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When working with your steering committee remember to look at your local churches that have completed a capital campaign. Their workers make good prospects to be on your Major Gifts committee and they already have a list of potential donors who believe in many of the values that Scouting and the church share.
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I recently noted that Mike Rowe, host of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs is an Eagle Scout. I know (having been at the jamboree) that there are a lot of dirty jobs available and Mike should easily be able to do a whole show about the jamboree.
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There has got to be a better way of pulling up FOS reports in MyBSA. It would be wonderful to be able to click on Fundraising, then a FOS link, then select my council, then my district, and select my campaign division (scouter, family, community, or even special event). Then I select report type like $ pledged/given per unit, or $ pledged/given per person or both.
It would also be fun to run a report sorted by total amount given per person or by unit showing the largest or smallest amount first and in order likewise. As it is, scoutnet and Mybsa is very difficult to use to generate these reports for FOS. All the fundrasing links on MyBSA and scoutnet are way to confusing and NOT user friendly.
My Thoughts
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Why can't NDC produce a full catalog? We still keep a copy of the 2006 "Complete leaders Edition" for reference. People like to browse through and when they do, they find many "must haves". The mini catelogs are useless and the ScoutStuff site is no better.
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Recently, our council added subdistricts to our district organizational plan in order to get a better feel for our performance in the individual communities we serve. This has worked out very well for us. However, many of the reports available through MYBSA do not have a "stop level" option. As such, the reports default to the subdistrict settings. This makes it very difficult to run summary reports for a district or the council when each subdistrict has its own page. For example, a report the used to be 3 pages now comes out as 12.
Idea/Question: Can all of the reports be enabled with the "stop level" option.
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It used to be that when you pulled up the Elearning Completed Report in Scoutnet you could also see the email address associated with the account. Is it possible to get that back?
Also is it possible that when they update their profile in MyScouting that the information (especially email) is updated in Scoutnet?
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The Ideal Map shows the Tay of schools in the District along with the ideal # of packs and troops for that district. This concept helps to avoid having small units that are unproductive, time consuming and poor program.
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Councilwide we only have about 15% of our families supporting Friends of Scouting. How can we raise that percent? With a better sales pitch? Premiums for giving? Stronger messaging? What level of percent participation do the rest of you have?
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A webelos Invasion has helped in my old district with cross over and retention. A one day event where every Troop in the district is invited to display their troop(doesn't work so well with large or rural districts). Postcards are then send out to all registered Webelos, inviting them to learn about boy scouting from the Troops themselves.
It also allows the troops to interact with the troops from their own towns or neighborhoods.
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It would be really convenient and a time saver if the membership Registrant Print Selections would allow you to select all entries in a category and then "unclick" the ones you do not want. IE: in pulling labels for all Cub Scout leaders, it would be great to select all leaders and then "un-select" Tiger Cub Partners. The way it is now, we have to manually select all categories, skipping Tiger Cub Adult Partners.
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One of the easiest and least cumbersome ways for me to see how our Council is doing with recruiting is to check the Give Every Kid a Chance report. Good stuff. My idea for improvement - could it drill down one more level to districts? It would be a real homerun for me to be able to simply click there and see how I'm doing by District with recruitment vs. the same time last year.
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One of the biggest frustrations my volunteers have with the Centennial Quality Unit System and the "business side" of Scouting is that they don't know where they stand compared to previous years. Too often, they feel like they are in a good place and don't realize that they are way behind compared to previous years. Anything that we can do to allow the volunteers to see what is truly happening would be helpful. If they had a way to constantly gauge their progress, they would have the opportunity to take immediate action on it rather than waiting for Centennial check up meeting in October to gauge their progress.
If something similar to MyBSA was created for volunteers through the MyScouting portal, this dashboard could allow them to see how their unit is doing compared to a variety of criteria in multiple areas. This could include a membership, finance, and program aspects. Each of these items could be compared to things we look at in MyBSA like year to date, year end, national standards, and even the goals that they set for themselves on the Centennial Quality Commitment sheets. The dashboard could also provide links to Internet Advancement, Internet Rechartering, Good Turn for America, and other unit accessible web applications that are developed in the future. Depending upon the user’s role in a unit, they will have access to all, some, or none of the sections on the dashboard.
