Scoutmaster Podcast 30

And now, for you, Scoutmaster.

Alright, I finally found the secret. I did. And I'm going to share it with you for nothing. But this is how to make a million dollars being a Scout leader. Okay? You got a pencil? Paper? Are you listening? This is how you're going to make a million dollars as a Scout leader. First, get two million dollars. And the rest is easy. Yeah. Hey, this is podcast number 30.

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clark Green. I'm recording this one a little ahead of time because this week I am up in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada, with two crews of Scouts from our troop. Doing a little paddling and portaging, or portaging, depending on how you were raised. Yeah, it's been a hot summer here in the Mid-Atlantic and in the South. And I guess just about everywhere. It's been kind of warm. And it's highs in the 70s up there in Canada. And I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, it's getting down into the 50s at night. Oh, baby. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be a nice break from the heat. But anyway, we've got several things to do on today's podcast. In Scout Mastership, in seven minutes or less, we're going to continue talking about troop meetings. And you know what? You know what I found? I have a fourth installment about the future of your unit and your future plans as a Scout Leader. How about that? You thought you were going to get away with three? No. Uh-uh. I've got a fourth one for you. Yep, it'll be in this podcast. Plus a Scout Masters Minute. Sounds like a lot to do, so we better get started, shall we? Scout Mastership in seven minutes. Or less.

This is from Baden-Powell's Outlook. This is something that's not too hard to find online. You know, Google Baden-Powell's Outlook. And this is from June 1910. So this is quite early in the Scouting Movement. He says this, That's a great deal of your patrol leaders, and nine times out of ten, they will play up to your expectation. But if you are going to always nurse them and not trust them to do things well, you'll never get them to do anything on their own initiative. That's Baden-Powell. Way back when, a hundred years ago. At this week's troop meeting, I counted eight active assistant Scout Masters. Now, following Baden-Powell's advice, we often have comparatively little to do. We don't do a lot of instructing. I mean, maybe two or three times in the past year, we've had an adult from our pool of Scout Masters instructing the Scouts. And we do next to no program planning. All of these things are in the firm grip of our youth leadership. So what do we do? What do we do at troop meetings? Well, three assistants are working hard on recruiting. One is following the progress of several Eagle projects and applications. I was meeting with a visiting Weeblow's parent. And the remainder were observing the proceedings of the troop meeting from a respectful distance. And that's it. That's really it. There's not a lot for us to do. Now, I know Scout Masters spend an inordinate amount of time worrying over their troop meetings. And they sometimes work on the entertainment quality of the meeting. So far as I can tell, a lot of them are actually running the meetings. And this is really a big no-no. A troop meeting is not a television show hosted by the Scout Master. Or a podcast. Where I get to talk and talk and talk. No. Here's some thoughts from an old Scout Masters handbook that I found on theinquiry.net. And if you want to go there and check it out, it's great. It's got lots of old school resources on scouting. Inquiry.net. That'll get you to the website. Here's what this advice said. As the years have gone by, some Scout Masters have set troop meetings on too high a pedestal. They have spoken of it reverently. And they spent hours and hours in perfecting his programs. And have seemed to consider that the conducting of a troop meeting successfully once a week was the whole idea. And the purpose of the Scout movement is running a fine, lively meeting on Friday nights or Tuesdays or Thursdays. And their work was done then for the week. There never was a falser idol set up than this glorification of the weekly troop meeting to the exclusion of other forms of scouting. We must keep clearly in mind at all times that the weekly troop meeting is but a means to an end. It is not an end in itself. Its business is not to be the scouting of your troop for the week. Its business is to make scouting for a week. To inspire it. To pep it up. To give it purpose and activities. To make it extend all through the week in each patrol's and each boy's life. We can't accomplish much actual work in an hour and a half or two hours every week. But we can use those hours to motivate every other hour of the same period. And by motivate we mean to stimulate activity by providing a motive to every boy and every patrol. The troop meeting can have great value by simply bringing the boys together for a common experience. It can make them feel they belong together as part of the whole big scouting brotherhood. Well, I read that and I could see myself in a couple of the comments there. Yeah. Big, lively, fun troop meeting. Got to be rocking and rolling all the times. Got to be, you know, something exciting and interesting and things like that. Well, that's not, that's really not what we're looking for. It's great if that happens. But hopefully it's the scouts that have made that happen. And we talked before about a matter of perspective as to what was good and what looked like it was orderly and useful for scouts. According to our lights as full-grown adult men. And we've talked that scouts have a very different idea of that. You know, what they consider to be fun and challenging, we might just pass by. But if we have, as Baden-Powell said, put the full responsibility of what happens in a troop meeting on our youth leadership, they're going to shine. They're going to rise to your expectations and surpass them. As long as you look at it in the right perspective. So that's the heart of what a scoutmaster's role is at a troop meeting. You know, there's a widely circulated little narrative called the One Minute Scoutmaster. And I think it was based on some management science thing. We're going to talk about that in the next podcast. But basically, you know, one of the tests for a successful troop meeting with you as a scoutmaster is you sit in a chair and you wait. The scouts begin the meeting. They conduct their meeting. They do whatever it is they're going to do, whatever they've planned. And then they look at you towards the end. And they say, now it's your turn for a minute. And you stand up. You give your scoutmaster's minute. Say goodnight, scouts. And that's about it. Now, actually, you're not going to be sitting in the chair the whole time because you're going to have the odd scoutmaster's conference to do. You're going to be talking with your fellow leaders. You might be planning your part of an upcoming outing or something like that. Just making sure that you have enough tents to sleep in for the leaders and all that type of thing. But you're not actually engaged and involved in the ongoing program of that troop meeting. That might be an unfamiliar picture to some of us. But I've been on both sides of the dividing line there. I've been actively engaged and involved in running troop meetings and presenting things for the scouts. And I've been on the other side where I'm watching what's going on. And I'll have a couple of things to talk to my senior patrol leader about at the end of the meeting. Did this well? This didn't go too well. How are you going to fix that? What's your plans for next time? And the boys are so happy when they're actually running the show that they'll come back. It's not a Nielsen rating kind of thing where they're going, Well, the scoutmaster wasn't really on this week. Yeah, I didn't like that show. Who wrote that one? That one wasn't very good. No. They're not an audience. They are the participants. They are the ones that make this happen. And that's what we need to keep in our heads as we're looking forward into the fall and the winter in our troop meetings. Well, we're going to wind this up in the next podcast. We're going to just finish up talking about some of the broad underlying concepts about what adults do at a troop meeting.

