This council-level contest can help spread the word about Scouting to the general public – and you can win some nice prizes! Click here to learn more. When you post these videos on your social network of choice, make sure you tag your chartering organization and/or the schools in which your pack recruits.
New national resource:
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:
“Scout Talk” videos produced by BSA can be used in social media posts/ads, in community billboards like NextDoor, or on your troop website. There are versions for boys or girls. You can download them here on this page of the BSA Brand Center.
There is a Scouts BSA version of the “5 Questions” video for parents. You can find different versions that you can download and use here on this page from the BSA Brand Center.
Formalize a relationship with a nearby Cub Scout Pack and build the expectation that 5th grade Webelos Scouts will continue their time in Scouting by “crossing over” or graduating into your troop. Troops that do this often invite these Webelos to camp with them at a special fall camp out called “Webelos Woods.” This effort culminates with a crossover ceremony in the spring where the Webelos Scouts become official members of your troop. You can learn more about this process by visiting this page.
Hold a Troop Open House. This is not too different from the Cub Scout Sign Up Night idea, only you are focusing on 5th Grade and 6th Grade youth. While the example on this page describes holding the open house in the spring, you can also do one in the fall.
Create a Facebook event on your troop’s Facebook account and “boost” the event for two weeks before the date of your open house. Set a radius of a few miles around the address of the open house 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). See this document from BSA’s marketing team for more on how to do this.
Do your Scouts have Instagram accounts? Have them post a fun photo from a recent camp or event and tag friends, inviting them to attend your open house or similar event. This can be part of a peer to peer or “friends asking friends” type of campaign; you can learn more about this idea by visiting this page.
