6 Steps to Successful Recruiting

Successful and sustainable recruiting is more than having a School Sign Up Night. The Guide to Cub Scout Family Recruiting attached in the links below describes these six steps for successful and sustainable recruiting:

1. Make a Calendar of Fun Activities that families like – your Unit’s program.  The big fun activities that current and future families will want to join – not just “when you meet”.
2. Let People Know – Promote Your Program!  Families join Units that do things and go places. Let them know what you’re doing.  And update your BeAScout Pin and Online Registration Tools.
3. Recruit More Leaders and Helpers – one by one, find folks who can help your unit out (do this throughout your recruiting process).
4. School and Community Presence – “Adopt a School” and show your School and Community the Fun and Values of Scouting, and you’ll get more School and Community support.
5. Once you’ve laid that foundation for success, have Sign-Up Events: not just School Sign-Up Nights, but Fun Den and Pack Welcoming Events Too!
6. More Fun Events. Keep expanding and extending your Calendar of Fun Events. You can grow after School Sign-Up Night and attract more Scouts and more Leaders!

All these steps help your success at School Sign-Up Nights and at your own fun Sign-Up Events. All these steps can be done at any time – Spring, Summer, Fall or Winter.

And know this:

• No recruiting method works every time for everyone.
• Every recruiting method works some of the time for someone. Find ways that work for you!

Recruiting Is Really A Year-Round Effort

We used to call Cub Scout recruiting “Fall Recruiting” because of the heavy attention to School Sign-Up Nights at the end of summer.  But recruiting can happen at any time your Unit wants to welcome new families.

• Spring and Summer recruiting allows you to bring in new families and connect them with fun, simple, easy activities that your current families and leaders will enjoy – and that new families can jump right into – like end of the year picnics and cookouts and bike rides and fishing and hiking, maybe kites, rockets or STEM activities, plus Day and Twilight Camp and Cub Scout Summer Camp.
  • The best way to make Cub Scouting appealing to new families is to make it FUN and show how it can be simple for new families to enjoy.  In Cub Scouting, we often say “Keep It Simple, Make It Fun”, so let’s do that!
  • Cub Scouting should be Fun, Families, and Friends – this is the essence of Cub Scouting, doing fun things with family and friends. (Yes, with the ideals of the Scout Oath and Law.)
• We want Packs and Dens to invite friends in the Spring and Summer – it’s not only fun, but you can use this for easy recruiting where families take a “test drive” of your Den or Pack.
  • Do some Fun, Simple, Easy Activities that your den’s families can enjoy together.  Maybe not even a “uniform” event. Maybe just … fun?  Simple. Easy.
  • No complicated meeting plans, just relaxing fun for kids – and families. Food is good. Make it a chance for parents to get to know each other better. 
  • P.S. not only can you relax at a fun event and just get to know other parents better, but in doing that you can recruit those parents to step up to be leaders and helpers with you.  If they show up, they must like Cub Scouts and should be able to see a way to help you.
  • See much more about this in The Power of Spring and Summer Fun Event Recruiting.

Scouts BSA Troops should also have a heavy spring recruiting emphasis focused on taking in both 5^th Grade Cub Scouts and their 10 year old classmates who may have passed on Cub Scouting – because any 10 year old 5^th Grader can join a Troop after March 1.  More here.

Be a Pack with a Strong Program Plan

The question for most families is “what do you do in Cub Scouts?” Not “when do you meet?”

• A recent Voice of the Scout survey showed that the Number One driver of satisfaction was “we have great outdoor activities”.
• A Pack with an active outdoor program is offering the best Cub Scouting opportunity to all families. Those Packs and Dens can say “Welcome to our Pack, look at our program of fun activities we can all do! Join Us!”

Getting fun activity ideas into your Program Plan is what makes Units successful and attractive.

• After all, if you can’t tell families what you plan to do, why would they join you?
• So, the first step in recruiting is Plan a Calendar of Fun Activities.
• And the second step is Promote Your Pack Program so families learn what you do and want to join you.

If you do activities families like, they will join you! That is what recruiting is all about. And if it’s fun for kids, fun for families, and safe — it’s Cub Scouting!

Recruit Families, not just Kids!

Cub Scouting is a family program, so the goal is NOT to just sign up new youth. The goal is to sign up new families! We can build stronger families through Scouting! That includes building stronger parents through Scouting!

• In successful Dens and Packs, every parent helps.
  • That starts with leading their own Scout in activities and advancement adventures.
  • It extends to joining a team of parents helping to lead programs and activities.
• This message shouldn’t be a “turn off” for parents and guardians – the Scouting program is designed to make stronger connections between kids and adults, which will make parenting easier!
• Without parental involvement – adult leaders – there can’t be a Scouting program.

If your Pack has only a few active engaged leaders, recruit very carefully:

• either be sure you’re lining up more active, engaged leaders to handle an influx of new youth, using the ideas in our third step of recruiting – recruiting leaders,
• or only bring on the number of youth your current leaders can handle.
  • (Then don’t be surprised if another Pack also serves your school so that all youth can be in Scouting.)

As you get the attention of current and prospective families with your calendar of activities – and find parents who are excited or interested in them – turn parents into helpers, and turn helpers into leaders. Pack and Den leaders have ways to “lead the parents to lead their Scouts” by providing them program ideas so that parents can lead their own Scouts and help lead the Den and the Pack. Like these Advancement resources.

Have a “Welcome Team” In Your Pack

Build a welcome team from your parent ranks – it’s an easy way to get parents involved. Officially called “New Member Coordinators” by Scouting America, the idea to is have a team of parents for “peer to peer” welcoming of families into your unit. Any responsible adult who can say “hello” and “welcome” and is willing to “chat up” your Pack or Den to their friends or others in their community can be on your Welcome Team.

• Welcome Team members don’t need to know everything about Scouting.
  • They just need to know enough about your unit to be welcoming (or as the Scout Law says: helpful, friendly, courteous, kind).
  • They don’t need to wear the khaki uniform – probably better that they don’t, to make it more evident that the Den and Pack need help from parents who look like regular folks.
• A “Welcome Team” is excellent in “sharing the load” of recruiting, communicating and welcoming – so your Cubmaster and Den Leader don’t have to do it all.
  • For more, there are training modules for New Member Coordinators at my.scouting.org
  • To find the modules, when you enter the Learn Center, click on “Position” Training or “Non-Unit Specific Training”.
• Keep this in mind about the official resources for New Member Coordinators:
  • The Training assumes that your Unit has a full team of leaders sufficient for your Unit.
  • In many packs, new families need a “welcome” that includes a request to step up, help out and lead.
  • That’s why we put so much emphasis on building your Unit by recruiting leaders.
• Be sure to equip your Welcome Team so that they can Welcome! at any time and any place.
  • Stock them with information like your current “Pack Packet” that they can share with families.