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It would be nice is if national started a professionals magazine that came out once a month or quarterly in it would be helpful tips for that time of year like Round up season . The publication could include a section where other professionals could tell you about what strategy worked for them what did not. I believe that many professionals would find this helpful and an enjoyable read.
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It would be helpful to have an advancement dashboard on mybsa.org much like we currently have a membership dashboard. This would enable us to track unit level advancements without having to go into scoutnet and print a report.
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We really need to be able to give our volunteers report updates on a regular basis that we KNOW are accurate. The reports in MyBSA for Training are never accurate for everyone, and we don't have a report that shows what Advancement Chairs need.
We need a Training Report like the "Training Not Completed" Report in ScoutNet, but one that shows all trainings required to be "Trained Leader" (ScoutNet currently only recognizes a couple trainings depending on the position and many don't include Youth Protection). We've also found that it doesn't always show accurate info about those who've taken the new "This Is Scouting" course or New Leader Essentials before the 4.1.09 deadline.
As for Advancement... there's no report that we can run that tells us which Units (and how to contact them) that have NOT used the Internet Advancement System. The ScoutNet Report "Internet Advancement Useage" is great but it would be better if it showed ALL Units (not just those who've used the system). We also need it to tell us not only how many reports the Unit has submitted since their start date but also when their last report was submitted... so we can see that they are submitting reports regularly.
Accurate information will show accurate progress and it will not only improve retention of youth but also adult Scouters. We will know the youth are earning/being recognized on a regular basis and we will be serving the Scouters to make their jobs easier by giving them proper training.
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With Randall Stephens serving as our National Centennial Chair can't we work with his company (AT & T) on a National BSA Plan? I would much rather send my 160.00 a month to a company that has endorsed our organization as a whole. As a Council we are a small company, but we as the BSA as a whole we are a huge corportaion who all need cell phone plans. Would love a BSA discount and be able to support a BSA company. Let's work with the organizations that support the BSA!
Would also love to see a discount for Councils who purchase iPhones for employees. There are some cutting edge applications availbale that would make life easy for a district executive. National could even come up with a myBSA app to have all stats real time.
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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.
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As the personal and professional use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs and other social media/new media tools increase, the BSA should consider developing social media guidelines to assist employees in the proper and acceptable use.
These guidelines would cover appropriate professional use in serving and growing membership, as well as allowances for flexibility of personal use on personal time, without fear of violating corporate policies.
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The history channel has pulled together some great specials over the years, why not present one on the BSA in the USA? There's certainly plenty of material to cover, and without a doubt plenty of "historians" and collectors out there with insight to offer. I think it'd be a hit, and would get us into the public eye even more!
P.S.~ I'd like 10% of the video sale proceeds to go to my FOS goal. Can we make that happen?
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As millions of our countrymen lose their jobs to unfair labor practices overseas, it seems less than appropriate that our uniforms are made in China. If cost is an issue, maybe we could provide an American made product alongside the foreign product, and give everyone the option to "buy America". It could even be used a a marketing tool.
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Help councils develop sideways/combined communication of goals between; Finance, Membership, Program, Training and Field teams. So that the managers, team leaders, advisors, and volunteers are communicating their plans prior to advertising and ececution. the military calls this Combind Arms: the use of Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines all working together to complete a mission.
Two simple examples are:
Training: At a woodbadge course, have Trails End popcorn as a snack. "training can help our finance goal"
At camp: Encourage youth to bring a friend with him or her that is not in scouting. Or encourage units to bring more than last year. Incentives! "Camp can not just retain youth, but recruit youth."
There are so many other ideas, but getting the staff and management to communicate ideas to the field staff or Field Directors and ask; How can we incorporate program, training, membership, and finance into all of our Council/District events, trainings, activities and camps?
We are all in this together and there still seems to be a division between these areas, at least in large councils and at the national level. Maybe it can integrated from the top down, via training manuals, resourses, personnel, and volunteer and professional job descriptions.
This could create the aha moment in our organization.
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We had several issues with our day camp program. One of the biggest was the management of equipment and trying to make sure that we were able to have enough of the correct equipment at each day camp. Often times each area would buy there own equipment and we would have a lot of somethings and not enough of the other plus it was stored all over the place. The other problem we had was coordinating getting the items to the correct location and having to pay for a lot of individuals to go to camp school. Our solution was as follows. We hired a Camp Director and a Program Director to run all the camps instead of one for each. We have 6 day camps so this means we only had to send two people to camp school instead of 12. This helps us to bring continuity to our day camp program and they get the experience of doing better fixing problems and so forth as you would at a resident camp. The second thing we did was purchase a trailer to store all day camp equipment. This enclosed trailer is easily towed by any volunteer with a tow hitch. Since all the equipment is in one place we can better manage our needs and not over purchase items. Also we are able to better manage our petty cash. With only having one set of directors to deal with we are able to manage the expenses and cut back on the amount of petty cash that is out at one time. So far we have been pleased with the results.