For district and council volunteers, they could see aggregate data for their appropriate service area. Having a "leader board" or something similar to a "Charts that Talk" section that compared their unit to other units in their district would help encourage improvement as well.
All in all, this dashboard could be developed in such a way that fosters volunteer engagement and allows the "business side" of Scouting to be more of a bottom up volunteer driven initiative.
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I have tried on many occasions to search for an incident, with no avail. I'm sure we have duplicate issues out there, if I could find the solution to my problem by reading what others have done, it would save us both time.
Sample Search on Catagory; GTFA
Query; Password
Result; The documentation that any help desk person entered when they received the call.
A self help tool.
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It would be great if these lists were sorted in ScoutNet. Sort them by year, by unit number, something to make the information easy to use. Having them in no order, or some order that is not easily determind by any normal person hinders the accuracy of information that we can give out. Would it really be that hard to code in a sort function? Thanks!
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It would be wonderful if we would be able to look up a specific unit and see what leaders and trained and what leaders are untrained in a specific unit through MyBSA. It would also be nice to see what specific courses they've had and what one's they need. If it lists a course they've had there should be a date next to it as well saying when they took the course.
Right now you can look up an entire districts training statistics or look up a certain position and see who is trained and untrained, but no way to look up an entire unit.
I would like to easily print off easy-to-read reports to share with my units of which of their Top Leaders, Direct Contact Leaders, etc. have taken which trainings.
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Many of the suggested technology improvements (social networking, mass email, Google map of units, etc) could actually be built by volunteers if we had a ScoutNET application programming interface (API).
Make it so programmers can make their own web pages that query the ScoutNET database using the end user's credentials.
For example, I as a DE should be able to make a Google map showing where all the Scouts in my district live color coded by unit or whatever. Google maps will take information from any database on the fly. But if a Scoutmaster logs into the same page he can see a Google map of only the boys in his troop.
This is only one example. The possibilities are endless and the process is simple. All that would be required would be to attach a password field to each membership record, require a unique email address for logging in, and build the interface for programmers to interface with ScoutNET. Google has already done this with all of its applications as well as many other companies as the proliferation of "mashups" shows.
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It has always amazed me how many trees have to die to support the paperwork of the Boy Scouts of America. One of the most glaring examples of this has been our approach to applications for both youth and adults. Ways to reduce the number of youth applications that a boy has to fill out from Cubs to Venturing is a discussion for another day.
My suggestion is that our registration department consider strategies that will permit chartered organizations, as well as districts and councils, to "promote" an adult from one position within that organization to another position, even if it's in a different unit. This would especially be useful to our favorite sponsors - those that sponsor units from all families of Scouting.
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The National Association for Interpretation is a non-profit organization that trains and supports professional and amateur interpreters in natural and cultural history. Their training covers reseach, thematic lesson planning and presentation. Many of my volunteers talk about these points in planning meetings but none of them seem to have a come basis of training so it is hard to know if the word they are using have the same meaning to each person.
This could also be integrated into the Venture Leader Skills Course, National Youth Leader Training and Woodbadge. There is a cost associated with the certification course but with a national partnership that cost should amount to the materials needed to acheive the certification.
www.interpnet.org
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As we go through training we form relationships with those individuals in attendance. Along those lines they have the similar problems that can be worked through if contact can be maintained. If a list was created like the current listing in global contacts for the council level for the PDL class and other training lists this would improve the trouble of reinventing the wheel so often.
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I utilized a google map for internal use to direct new parents and help volunteers find units to send their Webelos to shop for troops. In addition I use it too find organization for new units and map schools where units are present. It also provides district lines for boundaries. My council also has a version for public consumption.
michael@sccc.org
http://www.scccbsa.org/html/resources/unit_locator.html
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The Heart of Virginia Council will be opening the doors to the Cub Scouts' "School of Mischief" this fall in its recruitment campaign in schools and at local Cub Scout packs. The School of Mischief campaign will focus on the Cub Scouts as a program to safely, constructively channel a young boy's curiousity and natural desire for adventure and getting in trouble through the adventure of Cub Scouting. They will be teaching boys to do safely the things they yearn to do while introducing them to the concepts of teamwork, self-reliance and responsibility. Skills they need to develop on their path to becoming self sufficient, stand-up, but probably still mischievous, men.
