1% Club 

An idea hatched by our VP of Planned Giving while I was up at GNYC and then implemented by Mike Mahon of the staff has fallen out of my bag of tricks here at the Shore and had some success. Smells like a best practice or at least an idea that can be plagiarized easily.

You promote the idea of bequests and other planned giving instruments by asking people to join your 1% Club, where they agree to leave at least 1% of their assets to the Council Endowment upon their passing. It's easy to udnerstand and opens up conversations on other planned gift opportunities (we've gotten one life insurance policy) and helps to identify bequests already out there you don't know about. Plus, with bequests being revocable it's less likely folks will change if you recognize and make a big deal about it. Members get a lapel pin, presented at an Executive Board or other applicable meeting, and we recognized the first group - representing over $200,000 in planned gifts to the Jersey Shore Council - at our recent annual meeting and dinner. That presentation led to one other person coming up and asking questions about it after the dinner.

We'll only get more and more commitments as we promote and spread the word on the program. Someone try and get themselves to Jersey Shore about 20 years from now - a whole bunch of planned gifts should be flowing through.
Craig Shelley, SE, Jersey Shore Council

Fiscal Management Report 

A great tool for managng your expenses and saving money that I learned from Charlie Rosser while at GNYC is something called the Fiscal Management Report. Essentially you lay out all of your accounts line by line in a spreadsheet and project for every line item where you think you will end the year in terms of money coming in and expenses going out. At the start of the year you mirror pretty closely to the budget, but we all know that as the year progresses things change (something costs less than you anticipated, vacancies occur that weren't planned for, something raises less money than you thought it woud, etc.). While it is tedious to do so, you have someone input onto the sheet at the close of each month the actuals for each account and then review the report as a group on a monthly basis (in New York we just did it with key managers, at Jersey Shore I've been doing it with all of the professional staff). Publicly reviewing it holds people accoutnable for spending more than they projected they would, allows staff to better familiarize themselves with their accounts, supplies a quick reference to figure out where you have wiggle room when unforseen expenses occur that need to be charged somewhere, and allows at any given time to essentially keep a running tally/projection on if the Council will have a surplus or deficit and how big or small it will be.

It takes awhile (about a full year of going through it) for everyone to understand what they are doing and become very accurate with their projections (particualry on expenses) but the more you use it, the more valuable it becomes. As much as I hated going through the long monthly meetings reviewing it in New York (sorry Charlie), it's a tool I quickly started using in my own Council to get a better handle on what was happening with our budget. It's been a best practice for me and I'm happy to send along a sample of what the report looks like to anyone who thinks it could be a help.
Craig Shelley, SE, Jersey Shore Council

New Volunteer Position - Unit Recruitment Coordinators 

 Completed

I'm sure a better name could be found for this position, but we've been experimenting with a Unit Recruitment Cordinator volunteer position and are having great success and a great response from our units.

Units are asked to designate this person who becomes responsible for keeping the unit's information up to date on the www.beascout.org website, working with the membership committee and their District Executive to schedule the boy talks, school nights and rallies (and participate as needed) and then help the parents of new Scouts get acclimated to the unit.

We recognize these volunteers with a personalized letter and a special patch only available to them that recognizes their comitment and extends the brand of the beascout.org website by advertising it on the patch.

If we're to get volunteers to join us in a missionary zeal of extending Scouting to more kids, we need to drive the commitment down to the unit level.

MyBSA - Give every kid a chance 

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.