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We new this year was going to be a difficult year for fundraising. We started working early on our Family FOS campaign because we knew it was a weak spot for us the previous year. We did a Indiana Jones theme and put together a really great script that included props that involved the audience and made it fun for people to have presentations. We were able to recruit many volunteers to be presenters and they all really enjoyed having fun and getting units and parents involved in the campaign. The other thing we did was give away a nice knife at each unit presentation which we got donated. We were able to get one for every unit presentation that we thought would be happening. One of the things that we were able to increase was our Cub Scout Pack presentations. So far this year we have been ahead of last year in Friends of Scouting. We currently are ahead 4% of last year. Everything that we gave out was Indiana Jones themed including the patch which has a giant temple on it. We also incorporated this theme into our community campaign. We have several leadership breakfasts and many of them were opened with an actor playing Indy complete with theme music and props. It got the audience excited and ready to give to our campaign. All of our volunteers and professionals have enjoyed using the theme.
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We use plastic cards that resemble credit cards which can be preloaded with money to be used at any of our summer camps by Scouts and adults. This year we actively promoted that parents could pre-load the cards with money for their Scouts. We had a huge increase in dollars coming in before camp. There are several things that this helps do. One is that is protects the Scouts if the card is lost because we can easily find out the balance and replace it. Also it encourages parents to give money to their Scouts ahead of camp. It helps us to have a better idea of how we are going to do in our trading post and if the Scout runs out of money while he is at camp the parent can simply call us up and add more money to the card. These cards can also be used in our local Scout Shops.
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With the increasing popularity of e-book readers such as Kindle, Sony, etc. we should make the purchase of an electronic version of our handbooks, merit badge pamphlets, etc. available in these formats. Many other devices such as the I-Phone can be used to read e-books. Nationally many schools are adopting e-book readers for students as textbooks offer electronic versions. Electronic versions are cheaper for the customer to purchase and help project a "green" image for the organization (no killing of trees). The Girl Scouts already have their handbooks for sale in this format.
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To enhance the council's 2009 Family Friends of Scouting campaign we designed a family specific pledge form and envelope. The pledge form contained suggested giving amounts each connected to helping to support a Scout. Pledge forms were personalized for each family using the data from MyBSA fundraising. The envelope served a two-fold purpose: it listed the information formerly contained in our campaign brochure and it provided a way for families to return the cards during a unit presentation so that their giving information could be private. Envelopes returned to the office were re-used as they were not personalized or designed to be mailed. Cards and envelopes for families not at the presentation were then be placed in an outside envelope and sent as part of the follow-up effort. The results are as follows:
2008 Family campaign raised $219,888 from 4,385 donors
2009 Family campaign as of June 30 raised $250,326 from 4,006 donors.
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BSA must improve communication between departments! This is especially important with regards to volunteer/national office/website development communications. When massive website changes occur such as the change June 1st to user id’s, more should have been done to notify volunteers beforehand to prevent the overwhelming number of helpdesk requests for login assistance. The current MyScouting.org website is a complete contradiction to the Helpdesk mission statement “…delivering accurate and precise information in a timely manner…” The only portion of the statement that help desk associates consistently meet is the positive and professional attitude while servicing the enormous amount of incidents. These employees are amazing, working consistently with website, and server errors that prevent them from getting through these requests! Because of simple website errors and shortcomings, the number of service requests greatly outnumbers the responses provided by the helpdesk in any form of timely manner. I can only imagine the amount of money BSA could save by not having to hire as many Temp workers to tackle such an overwhelming number of requests!
Changes in technology should not be such an issue for a company with such a rich and long history. Mac OS computers and Firefox web browsers are targeted to the same audience as many of your MyScouting users. For a BSA website to be non compatible with IE 8, Firefox browsers or Mac computers is a disgrace and there is no excuse for it.
When basic links, such as “Reset Password” links fail to work, it can only look bad upon any company or organization. For many weeks, simply changing a username created an error message that told the user the change did not take place, however in actuality the change did occur, but that volunteer needed to call the help desk to find out. These simple errors and incompatibilities should be of the highest BSA priority in order to maintain the type of service that the millions of BSA volunteers have come to expect.
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How about the BSA or the World Scout Association partnering with Rotary International on its Polio Plus project to eradicate polio in the world? Rotary has made great progress and is working to meet a challenge grant from the Gates Foundation. It would be national and international in scope and form a working relationship with Rotary.
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I had a leader ask me about how to know which merit badge books and their requirements are up to date and which are out of date. I told him that probably the easiest way would be to look in a current edition of the merit badge requirement book and take the dates off of the page that lists all the merit badge books and the year the last revisions were made.
My suggestion is to put on the website a date next to the requirements to let everyone know what the last date the requirements were revised; maybe even a downloadable pdf that gives the names of the merit badges and the last date of revision. Also, I'm not sure how often requirements are changed or new editions of the merit badge books come out, but would there be a possibility of a notification via e-mail when new requirements come out or when a new edition of a particular merit badge book will be published?
