Councilwide "School Night for Scouting" Conducted in One Night

Jason Stein Scout executive Santa Clara County Council

On Thursday, September 21, 2006, the Santa Clara County Council conducted a councilwide School Night for Scouting at more than 200 elementary schools on one night. Because of this event,

• Cub Scouting increased 7.6 percent by the end of September;
• 922 potential Cub Scouts attended recruitment presentations;
• 288 applications were turned in within 24 hours;
• 348 youth were recruited in September, compared to 175 the previous year;
• 405 youth were recruited from July 30 to September 30, compared to 205 the previous year;
• 107 more applications were entered by October 5 because of phone calls made after flagging applications missing signatures;
• 112 unit and district Scouters trained in successful recruitment methods; and
• traditional membership increased 3 percent by the end of September.

We chose the event day, Thursday, because it provided the best chance for success with four school days to conduct boy talks and hand out fliers. We chose the third week of September because some schools started in late August, while others began the first week of September. Any sooner and we would miss some opportunities to get the word out. Also, roundtables are held the second week of the month, and we wanted to use that meeting as a last opportunity to hand out supplies and conduct training. We didn't want to wait until the fourth week of the month because we wanted our registrar to have time to enter the hundreds of applications we planned to receive. We asked all unit and council committees not to hold any meetings that night. The Order of the Arrow lodge even moved its council of chiefs meeting to the end of the September Ordeal weekend.

Adopting the Cub Scout Division's racing theme, our council membership committee chose the title "Silicon Valley 1,000" to reflect our goal of recruiting 1,000 new Cub Scouts from this recruitment effort. The plan consisted of three major parts:

1. Securing the schools
2. Inviting youth to join
3. Conducting a successful recruitment program

Securing the Schools

We identified approximately 300 public and private elementary schools as potential recruitment sites. I sent a letter to all superintendents and principals, letting them know our plans. District executives and membership chairmen identified local packs that recruited from one or more schools as well as those schools without a local pack affiliation. Schools with less than 100 total youth enrolled received only fliers. The larger schools received visits from unit leaders, membership committee members, and district executives in July and August. An initial visit typically included introducing ourselves to the secretary, making an approach to the principal, obtaining paperwork to secure the site, and leaving some popcorn as a "thank-you." We also obtained answers to the following questions:

• What is the policy regarding handing out or posting fliers?
• Is district approval required?
• What time is dismissal each day?
• If we want boys to take the fliers home the week of September 21, how many fliers need to be provided to the school? By what time or date?
• Are there any costs for using the facility?
• Are any other obstacles present to conducting this event successfully at the school?

We found a few schools had meetings scheduled on September 21--most commonly, "back to school" nights. In almost every instance, we were allowed to have a table at the school open house to take the names of interested families and distribute fliers. If such a scheduling conflict arises in the future, we will schedule a separate recruitment night or conduct the recruiting event earlier in the evening, before the back to school event begins.

Some schools balked at having a recruitment night in their multipurpose room. In such instances, we tried to find a Scouter who is invaluable to that school's activities or academic program to make inroads with the school leadership. We also tried to identify Eagle Scout service projects that benefited the school, to show Scouting's value and impact. Our fallback position was using the outside lunch tables, parking lot, sidewalk, or an adjacent park.

It was important to use elementary schools and not junior high schools, churches, or community centers, because our primary audience was families with first- and second-grade boys. Moving to a location other than the families' elementary school would have meant one more hurdle to overcome.

We also experienced some reluctance from a handful of Cub Scout leaders to this "one-night" recruitment effort. In previous years, unit leaders received few guidelines and suggestions on successful recruitment methods. The "path of least resistance" was to staff a table at back to school night, hand out fliers, and invite interested families to the next pack meeting. Through training and one-on-one coaching, we encouraged these leaders to follow the plan. One of the most persuasive arguments for supporting the plan was the promise that local media would help reach families that would not otherwise attend the event because they would not receive a flier.

We staffed 224 of the 300 possible elementary schools for recruitment night. In addition to the event's result, district executives tracked the number of

• schools reserved,
• trained and untrained unit leaders recruited to coordinate a program,
• trained and untrained district coordinators, and
• "boy talks" scheduled. (Some schools had more than one due to the large number of attendees.)

