General tips:

• The existing youth members of your ship are your best ways of attracting new members. Have your Scouts invite friends to an open house, ship sailing day, or other activity.

• Create a Facebook event on your ship’s Facebook account and “boost” the event for two weeks before the date of your joining event. Set a radius of a few miles around the address of the event’s 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.

Sea Scouting has two resources for promotional materials; here’s the page on BSA’s Brand Center and here’s the Marketing Toolbox page on the national Sea Scouting website.

Here is a recording of a webinar by Sea Scouting volunteers about best practices for membership recruiting around back to school time:

Here is a recording of a webinar by Sea Scouting volunteers about best practices for membership recruiting in general: