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Christopher Guarniere

Christopher Guarniere
Member since : Oct-20-2008 (Verified)
3 Ideas, 14 Comments, 199 Votes

User Activity Stream

Ideas Posted

Would it be possible for all of the new teams within the national council to track their current projects on an internal project management tracking website? The national webmaster, at one point, listed projects that were being worked on but the list has gone out of date. This project management website should be a bit more professional and dynamic to allow for easy updates.

The website would be able to provide accurate and regularly updated information on when to expect a new enhancement to be released so that we, at the local council, can prime the pumps and make strategic decisions about enhancements / changes before these changes are sent out. If the list of topics is made public then the professional scouting community would be able to e-mail, or maybe through the website, provide input on the topics being discussed. Projects could be put up on the site when the team / group is ready to make the concept public and open the concept for discussion and input and a timeframe for completion has been established.

Knowing what is being worked on allows the talent of a national professional staff to have input on the programs, allows councils to be proactive in planning for the future and allows us all to know what direction we are headed in.
Moderator Comments
10/22/08
From: Dan Nelson, Director of Applications Services

It is our desire to have at least a link on MyBSA to our weekly status report to show anyone who has an interest the status of our projects.  It will include the requested projects list and how they are prioritized.  As of today I don’t know when we’ll have that up.  Hopefully before the end of the first quarter of 2009.
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We should consider ALL alumni from the Scouting program as a major stakeholder in our organization. While Eagle Scouts have gone on to accomplish great things so have alumni who have not made it to that rank. By putting a focus on Eagle scouts we limit our true alumni potential and push those life scouts or star scouts or scouts who just earned their arrow of light to a lower level of importance.

Currently we lose track of alumni, unless they make Eagle, once they go to college or "age out" of our programs and then try to reconnect when they are in the business world or parents. This model is flawed as it should be easier and beneficial to us to maintain an existing relationship.

We should think of alumni just like a college considers alumni, future donors and leaders of our organization. Under the guidance of a suggested national model, each local council should be looking for a professional Scouter to head up alumni membership retention, events and campaigns. There is a value in the number of alumni that are still engaged, and we should track the number of alumni just as if we trackc membership of youh. We should be tracking all of our alumni, communicating with them at least quarterly both as a council and from the national organization and keeping the alumni engaged.

There needs to be some structure behind alumni development suggested from the national organization, supported through the national organization with registration and fiscal reports and enacted at the local council level. All Alumni are potential donors and potential leaders and we should put a renewed focus and resources toward them.
Moderator Comments
1/7/09
From: Bill Steele, Alumni Relationships Team Leader

The writer has targeted the strategic direction we are taking with the Alumni Relations! NESA, the National Eagle Scout Association, is 36 years old, has over 180,000 members, but we need all Scouting alumni!

With the recent launch of its Alumni Connection program, the BSA is encouraging alumni across the United States to reconnect—in time to take part in the celebration of the organization’s 100th anniversary in 2010. The goal of the program is to have people whose lives have been positively influenced by Scouting demonstrate their dedication and commitment to the next generation of Scouts. The reconnected Scouts and Scouters represent a potential boon to current councils. A surge in alumni involvement could mean more volunteers, ambassadors for Scouting, and donors. The invitation extends to former Scouts, their family members, volunteers, professional and former professional Scouters, community leaders, and the tens of millions of Americans who benefit from Scouting every day.

Each council will have access to the contact information of those who reconnect through www.bsaalumni.org. Leaders can also get strategic guidance on how to find and engage alumni, as well as template presentations, flyers, and promotional materials from a toolkit available on YourSource (scouting.org/100years). Anniversary volunteers can contact their local council staff advisors to learn how to access YourSource.
Alumni will soon be able to search the site for former Scouting friends and mentors, upload photos and stories to an online scrapbook, and learn how they can get involved in centennial activities.
Scouts and Scouters wishing to reconnect can go to www.bsaalumni.org. As more people register, alumni will soon be able to search the site for old Scouting friends and mentors, upload photos and stories to an online scrapbook, and learn how to get involved in centennial activities.
Through the Year of Celebration program that launches in September 2009, alumni also will be able to earn commemorative patches as part of the celebration—something that, for the past 98 years, only active Scouts could do.
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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Comments Posted

If the shirt is made to be worn untucked it still needs to be longer so that our volunteers are not showing mid-drift on their events.
I believe there is a time and a place for each. The Rockwell prints attract the long time Scouters who have dollars to contribute in support of the program. We can not isolate our donor base. Looking at our stakeholders as unique and different and tailoring branded materials to that group will always be the best approach. It takes more thought on our end to develop as we are not shooting with a shotgun but shooting with a .22 rifle. I agree we need to look forward but also need to ensure we do not isolate our past as we move forward.
With the new social networking site that the national council is developing it will be possible to setup user defined groups, such as a group for a PDL class. The group would work similarly to a facebook group and members of the group would be able to subscribe to the group and get notices of information on the group via e-mail. I see your idea finding a home there.
In the grey box ScoutNet application there is a report that provides information on trained and untrained leaders. The report lists all of your leaders, identifies what courses are needed to be trained in their position and then provides a date for when the training was completed next to the course or leaves a blank next to the course to indicate that the course was not completed.

