be determined if or when we decided to proceed. We don't envision these to be much different than what kids are already purchasing or applying from special bubble gum wrappers.

We recognize that these could not be given out at schools during classroom events. Although, we envision that they would be made available at other sign-up events.

We'd like to hear your opinion.
Has anyone given consideration to a staff position on the National or Regional level that specializes in unit organization and recruiting to support local councils? Would it be beneficial to all to have a person that can go to individual councils for boots-on-the-ground, one-on-one or small group, hands-on, on-the-job training?
Some councils, especially small ones, are cash strapped and consequently are shorthanded. The SE is not in a position to spend much time training the new field executive(s), especially in the area of recruiting and unit organization. The new professional is handed a book or DVD and told to read it and get after it. We all know this happens, and agree that it is not the best situation but it is reality. It is not what we like or want, but outside conditions force this upon us at times. Yes, CPD teaches recruiting in PDL-1, but they are only able to spend a small amount of time on it, and with a large group at that, so there is not the advantage of one-on-one or small group instruction, hands-on teaching, nor is there the luxury of working out detailed methods suitable for specific areas of a school system, district, council, or even state.
For one reason or another, many councils and/or districts don’t have volunteers who have the time and/or talent to do good boy talks and roundups, and thus the councils are in membership decline. The Regional Recruiting Specialist (or whatever other title you might think appropriate) could come in and spend a few days or a week working with both field staff and volunteers to help get them up to speed, or to help polish their techniques. The Recruiting Specialist could also host cluster/area training seminars from time to time, so that several councils could benefit at one time. These training sessions could be held for either professional or volunteer groups, or both.
In some councils that are missing field staff and cannot afford to hire the needed staff, and are desperately needing membership so that they do not lose United Way or special grant funding, this person could come in for a week or two to boost membership. With the right preparation, in one week this person could generate more than 100 new youth for a council that is short handed, and that could pay big dividends for that council at the end of the year.
The Recruiting Specialist could also be invited to visit councils and audit their recruiting/unit organizing procedures to help them identify ways to improve them. A written report could be generated so that in subsequent months, the local council staff could review the suggested improvements to see if they are following the suggested plan, and if it is working. With feedback, our overall methods utilized in various councils could be compared and maybe would bring about changes for the benefit of all. The Specialist could also work with the other National staff to help plan and develop the recruiting plans that are delivered to the local councils each year.
There are some professionals in our organiation that have a special talent when it comes to recruiting and unit organization. There are some guys out there who can recruit 15 and 20 Boy Scouts in one roundup meeting, who can recruit more than 200 Cub Scouts a month, who can start new packs with 25 and more leaders, and who can start 4-6 new units in a month. It seems a waste of their talent to keep them confined to a district in a local council when they could help many more districts and councils succeed.
we need to keep up with technology and use what is available. Face Book and tweerter are great tools that everyone is using specially teeens.

The national website should also have a page for kid interaction and games. Disney is a great example of this. They have games and shows for children to take a part of. They also have a program where you can become a member and charater from the show will call your home and leave messages for your kids on upcoming events. Maybe we can have Pedro do this.
With Pixar's new movie "Up" being released in two months and it's advertizing prominently displaying a "Wilderness Explorer" as one of the main characters, I have to wonder why he couldn't be a Boy Scout instead? What a media opportunity this could be! Here we have a big budget movie targeting the very youth market our programs are designed for, and portraying a "scout" character.

Maybe he still can be?

Product placement works, as any advertizing agency will tell you. We need to get our brand out there using the advertising mediums that kids these days are exposed to. Golden opportunities like this are rare, and we can't afford not to take advantage of them.

Granted, any product placement involving Scouting would need to be tightly controlled to conform to our standards. Many of these controls already exist at National so this shouldn't be a big hurdle, and the potential benefits are astronomical.

Maybe there's still time to work with Pixar and capitalize on this?