About Volunteering

Perhaps you’ve asked for help, and folks let you down. Your Scout’s reactions to your efforts may be somewhat less than what you expected. You’ve tried to apply what you’ve learned and it falls flat. Welcome to the club! You already know what I am to write, you’ve read or heard it a thousand times […]

Frank Maynard’s excellent blog ” Bobwhite Blather ” addresses one of the most common problems in Scouting: wearing too many hats!  “An hour a week,” we were told, and soon found that it’s not always an accurate estimate, “but who’s counting?” we reason, because it’s for our sons and those of our friends and neighbors. … […]

I don’t think my friend Berk really cared too much about what other people had to say about the ceremonial campfires he built at our Scout camp (and they were some impressive campfires). What he really cared about was what he thought of them. I can recall some occasions where (at least to my eye […]

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor. Robert Louis Stevenson Why should you be a Scouting volunteer?  Through three decades of guiding my Scouts as a volunteer Scouter I’ve camped and hiked and canoed my way through some beautiful places, shared a thousand campfires and […]

Have you ever been described as “generous to a fault’? Volunteering is a wonderful, generous  way to spend our time but we all have a breaking point. If we don’t have volunteer boundaries there’s a pretty good chance we are headed for a crisis. Call it burn-out fatigue, or what-have-you – it’s the point where it […]

Why do we volunteer? How many volunteers are involved in Scouting and what do we do? A 2011 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report notes that  64.3 million people volunteered  last year 29.9% of women and 25% of men in the U.S. volunteered. 35 – to 54-year-olds were the most likely to volunteer. Persons in their […]

How do we attract and maintain volunteers? What are the benefits of volunteering? Who volunteers and why, what they need what they want from volunteering? Here’s ten facts about volunteering and volunteers that should help you grow your number of volunteers: Volunteers give without expecting anything in return yet they are rewarded in personal growth and […]

No matter what community volunteer effort or organization, whether  local, national or  worldwide in scope, there’s a fairly immutable rule of the way people will perceive your efforts: 25% of people will actively support the effort by volunteering, contributing financially and talking positively with their friends, coworkers and family about the work. 6o% of people will be neutral. They will […]

Can a volunteer be too involved in their work? Yes. Need is constant and concerned human beings want to fill the need. They can’t. Most volunteers will not encounter a situation that demands truly heroic action or sacrifice yet they impute such importance to their work they can overextend themselves. Volunteers often get involved past their […]

I’ve often heard about the difficulty of recruiting adult help from other Scouters and I wonder, sometimes, if it has to do with the way we ask? When the coffee is flowing and the discussions range wide we volunteers commiserate with each other. How many times have you heard things like: “Why are we the only ones […]

Once in a while a young, energetic Scout leader bounds up on my front porch here and says: ‘I have a great new idea!’ The old Scouter grips his cane, stares over his bifocals and replies ‘There is nothing new – now get off my porch!’ They walk away muttering under their breath ‘ What a curmudgeonly, cane waving, […]

Larry Geiger has served as a Scoutmaster for two different troops so that means he has transitioned in and out of the Scoutmaster role more than most of us. I asked him to write about these transitions and offer his advice. In 1981 in Lawrence, Kansas Ed Burgess (here’s Ed with five Eagle Scouts) had […]

Volunteer Scouters often have to explain themselves and dispel persistent misconceptions. Here’s a few things I think people who don’t volunteer don’t get: 1. I have already heard all of the jokes and impolite innuendos about Scouting and Scouters. I have a pretty good sense of humor, but how about you think a little more about what you’re saying. […]

This post is a bit of a bait and switch. You think this is about term limits for Scouters and it is – kind of. Thing is I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other. I can see good arguments for and against the idea of a limited term of service for […]