Inviting Youth to Join

This was deemed by our committee members as the most important of the three steps. We emphasized successful best methods, and introduced some new ideas. At our recruitment night trainings, we stressed that the "tipping point" is seven points of contact with the potential Cub Scout and his family, and that the key decision-maker for a first-grader is his mom. From a list of 25 invitation suggestions we developed, here are our top 10 concepts:

• Fliers. We ordered 100,000 fliers for our fall recruitment season. Units could customize the back of the flier or select a design rendered by a couple of district executives. Next time, we will hand out two different fliers: the standard, customizable flier to be sent home the week prior to the event, and a half-sheet reminder printed on a bright, heavier paper stock.
• "Welcome back packets." Our plan called for packs to give schools "welcome back" fliers to include in the "first day" packets for families. In the future, our council marketing committee will design a flier with key message points in the predominant languages found in Santa Clara County (English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin, and Arabic).
• Posters. We ordered 1,000 posters from the Supply Group. The bottom half of the poster was customized with an announcement about that school's recruitment night. We enlarged an 8.5" x 11" landscape-formatted announcement to an 11" x 17" sheet and taped these to the posters. We encouraged packs to place additional posters in locations where elementary school families might visit, such as the library, a community center, a self-service laundry, markets, school supply stores, and coffee shops.
• Boy talk. We asked for permission to go class-to-class and had 50,000 recruitment stickers produced for use in boy talks. The last choice for making the request is the district executive. If possible, we identified a key Scouter/parent volunteer at the school who the principal knew personally and was a popular parent (coach of a sports team). This individual, or someone else from the pack, is far better suited to get a "yes" answer from the school leadership, and they are recognized by the students. Although the district executives could not cover all the schools, we blocked off our schedules so they could visit as many schools as possible. One professional visited four schools on one day: two classroom boy talks, a lunchtime assembly, and an end-of-the-school-day recess.
  When classroom access was not permitted, we asked for permission to meet with the boys
  • after a morning flag ceremony for the entire school conducted by the pack,
  • at the end of a morning or afternoon recess,
  • during the lunch hour, or
  • during a schoolwide assembly for just the boys or as part of a regularly scheduled schoolwide gathering.
• Peer-to-peer recruiting. One of the best methods was to make the national peer-to-peer recruitment materials, such as the sticker and business card templates, available on our Web site. In July, we mailed a letter to key Cub Scout leaders, inviting them to recruitment training courses and asking them to use the peer-to-peer recruitment methods. Next year, we will follow up that initial letter to key Cub Scout leaders with a second letter to all Cub Scout families the week before school starts. On Wednesday, September 20, we used an automated phone-calling service to remind all Cub Scout households that September 21 was our School Night for Scouting program, and to ask the Scouts to wear their uniforms to school and invite their friends to join. (The cost of the service was between 5 and 20 cents per call.)
• Adult-to-adult recruiting. Because Scouting is great for adults as well as children, we encouraged Cub Scout parents to invite other families to join the pack via personal invitations, postcards, or by sending an e-mail to their child's school or classroom roster, school e-mail group lists (Yahoo or Google Groups), church-based fellowship groups, or after-school and club sports rosters.
• Yard signs. We ordered 1,000 yard signs from the Supply Group to be placed at or near the schools. We taped the same information affixed to the posters to the yard signs. Next year, we plan to ask dens to have their Cubs make their own yard signs and post them in front of their homes from the first day of school through the recruitment event.
• Visibility at the school. We sought other opportunities to have a visible presence at the school, including
  • conducting a schoolwide patriotic flag ceremony,
  • staffing a table at the back to school night,
  • wearing uniforms on September 21,
  • displaying a pinewood derby(R) track in front of the school the week of the event,
  • revving the engine of a neighbor's "really cool" car in front of the school to attract students' attention as they arrived at or left school, and
  • conducting a pack service project the week before school opened by volunteering to help teachers and staff prepare the campus.
• Direct mail. Our direct-mail firm identified more than 10,000 households with children in school from grades one to six--9,153 of whom were not on our current membership list. For approximately 52 cents each, homeschooled families received notification of the recruiting event.
• Media. We customized the national public service announcements and distributed them to the local television, cable, and radio stations. Print advertisements were sent to the community newspapers, business journal, major metropolitan paper, and local community magazines. We also submitted requests to be included in newspaper community calendars. Our major Rotary Club has owners or managers from two radio stations, and we made a special appeal to them to have the announcements aired. Scouts stood in the background for a morning news show, and the weather reporter interviewed some of them. Most important, we promoted these efforts to our Scout leaders and convinced some of the reluctant ones to come on board and conduct the recruitment drive.

Conducting a Successful Recruitment Program

We scheduled five training dates, each on a different day of the business week, over a three-week period at the end of August and beginning of September, in case families were on vacation. The training, attended by 56 leaders, ran 90 minutes and covered securing the schools ("on your mark"), inviting the youth to join ("get set"), conducting a successful recruitment program ("go"), and following up ("checkered flag"). We also offered a condensed version of the training for another 50 leaders at roundtables the week prior to September 21. This year, we will conduct the training earlier and more frequently.

