The Boy Scouts of America has created a web page with updated recruiting resources, including past webinars discussing Join Scouting Night ideas, a social media planning calendar, BeAScout.org support, and more. See all that and more at scouting.org/recruitment.
General tips:
Your district membership team has a plan to help make your pack’s recruiting campaign successful. Check in with your District Executive or District Commissioner (find their contact information from your district’s listing on this page of our site) to get connected.
We have created a fillable PDF version of our recruiting flyer. Simply save either file to your computer, open it and type in the blanks, then save it as a new file. Then print and distribute or email to your heart’s content.
Have a parent in your pack visit school (get permission from the Principal first) and conduct a 3-5 minute “Scout Talk.” This is a chance to quickly talk about the fun stuff your Cub Scout Pack does all year long. Your goal is to motivate kids to bring the Sign Up Night flyer home and show their parents.
Create a Facebook event on your pack’s Facebook account and “boost” the event for two weeks before the date of your Sign Up Night. Set a radius of a few miles around the address of the Sign Up Night location so that whenever a Facebook user enters that distance around the location, your event will pop up in their Facebook timeline. Don’t spend more than $1 a day in budget (you can spend more if you wish, but it’s not necessary). If your school and/or school’s PTA/PTO have a Facebook account, ask if they will agree to co-host the event on Facebook; doing so will increase your event’s reach (meaning more Facebook users will see it). See this document from BSA’s marketing team for more on how to do this.
On the day before your Sign Up Night, have parent volunteers from your pack pass out stickers to children as they get on the bus to go home. The stickers should have information about the pack Sign Up Night. If your school won’t let you set up near the bus area, stand by your recruiting yard signs or a tent/shelter and offer stickers to students/families as they walk home or walk to their car. If a family is interested, take some time to talk with them briefly about why your family enjoys Cub Scouting and personally invite them to the Sign Up Night.
Have your Cub Scouts all wear their uniform to school on an agreed-upon day before your Sign Up Night. Give your Scouts a business card-sized “buddy card” that they can give to a friend as a way of personally inviting them (sense a theme here?) to the Sign Up Night.
Use contact information from your school directory to email each family with a personal invitation to your pack’s Sign Up Night. Include some kind of personal testimonial/message about how Cub Scouting has benefited your child and family. This is especially important for Kindergarten and First Grade students, who might not be as involved in other activities yet. Attach your Sign Up Night flyer.
Similar to the email idea, utilize Facebook Messenger to send a personal invitation to parents to attend your Sign Up Night. Messenger lets you send a note through Facebook to anyone, even if you are not “friends” on Facebook. You’ll need to exercise some judgement as it may be impossible to know which of the 50 John Browns that turn up in your search is the John Brown who is a parent at your school. In that case, you might just omit them from this effort. But, there will likely be enough unique names for you to utilize this idea. Include an image of your Sign Up Night flyer and/or the URL for your pack website or Facebook account with your message to reinforce that you’re legit.
Use the “rotational recruitment” model. This is a way to conduct your actual Sign Up Night that is less intimidating for new families and focuses on the most important goal that night: get them signed up! It was actually tested by volunteers in one of our largest districts and worked incredibly well.
You can also find logos, images, and promotional materials on BSA’s Brand Center page for Cub Scouts. Before you go spending money to print flyers, check with your District Executive and Membership Committee because they are probably already printing flyers for you.
