Recruiting Pack Leaders – Show Organization and Set Expectations – Pt 3

Tune into a series of articles on Recruiting and Retaining Unit leaders over the next 3 months 

• See Article 1 – Identifying the need for Unit Leaders
• Article 2 – Turning Parents into Helpers

Show Organization, Set Expectations, Extend Invitations.

First, get organized – slice and dice your big jobs into small portions.  Identify what roles you want to recruit for, figure out ways that parents can understand how they can help.

• But don’t just recruit for Cubmaster and Den Leader and random unassigned committee members.
  • Ask for specific kinds of helpers, so that people who might be Cubmaster and Den Leader see that people will help them and how they will help

Second, set expectations of Parent Helping.

• Especially if you’ve shared a menu of “small portion” jobs that slice and dice what a Den Leader or Cubmaster does, you can make that “every parent helps” baseline expectation clear from Day One: every family needs to participate in Den and Pack leadership, sharing the fun of Cub Scouting – but also sharing the effort of putting on the program.
• You need to have a culture of parent helpers and parent leaders: share the load and share the lead.
• The Better Approach is “Every Parent Helps and Every Parent Leads – This is a Family Program”
  • Several Packs use a policy called “Every Parent Helps” or “Every Parent Leads”, as a condition to joining, so that every parent is making a commitment to be a leader and help the leaders.

Third, use all ways to ask for and get volunteers.  Paper Surveys, Group Pitches, ask for a Show of Hands, surveymonkey.com, signupgenius.com, emails, texts, phone calls, one on one personal asks for a specific job, take a prospect for coffee, remind a parent that it is their time to help – there are lots of ways to get this done, and it is an ongoing process as a Pack plans for a coming year, receives expressions of interest and youth applications, and engages families at events.

• The Den or Pack “Talk”: We Need Leaders.  At some point – whether a parent planning meeting before back to school “Meet and Greets” start, or at a Sign-Up Event, or as a “breakaway” from a Fun Den or Pack Welcoming Event – many Packs will need to have “The ‘We Need a Den Leader’ Talk” with parents about Dens, Den Leaders and how your Scouts need more Den Leaders.
• Attached below is a word document for Den Formation Discussions, with script ideas.
• This has a script for “the whole Pack” (if you have no Den Leaders at all), as well as scripts for “den by den” discussions to try to get Den Leader and Assistants.
• As part of that, you might do the “Yardstick/Timeline” demonstration attached below.  Here’s a YouTube video of one way to do it