This only shows what a unit leader needs in order to be trained in their current position but does not show the additional trainings that they have completed. The trainings are listed by code and it would be helpful if the codes on the report are converted to course name so that it is more user friendly.

This trained and untrained report is different than registrant print selections. It also does not show fast start or youth protection which in theory are required but are not required for a leader to be marked as position trained in ScoutNet.
The ability to search by e-mail address would also be helpful so that we can handle bounced mail and requests for removal a bit easier when a mass e-mail is done.
I agree that there should be limited ability to update records by the unit itself. We allow the unit leadership to access records via the internet advancement and the online recharter system and we trust the information they put forward as long as multiple people in the unit sign off on the changes.

But building on this idea, if a unit is able to list a Scout as "Dropped" at ANYTIME during the year we are able to enact an instant Save-a-Scout response with the Scout / Family to try and recover the youth into the program. I am not suggesting that the Scout actually be DROPPED from our records but I am suggesting that we the Scout be marked as a potential drop in the unit on rosters and on a report that lists potential drops. I'd rather try to recover a just dropped from Scouting youth then respond to a been out of Scouting for a year dropped Scout.

We really missed the boat by allowing TroopMaster and PackMaster software to be developed. Many units now use this software to manage their programs. If we developed a comprehensive web based troop management interface that interacts with our ScoutNet system we would have more acurate and timely information. We are in a world of information sharing and if we can protect our sensitive information but better share what is not sensitive, and provide access to more users to maintain we will be able to better react to a changing environment.
This would really be a local council decision. Some companies turn friday jean days into a fundraiser. Pay a dollar or two to wear jeans and the organization donates to a cause. That might be something to consider.
I really think it's the trainers responsibility to read the course material and become familiar with what they are teaching. By you training the trainers on the new material you are just saving them time from reading the information.
A four day work week has a few benefits for a council, most of which are energy savings by not occupying a building one extra day a week. We are looking to have fiscially strong councils, save dollars by only opening four out of seven days a week. Studies have been done that demonstrate that workers take less sick days, turnover is far less on employees and moral improves with this work schedule. Professionals would probably not be able to benefit from this schedule as most are not 9-5. Support staff will benefit from decreased fuel cost in travel time plus the an extra day off. It's worth considering as there are benefits to the idea.
cguarnie 1 year ago
Character, citizenship, fitness and... mischief. The word mischief has such a negative meaning being it I am not sure how the public would view the campaign. I'm somewhat uncomfortable making the connection with mischief as the connection has to be explained in order to be understood fully. How did the campaign go? How did the community react to the campaign?
cguarnie 1 year ago
I think what is being proposed is a MASS texting service. This is not a DE sitting at his or her phone typing away one message at a time. Mass texting services are used on college and corporate campuses to send out a blast test message alert when needed. One person types a message into the computer and the computer sends out a mass text to those who subscribe. I believe what anvogl is suggesting is that we invest in a mass texting service which is far less sketchy than a 45 year old texting a 13 year old directly.

As for constituents, I disagree that our constituents are just our volunteers. At a few trainings we have talked about the gatekeepers to communication. Cubmasters who don't pass information on to their Pack... so we communicate with all of the people in the Pack, for example. Target marketing youth to promote Boy Scout camp, Philmont experiences, camp staff opportunities, requirement changes seems as if we are getting our message to the right people. We need to promote on multiple channels not just one channel. Mass texting is a good way to get those targeted messages out there.
cguarnie 1 year ago
I'm not sure that changing names is really the solution to the problem. In any organization there are culture specific terms used to describe events, ceremonies, ranks...etc. Individuals who strongly support the organization will learn what those names mean. We should be looking at ways to make the terms we use in our organization more available to volunteers. Sites like ScoutParents.org can be used to level the playing field and orientate parents into our organizational culture. We can also use the New Leaders Essentials training to orientate volunteers into our organizational culture as well. No matter what we change our names to there will be some sort of organizational assimilation that will need to take place. Better orientation and education is the key.
cguarnie 1 year ago
I agree with the mission that we are building physical fitness but the length of the uniform also impacts our taller Scouts and Scouters. Most dress shirts fall longer and allow more fabric to be tucked in then the current uniform.
cguarnie 1 year ago
It is possible to get a point in time report similar to a DTR report in MyBSA. Head to MS Statistics under the Membership Tab. Under the Membership Dashboard, if you click on the district you are working with you are able to export the information out to Excel. Depending on the headings that you opt for on the main dashboard screen, you can pull whatever information you want into Excel.

What it does not do is provide the table of information similar to the objectives report that appears at the end of a DTR.

I'd suggest having a function within the Membership Dashboard that can be selected to format the membership dashboard figures to look like a DTR rather than setting the options manually. Along with that it would be nice to be able to save "Profiles" of the setup of the dashboard report so that one can be looking at retention, one looks towards units...etc but these profiles can be set and saved by each individual user.