A guidebook provided detailed information, and national and local support materials were distributed with a focus on three goals:

1. Getting the boys signed up and registered
2. Getting the adults signed up and registered as new leaders
3. Organizing the new Scouts into dens. There were six key areas addressed during this portion of the training:
   • Be prepared. Have a checklist of items to bring, from pre-opening displays to pens. A recruitment kit for each school included youth and adult applications, mini Boys' Life magazines, a new-parent's guide, sign-in rosters, den organization rosters, and table tents to direct first-grade boys to the Tiger table.
   • Have plenty of help. We recommend that eight Scouters staff a school, with each having an assigned duty: a greeter/applications collector; four table captains, one for each program; an opening ceremony and game coordinator--a den chief or member of a local troop or OA chapter; a master of ceremonies, usually the Cubmaster; and a district representative to help where needed.
   • Arrive early. Be there at least 30 minutes before the announced time, and have the room set up 15 minutes before the announced time. (This gives you 15 minutes to find the custodian, open up the room, set up displays, organize the tables, etc.)
   • Organize the room. Our guidebook included a suggested room layout with four tables in the middle of the room--the front two for Tigers and Wolves. Colorful table tents, included in the recruitment-night kits, helped direct families to the appropriate tables. If a family had sons in two categories, we suggested that they sit at the table for the youngest child.
   • Follow the suggested agenda. The guidebook had a general outline, and the national support literature provided one with more detail. We uploaded two PowerPoint presentations to our Web site for packs to customize. We suggested a balloon-stomp game early in the program to show the families that Cub Scouting is fun. The meeting should be kept to one hour. We created a new-parent's guide that could be used as a meeting outline.
   • Recruit den leaders. Often, the most difficult part of recruitment programs is identifying and recruiting den leaders. A variety of techniques were suggested and one particular approach, the "salesman" or "engineer" method, was explained in detail. Each table has a captain, an experienced Cub Scout leader. The captain asks each parent three questions: (1) What is your occupation? (2) Do you have any Scouting experience?, and (3) Do you prefer to work with boys or adults? Based on the answers, the captain categorizes the parent as either a "salesman" or an "engineer." There are jobs in a pack that are best suited to a salesman who wants to work with boys, such as den leader. Likewise, there are jobs best suited to an engineer who wants to work with adults, such as fulfilling pack committee functions.
     After getting a general idea, the captain suggests a role for each adult present and asks each to consider doing this job for just 30 or 60 days. A job description is included in the new-parent's guide that summarizes the time commitment for each of the suggested functions. An offer is made to provide training the next week and to help with the first den meeting. After 30 or 60 days, the parents can continue, or switch to another job. If they agree to serve in this role that evening, the meetings can start next week. New den leader kits are distributed to all who agree to serve in that capacity.
   • Turn in the applications and fees that night or the next day for a special incentive. In previous years, the council provided a variety of incentives, from patches to pinewood derby(R) cars. While those might have convinced some boys to join, the membership committee wanted to try to encourage unit leaders to turn in their applications immediately. (It had been a common practice to hold applications for months or to submit them in December with the recharter paperwork). In 2006, each new youth application submitted by September 22, with fees, would result in the council crediting the unit $3.40 (an amount equal to four months of registration). Each district staffed a "race headquarters" from 8 P.M. to 9 P.M. on September 21 so district representatives or unit leaders could bring in the completed applications with fees. By 5 P.M. Friday, September 22, we had 288 new youth applications turned in.

Our recruitment guide included contingency plan recommendations, such as the school being locked or being understaffed. We concluded the training by reminding everyone of the importance of following up after September 21, including holding a second recruitment night if results were surprisingly low and encouraging new leaders to attend roundtables as well as Fast Start, Youth Protection, essentials and leader-specific training.

Conclusion

By all measures, the Silicon Valley 1,000 was a success.

• Of our six district executives, four had been in their assignment for a year or less. This was a great opportunity to teach the new staff best methods and to reinforce successful methods to the tenured district directors.
• Inroads were made with units that used less successful recruitment models, and a new model was introduced.
• Three new units were organized within two weeks from the large turnouts at some of the schools. Another 10 new Cub Scout packs have been identified.
• The council provided new support materials and established an organized plan that can be improved and embellished in the future.
• "Campaigns" were not part of the council's culture. The organized, well-prepared, comprehensive nature of the Silicon Valley 1,000 set a precedent that can be replicated for Friends of Scouting, Scout-O-Rama ticket sales, popcorn sales, camp promotions, etc.

We've already announced Thursday, September 20, 2007, as the date for the second annual Silicon Valley 1,000, only we may call it the Silicon Valley 2,000, to capture the flavor of being twice as successful as last year.

The Merits of Marketing (marketing.scouting.org) is a resource for local councils, developed by the Marketing & Communications Division of the National Council, Boy Scouts of America.