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jotoro

jotoro
Member since : Dec-13-2008 (Verified)
6 Ideas, 22 Comments, 189 Votes

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Ideas Posted

It would be very helpful to have an Advancement Percentage instead of just the raw number of advancement on the District Advancement report.

If a pack has 10 advancements in a year is that good or bad? It is great if they only have 7 boys (143%) but horrible if they have 80 (12.5%).

I have been figuring out the unit percentages by hand. I would be helpful to have mybsa or scoutnet do the calculation for us.

Number 4 on the 2010 Centennial Quality Unit Award says: "We will have _____ percent of our youth earn advancement awards."
We are all becoming more aware about our need to be more physically fit. Most of the suggestions for how we can bring a fitness theme to scouting are one-time events like fitness themed camporees, or short term events like merit badges.

For the last 4 months I have forced an hour of my day to be devoted to fitness. Most days I walk (2-4 miles). I figure I'm walking about 45 - 55 miles a month. I have lost 55lbs since I started.

I propose that we create an award to recognize youth, volunteers and staff for walking 100 miles in our centennial year. We could develop a little tracking card and a place to mail it in with fees for a patch.
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.
It would be a great advantage to have a BSA version of Doubleknot where scouters could fill out online registration forms and pay for things through a council website.
I realize that councils can purchase the services of a third party vender like Doublenot. I just thought something more taylored to the BSA and done as a national effort would cut the cost and improve the usability and service.
I need to have an Excel spreadsheet of who is (and is not) trained at a unit level, with contact information (mailing address, phone number and email address) in order to selectively target those who need to be trained, so as to invite them to the next course.

It can not currently be done. It was a promise from Scoutnet 2000 that was made and forgotten.
Moderator Comments
1/6/09
From: Gary Butler, Council Solutions Group Director

The challenges with the training functionality in Scoutnet are a concern. Discussions are underway to make these and other improvements to this function.
There are way too many things that could be covered under the Technology tab in the innovation engine. It's hard to access and review the growing list. It should be subdivided.
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Comments Posted

jotoro 16 days ago
Dear National Office,

Please wake up and do something about training reports. You are a road block to our success in the field by not creating a training tracking system that is useful. You keep promising us that you are fixing the problem, but you have been saying that for the last 9 years. Don't promise us anything. Just fix the problem (pretty please with sugar on top).
jotoro 16 days ago
I think having multiple versions of CSP's goes against one of the core methods of scouting, uniform. You can't be uniform if everyone is wearing a different CSP. The CSP is meant to be something that identifies your belonging to a council.

Baden-Powell insisted on uniforming his scouts to remove some of the social differences that the boys had. By creating CSP's for FOS or other high ticket item events we subtly reestablish class differences into the BSA.

I think that some exceptions can be made, but some councils go overboard. My last council created over 30 different CSP's in 5 years.
jotoro 1 month ago
Matching funds for our 403b's across the board would be wonderful. Of course it is a matter of being able to fund such an account. Many councils can't afford it.

One of the main reasons councils do a match in the first place is to retain quality employees. Thus making it harder for them to leave the council.

Another reason is to attract quality employees, or make it easier to think about a move to a challenging job.

As it stands now, councils already support a retirement fund that puts away money for the future of each of their employees.

I think this idea would meet resistance from councils that can't afford the extra money as well as councils that use this to make themselves more attractive to employees.
jotoro 1 month ago
good idea.
jotoro 1 month ago
I think it is a great idea to offer leader training at summer camp.
jotoro 1 month ago
Many councils do have funding for uniforms. Of course it is the first thing that gets cut when times get rough.

If the national office were to make free uniforms available, they would raise the price of uniforms to cover the cost.

I understand the reluctance to purchase a uniform, but even the less priviledge of us will splurg on something nice. I joined scouting and had a uniform that was older than I was. I had to wait until Christmas before my parents would buy me a new shirt. I had to wait until my birthday in May before they got me new scout pants. My family was not poor.
jotoro 1 month ago
There are many councils where the United Way is hostile to the BSA. I believe that we need to get out of the United Way business and replace it with something sustainable like endowment.

Also, $2 a head would not generate a lot of money, and the United Way really discourages its member agencies to ply for money at corporate presentations.
jotoro 1 month ago
Most advertising happens locally. The ads you see on many nationally sindicated shows are purchased in local markets. There are exceptions, and the national office should look into those. But you have the opportunity to talk to local media markets and ask them to run our Words to Live By PSA's. Or at least get them to run as advertisements at a reduced rate.

Another problem is that there is no one place to purchase ads that would reach all mediums. Specifically, there's broadcast TV, Cable TV, Dish TV, Dish Network, TV online.

In order to get the word out you would need a couple of dedicated volunteers who are savy in the local media markets. A good place to find these people is from companies that place a lot of ads already. If you see ads for, let's say, Ace Hardware all over the place, call them up and talk to the person doing all the ads. Ask them for volunteer help. You might even get them to pay for ads.