Well, this is the fourth in our series of talking about the future of your scout unit. And we're going to talk about money and finances this time by answering this question. How will we reach and or maintain financial stability within our scout unit? Years ago, I can remember a day where we had to turn to our treasurer and ask him to lend us several hundred dollars to float the troop through the next several months because we had no money. We didn't have an effective fundraiser. We were kind of nonplussed about charging people dues and things like that. It wasn't working very well. We needed to get on a much more stable financial footing. And over time, we were able to do that. Every troop, pack, and crew I know of raises money to support its program. And I'm not concerned here necessarily with the specifics of how money is raised and the rules of fundraising. Now, if you need to learn about that, find the unit money earning application. It's easy to find online. It's a PDF file and I'll link to it on the blog. It explains the official guidelines for unit fundraising. They're pretty simple. Raising funds should have obtainable goals. It should be simple and minimally disruptive. And it should represent value for money. Fundraising isn't something that you set aside the program and you go off and you do the fundraising and then you come back to the program. Do you understand what I'm saying? It should be part of your program. There should be opportunities in any fundraisers for scouts to do the things that scouts do. You know, whether it's washing cars or serving meals or delivering goods or performing a service, it's a learning experience for scouts. And it's something that you should definitely take advantage of. And it should be an expectation that this is when we do fundraising and this is how it happens and it should be fairly simple. Now, that being said, I've been through a number of frustrating and difficult fundraisers in the past until we found a decent one that makes things easy. And it's no big secret. We have a spaghetti dinner twice a year. One in the spring, one in the fall. And people actually look forward to participating in the spaghetti dinner. The only thing that our families have to do is sell tickets. We ask them to be responsible for X number of tickets per family. And it's a very obtainable goal. And that's what I said before. It's very important to have an obtainable goal. And then there you go. Now, I know a lot of troops and packs and crews will have some kind of an awards program for guys who raise the most funds and things like that. We just haven't ever seen a need for it and we don't do it. But, you know, there's another possibility. And if you don't like whining and crying and carrying on and grousing and complaining, what I want you to do is take your podcast listening device and advance it by about 45 seconds. Because what follows is Clark's opinion and only my opinion. And I really don't want to hear about it because it's just my opinion. But I don't like the popcorn. I'm sorry. I don't like the popcorn. I've never tasted the popcorn. But I'm stuck on the value for money part of fundraising. Don't sell me $3 worth of popcorn for $15. You know, I don't like the Girl Scout cookies for the same reason. Yes, I am old and crotchety and a little mean. But we're talking about funds and fundraising and the popcorn is a huge thing. And there you have it. There's my comment. Don't order your life by my likes and dislikes. But there's my comment. So if you were smart, you just turned your podcast thingy ahead 45 seconds. And now we're back. And you don't have to listen to the nasty, crotchety old man. Like the rest of your unit program, you know, a fundraiser needs to have heart. It needs to be something that people are going to be interested in. And everybody can get behind and support rather than, you know, that annual or biannual thing that everybody dreads. Um, financial stability in your unit means having kind of a long view and maintaining a budget. Do you have a unit budget? It's important to have one. Are you nickel and diming all your leaders to death? This happens, I think, more often within a Cub Scout pack. Where, you know, the den leader goes out and buys the box of pipe cleaners and the popsicle sticks and the glue and the glitter. And somehow loses the receipt and it doesn't ever quite get back and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, it was only five or ten bucks and I don't mind and everything. And then over a year, they spent a couple hundred bucks on program things. And, you know, that can get people set up in the wrong way. So, uh, there needs to be a clear road to being able to play for program things that, uh, people go out and get. It needs to be simple. It doesn't need to take weeks. And, um, it, there needs to be a budget around it. Uh, when I was a Cub Master, we had a budget for our pack. And we had a budget for our dens. And any den leader was on notice that they could spend, you know, X number of dollars every month on anything they wanted for their program. No problems. No questions asked. We just need to see a receipt for, uh, the treasurer. And it was very simple and it worked pretty well. But having a budget is important. Um, there should be program money available. There should be equipment money available. And having a little bit of an emergency fund socked away for some kind of unknown, uh, uh, emergency that would require a little financing. That's a pretty good idea, too. Uh, so, you know, a budget for a unit is not too much unlike a budget for a person. And, um, it's a good idea to have one and to stick to it. Now, it surprises people to know that our little scout troop of 30 or 35 has an overall annual budget of about $15,000 to $20,000. That's including everything from soup to nuts. The food that we spend, that we get for camping weekends, you know, summer camp, our trip to Canada, uh, and, and everything like that. It's, it's, it's a powerful amount of money. Actually, I might be low-balling it there. It might be $25,000 to $30,000 that runs through our account in a given year. That's a serious amount of money. And that takes a good treasurer, and it takes a committee with their eyes open, and it takes good thorough reporting and good budgeting. I am not a money guy. I don't do good with money. I don't good, I'm not a good record keeper. Um, I'm not a good budget maker. Uh, and, and knowing that is nine-tenths of the battle because I entrust that to other leaders in the troop and let them, let them take care of it. I, I just know that it's important. And what we're talking about is broad concepts, and we're talking about the next five years, you know, the future of your unit, maintaining financial stability, having good financial plans, having a fundraiser that everybody enjoys and doesn't dread. These are all important aspects to, uh, looking towards the future of your unit and maintaining its service in your community. So the next time we're together, we're going to talk about the final question in this series, which is, do we meet key indicators of effectively presenting our program?