This could really help volunteers to make sure their library of merit badge books is up to date and
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Could we somehow have people in the system under their given name, but indicate they have a "prefered name" which could appear on FOS billings, reports (perhaps as an additional line on reports) or other materials? One of my donors called his DE several times, irate, after his monthly bill arrived under his given name. However, to maintain the integrity of our youth protection procedures, we don't want to create a separate record in case an individual should appear on the "ineligible" list. Also, there tends to be confusion with these records - especially when a new DE comes on board - because the FR and Membership departments are often the only ones who see the names enough to realize that Skip's real name is Thomas. Finally, it may be beneficial on pledge cards, so when volunteers make calls, they know how how the donor prefers to be addressed.
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As with viewing multiple addresses in a search, I believe it would be beneficial to also see a Nickname for an individual. Many times a person submits their legal name for registration, but is submitted for FOS using their nickname. I don't mean "Donald" vs "Don". But specifically those who use a very different or unrelated name: "Thomas" vs "Skip". It would help in reducing duplicated records.
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As a registrar and an FOS clerk, why when entering in to a data base program such as Scoutnet or even the new Funding program in MYBSA is it that we have to use the mouse as much as we do? I thought with a data base program the idea was to enter data in and what is the best way to do that? Keep your fingers on the keyboard. When updating people, why do we need to click on the address tab, phone number tab, e-mail tab to update? Everything should be on one screen and at your fingertips to update as needed. These screens can be better used if they followed the applications, like they do when entering in any new registrant. Even entering new application could be fixed to solve the problem of having to use your mouse to select a program and then have to use your mouse again to put the cursor in the position field. If putting it all one screen leaves concern about the privacy tab you could easily grey out the SSN field for those you do not have that user roll. We should be able to see their registration without having to click on the registration tab. That is one of the most used functions and should be made easier to check if a person is registered. There has to be a better way for us to enter in and update applications then what is currently available. If we could better utilize the system in the long run it would help the professionals and volunteers with having the most accurate and up to date information. Why not let users customize their own keyboards with the function keys they use the most?
With the roll out of the new Fundraising program in MYBSA, I hope they can change it to be a friendlier data entry program then it is now. It is cumbersome and very slow to maneuver in. The Funding program was designed more for the professional in mind. I understand the need for the professionals to have the tools to do their job, but give us the tools to do our jobs too. Professionals can get the reports and information they need; we can enter data in with speed and accuracy that is required of the support staff.
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When a leader transfers his primary registration to another unit his Scouting subscription ends because he no longer has a fully paid registration. Why deprive our hard working volunteers of this valuable resource because they have a transfer registration?
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This is not really an innovative idea, but it seems to me that since we are stating that we are going to try to improve the fitness and health level of our employees, perhaps we should stop serving doughnuts, muffins and cakes, etc. at our events. It might cost a little more or be a little less convenient to serve things like fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, etc., but it doesn't seem like we send the right message when we talk about being fit and healthy, and literally at the same time are handing out high-fat, low-nutrition foods.
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I've been working on a special summer session of our normal merit badge classes here at the museum. I ran into some issues this past week with scouts wanting to take the Personal Management class that is this Saturday. Unfortunately they had to pull out here at the last second because their Scoutmasters refused to give them a blue card. The rational of the Scoutmasters happen to be that the boys were "too young" to take the merit badge.
The BSA policy is that all boys who are registered members of the Boy Scouts of America and are in the Boy Scout program can take any merit badge they want whenever they want. These Scoutmasters are indirect contradiction to BSA policy and unfortunatley the parents are unwilling to go against the wishes of their son's Scoutmaster.
I think we need to make merit badges a key point in the training of Adult Leaders. Otherwise, we need to find a way to make sure Scoutmasters cannot deny the Scout the opportunity to take a merit badge.
I believe a Scoutmaster should have the right to voice his disapproval, but he should not be allowed to refuse a blue card to a Scout wishing to take any merit badge.
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Let's take the information that is in our merit badge books and turn them into a series of 3-5 minute lessons that boys can view when needed. It is proven that people learn better through multimedia. This would help the Scouts learn and be more along the lines of the things they do anyway.
Plus, someone w/ an iphone could download a video while at a Scout meeting or campout for all of the Scouts to learn...Can we make an App for that?
Likewise for the different Tenderfoot, 2nd Class, and 1st Class requirments.
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Let's provide a webinar for and encourage units to produce unit Facebook groups for their members. This will help them in communications, but more importantly, can be used as a recruitment tool.
The unit can create an "event" for their fall sign-up and have all of the parents/youth invite other parents/youth who are on Facebook. Then, for subsequent pack/troop events, the parents/youth can again invite friends to activities.
The unit can also collect photos and videos from all members. This will allow the public to see just what their unit is doing and may encourage others to join.
I know not all parents of this age are currently on Facebook, but the Facebook generation knocking at the door.
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