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I just got back from PDL-1 a week ago and one thing that I noticed during that training was that all but one of the thirty-one of us there did not have a well-organized, or fully manned district. Most of us were simply inheriting districts that had a chair for each committee if they were lucky. Most of them were not lucky.
I know one of the best ideas I took away from training was given off-handed talking about group recruiting events to fill district's swiftly. It had to do with having local organizations, such as service clubs, fraternal organizations, churches, and businesses take ownership so to speak of a committee. What I would like to do once district nominations are completed at the beginning of next year is to begin making presentations at these organizations telling of a specific committee need and asking for volunteers to fill that committee.
I have been able to find little more than a few paragraphs discussing a group recruiting event and would welcome any suggestions anyone has to enhance this concept and make it more effective. What has worked well for you in group recruiting?
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Hi-
I am a big fan of making a plan, and I realize that we all have the opportunity to participate in the 2010 marketing plan contest, but I have found that it's really important, even without the contest, and not only for marketing.
I learned something called the R.O.P.E. technique. Research. Objectives. Planning. Evaluation. I think it's really important that we use this technique on all levels (marketing, event planning, strategic planning, everything.) If the idea is to spice-up round table, use R.O.P.E. If the idea is to host a new event, use R.O.P.E.
This technique is simple, and the return is positive and measurable.
Research is first because it is the most important step. We oftentimes think of idea and just "go with it," without ever verifying that it is a "good" or "smart" idea. So the action here is to research the idea. For example, before we do a big event, council-wide, we should poll our internal (and perhaps our external) audiences to see if the event is something they would be interested in attending, and paying money for. More often than not, we fail to do the simplest thing, and that is to just ask a question. Ask people what they want. Ask them why they joined Scouting, or why they didn't. Ask them why they donate, and why they donate the amount that they did. If you start off with the research, you have the knowledge to make a plan.
Objectives are important. After you do your research, you can select your objectives. If your goal is to increase fund raising revenue, then you can come up with a list of objectives as a means to do so. For example, objective 1: host a profitable event, objective 2: increase cash donations, objective 3: increase in-kind donations.
Planning. This is the "meat and potatoes" if you will. Planning means coming up with tactics to reach your objectives, and therefore your goal. For each objective, there should be several tactics to ensure that the objective is met. For example, take objective 2. If we want to increase cash donations, we need to use our research to decide our tactics. If the research told us that members donate $50 because they believe in the program and they want to give us a large amount of money, then we need to be sure we are communicating our benefits to members when we ask for money. That is one tactic. We would continue with more tactics, connecting them with research and solving our problems, on bit a time.
If the research tells us that non-members are not donating because they feel unfavorably about our organization, we must find out why they feel unfavorably and then work to communicate to non-members the positive things about our organization. Be sure that you write enough objectives and tactics to achieve or exceed your goal. This way you are setting yourself up for success.
If you follow your complete plan, and do not change the plan, you are guaranteed positive, measurable results. There is the chance that your results could turn our more or less favorably than you intended. That is what the final step is for.
Part of your plan is to set and stick to a time line.
Evaluation. When you decide your goal, decide your means for measuring whether or not the goal was achieved. If your goal was to increase fund raising revenue, your evaluation could be to "Count the amount of funds received this year and compare to number of funds received in previous years."
Simple enough. It works.
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The Centennial Quality Uniform Shirts are much shorter in length than the previous uniform shirt. This means that our larger members find that the shirt is untucked from their centennial uniform pants when they bend over to pick something up. The shirts need to be longer to ensure that the shirt remains tucked in and we continue to look neat.
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As I speak with more and more teens, e-mail is a passing fad. They are more likely to read and respond to a text message on their cell phone than they are to an e-mail message. National could be a huge help by getting a big, bulk rate to assist Councils in sending out mass text messages to our membership for events, activities, promotions, stunts, etc. Or perhaps advising on proper etiquette and/or usage.
There is a big potential out there that we can harness if we provide training to our staff. Maybe AT&T could advise.
This might be something to add to the Scout application as well. Cell Phone field.
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