Wicked Awesome Scouts #3
Everyone hates paperwork. I certainly do.
Effective administration of records and processes is important, but we want those processes to be as painless as possible.
I’d like to share with you 10 actions that we are taking to strengthen our support for you, our volunteers.
- Sought your input: Thank you to the many volunteers that completed our survey in September! Your feedback is helping guide our future steps.
- We have assembled a great team to support you! We have filled several vacancies so that we can better serve you. Watch for my next blog post to learn who has joined the team…
- Reorganized the support staff: On September 1st, we reorganized our support staff to improve processes. To better serve you, we now have:
- Senior Administrative Assistant: Judy Ferrante
- Senior Camping & Program Assistant: Kristina Andrews
- Registrar: Jennifer Camara
- Assistant Registrar: Bridgett Desrosiers
- Field Service & Membership Secretary: Chasity Chatham
- Development Secretary: Rachel Sowersby
- Receptionist & Eagle Scout Processor: Toni Schultheiss
- Customer Service Director (West Bay): Joram Northup
- Assistant Customer Service Director (East Bay): Erin Lawson
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The Narragansett Council is committed to supporting our volunteers superbly to help you in the delivery of an outstanding Scouting program! Overhauled paperwork handling: In September, we implemented a new tracking system. From the moment you drop off paperwork at the Scout Store until the time it reaches its intended destination, we now know who has it, how long they’ve had it, and where it needs to go.
- Added a Unit Service Coordinator. We redesigned one of our staff roles so that we now have a position whose responsibility is to provide key areas of support to units in the Southeast and Northwest Service Areas. If successful, we may hire a Unit Service Coordinator to also support units in the Northeast and Southwest service areas in the future.
- Improving communication: We have implemented a new council-wide email news distribution system, added the Wicked Awesome Scouts blog, increased our social media presence, and started a monthly communications meeting to coordinate communication.
- Added a registration assistant: We added a part-time registration assistant on November 2 to help us process applications and charters more efficiently.
- Revamping charter process: Our volunteer commissioners and staff have worked together to tear apart and rebuild the recharter process to improve our support to you. Our commissioners are taking a much greater role to help your unit complete its recharter on-time, correctly, and with less pain.
- Improving Eagle Scout application review: We have taken some intermediate steps to improve our processing and review of Eagle Scout applications, but are working on bigger steps that will improve this further.
- Updating website: It has been several years since we have done a major update to our website. We are planning to improve navigation, add resources, and make updates throughout. This is a major project that we will tackle in 2017. We will be assembling a group of unit volunteers to help us in the redesign.
That’s a peek at a few items that we are focused on in our support to you and a strong Scouting program. How are we doing? If you have some helpful ideas or feedback, please let me know in the comments!
Thank you for your leadership in Scouting!
What are you doing for recruiting for current troops. We all know that cub packs are the future yet at the same time troops numbers are are down as troops have folded, southeast service area. We need help here and the answer is feeding our current units , not starting new ones. It is sad to see troops that have served youth for over 70 years be unable to recharter due to not enough scouts.
Thanks for the question!
I agree that recruiting for Boy Scout troops is imperative. Our first priority for the fall was to really ramp up our Cub Scout recruitment (many Boy Scout troops also recruited new members by participating in many of the recruitment programs!) The Cub Scout recruitment effort has really paid off with a major increase over last fall’s recruitment. This, of course, will benefit troops in the future as this growth in Cub Scouts continues on into Boy Scouts.
In addition, we are currently working on a Boy Scout specific recruiting campaign for the spring. Watch for details after the first of the year. Also, we will be expanding on a great program developed by the former Annawon Council (now the Northeast Service Area): a very successful Arrow of Light graduation ceremony that has improved Webelos-to-Scout transition in their area. Each service area will be introducing this to help improve graduation into troops.
In addition, we saw several troops have good success with effective participation in selected community events–this is an area we want to expand and improve on.
Thanks for your emphasis on this–watch for more info in 2017.
Tim; As you know, several of us volunteers in the Southwest Service Area have been working to increase the attention on and activity for Venturing. Unfortunately I haven’t seen a great deal of support for Venturing at the council level. What steps are being taken to improve support for Venturing council wide? We have attempted to reach out to Venturing crews in the other service areas/districts with negligable response. Our group feels that Venturing is an untapped opportunity to continue and expand character and leadership development for youth in our council.
Paul,
Thanks for your note on Venturing. I absolutely agree that Venturing is an untapped opportunity. It is an awesome program for teens. In fact, I was a Venturing crew advisor for 3 years with my youngest son and it was one of the most rewarding positions I have held in Scouting. Our crew did several very cool activities.
We have lots of opportunity to do more for Venturing. I do not have concrete plans to share with you yet. We are just beginning to work on plans for Venturing–look for more in the late spring. I’d love to learn from your crew about what will be helpful support at a council level. Ideas?