That's right, it's time for a Scoutmaster's Minute. That's right, it's time for my hands. Do, do, do, do. Biddy-bar, biddy-bar, biddy-bar, biddy-bar, biddy-bar, biddy-bar. One of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, Ernest Thompson Seton, was visiting a camp he founded near his New Jersey home. And Seton had invited several important local businessmen to join him on this particular visit to interest them in supporting the camp. During their stay, they watched with great interest as some of the scouts there, they probably weren't scouts right then, because I think this was during the period where Seton was working, uh, on his woodcraft Indians idea. So this was probably before the founding of the BSA. But during their stay, they watched with great interest as some of the boys tried to light a fire by friction using the ancient bow and drill method. Their efforts were great, and the resulting fire was a victory won over many, many attempts. As they turned from the scene, one of the guests turned to Seton and said, Mr. Seton, why in a world of matches do you ask the boys to struggle with these primitive methods? Well, Seton thought about it for a moment, and he pointed at the ground. You are thinking of the fire that is lit here. And then he placed his hand over his heart and continued, while I am after the fire that is kindled here in the heart. The challenges that life present often turn us from an easy path to one that requires much more effort and more skill. As scouts, we deliberately challenge ourselves to develop our skill as outdoorsmen and extend our own personal limits. There are a lot of easier ways to do things, but the way that offers growth is often the most difficult, and in the end, the most meaningful. Well, thanks again for listening to the Scoutmaster Podcast. You can read the Scoutmaster blog at scoutmaster.typepad.com and follow us at Scoutmaster Blog on Facebook and ScoutmasterCG on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the Scoutmaster Podcast on iTunes, and when you do, feel free to leave a comment or a review or a rating. Those are always appreciated. And you can email me, Clark Green, with your comments and questions at ClarkGreen at gmail.com Now that's C-L-A-R-K-E-G-R-E-E-N at gmail.com Well, we've got to read the disclaimer so we can disclaim the Scoutmaster Blog and the Scoutmaster Podcast are not official publications of the Boy Scouts of America. How about that? Nor are they endorsed or sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America. Nope. It's just yours truly talking into a microphone. Yeah. And we try to lend a hand to Scout leaders and have a little bit of fun along the way.

Now, as we do each time before we go, we want to hear from our founder, Sir Robert. Good luck to you, and good camping. Why, thank you, Sir Robert. It's Clark Green here at the podcast. Still me. That's right. Until next time.

I put some more. I'll see. I love you.