There are radio PSA's also. When I worked in Allentown we did one step better. We had a couple of Webelos and their leaders go to the popular morning show and cook the DJ's breakfast in their parking lot. It was always a riot. The food would usually be hidious and the DJ's would poke fun, but for two solid hours of rush hour drive time they were mentioning the fall recruitment effort every 15 minutes.

I just placed some ad time with one of our local cable markets. 150 thirty second prime time spots on CNN, TNT, DISC, HIS, ESPN for a total of $200.

Advertising is a great idea, but the national office correctly tells us that it is best done locally.
jotoro 2 months ago
The big guys don't hear us on this one. They say 'yea yea we'll fix it,' but they never get around to it.

I constantly have to make excuses for our inability to get correct training records. And tools that would make training easier (like an excel spreadsheet with leaders: names, training status, address, email, phone number and unit number on it). Basic stuff.

It has become a trust issue. We can't trust that this will ever be fixed.
jotoro 2 months ago
One of the great struggles of our professional evaluation system is how to evaluate positive performance. It is easy to see why membership numbers are used. They are convenient to observe. I agree with you that there should be another way of evaluating membership growth.

It is hard to use density as a means to do that because TAY numbers are not accurate. If the national office had a better way of tracking TAY, I would agree that there could be a density number that would always be great to have regardless of growth.

I have been a long time advocate of term of duty goals (goals for 3-5 years). I also think that we should be evaluated on how sustainable our efforts are after we get promoted to the next level. By looking at raw numbers alone our organization is becoming hollow. Districts and councils become a house of cards.

Lastly, it is not a given that it is easy to gain 4% membership growth after a loss of 10%. I have seen districts/councils continue the downward trend for years.
jotoro 2 months ago
It would also be useful to post the advancement percentage by unit.
jotoro 3 months ago
It is often the case that the same idea comes from several different people. It is evaluated and blogged about with different results. Sometimes the first person with an idea didn't phrase it well enough to get attention.

I like the idea of giving a reward out, but I'm not sure it could be done fairly.
jotoro 3 months ago
What value do we place on volunteers working on membership? What value do we place on membership growth? We call the first important but the second critical (as in achievement). If the desire of our organization is more volunteer involvement, and we are ready to make it a priority, than it should be reflected in how councils and their staffs are evaluated (Quality Council, CSEWC, and CA's).

In addition, volunteer recruitment (and support) can't just be another thing added to the mix of all the other things that are important. It needs to become THE thing that we do.

It has always been the assumption that good membership productivity equaled good volunteer support. When times would get tough the pro would step in. Somewhere along the line we forgot this to the point that there are fewer volunteers working on membership.

We need to stop relying on numbers alone and also evaluate our success based on how new membership is recruited. It is a leap of faith to be sure.
jotoro 3 months ago
I like the idea of a one year Webelos program. But I think you are really looking for an answer to the transition problem. There are other effective solutions to that. A one year Webelos program is thinking far outside of the box. I think it might work. Of course that would mean a 4 year cub program.
jotoro 4 months ago
Josh,
I think the way you phrased your idea is leading people to think that you think boys should be able to earn badges online or through interactive videos. From your comments it is clear to me that you meant for these technologies to augment what we already do. I think that may be negatively effecting the vote on this one.
jotoro 4 months ago
As a past Scoutmaster I feel that it is a scoutmaster's job to remove barriers to success, not to create them. It would be appropriate for a scoutmaster to coach and counsel a scout on what challenges lie before him, but it is not appropriate to prevent the scout from trying.
It would not be a waste of time for a scout to try something and not succeed at it. He could just try it again until he gets it. Many of my most remembered lessons in life have come from first attempts at big challenges.
I earned my Eagle badge when I was 13 without any parental support, and I was mature enough to do it at the time. Scoutmasters and district leaders who feel that they need to step in and prevent a scout from advancing too fast are hurting the program.
jotoro 4 months ago
Wellness plans are sometimes used to differentiate participants in health care plans. Those not participating in the wellness plan are charged higher rates (for being less healthy). It's a great idea if you are in your twenties.
jotoro 4 months ago
The uniform is fine the way it is. If you cater to trends in fashion, you will be chasing your tail forever. Making dramatic changes to the uniform would change our brand. Boys and professional players eagerly dress up in 19th century garb to play baseball. Boys look forward to getting their first Karate gee. High school youth proudly wear marching band uniforms that John Phillip Susa would be proud of. So be proud of who we are. Wear your uniform to work tomorrow.
jotoro 4 months ago
Ditto. We are 15 years behind in this.
jotoro 5 months ago
Seriously?
jotoro 5 months ago
It is a constant source of frustration that we don't have the ability to produce training reports with the needed contact information. It seems that our cries for help over the last NINE years go without notice. For the last several years we have had promises that something will be done to improve our training records, but no results. When volunteers ask us why we can't produce what they need we have been LOYAL to the cause, and explain away the problems. It's time for our IT folks to be TRUSTWORTHY and keep their promise to fix this problem.
jotoro 11 months ago
Wow what a great idea.