Membership Growth within Scouts Canada

Simple question but many complicated answers.

What do you see as the main factors that are currently affecting the overall growth of Membership in Scouts as a whole?

Are we in fact growing as an Organisation?

Growth is entirely dependent on a quality program. That program in turn is dependent on having motivated, dedicated adults putting in a lot of effort on a weekly basis. The kids will automatically follow (with a little bit of local marketing; e.g. school talks).

National won't release the official membership numbers from last year until the AGM (December I think). So we won't know until then how we did last year. The following graph will update automatically once these figures are available. You will see that as of the year before last we were starting upwards again; only time will tell if this is a trend.

it cant be only program quality that leads to membership. we cant have half the members of a few years ago and extrapolate that our program as half the quality nationaly? I dont think we are that bad. we are compeating for kids with various other things, and those other things are winning. sure a good program helps, a bad program hurts, but what are the other things doing better?

I've been following this website for awhile and this is the first topic that made me register and post a reply (Not that I didn't gather good information before, just didn't feel like replying.)

I am curious how many youth joined the program because they thought it was a good idea. Not that they had an older brother or sister in the program, but came home from school one day and asked to be part of Scouting without any one else they knew being in it.

Mine didn't. I signed him up. Once the younger brothers saw what he was doing, they wanted to do it when they were old enough. But the first one never asked, I was trying to find something for him to do and remembered Cubs from my youth.

Is there a possibility that the awareness/coolnes problem isn't with the youth, but with the parents?

If the parents don't know we exist will the youth?

If this is the case, would we not be better off advertising to the parents?

In my opinion, a good program will keep the youth there, but won't necessarily encourage new youth to join.

Just a thought,

Stan

Is there a possibility that the awareness/coolnes problem isn't with the youth, but with the parents?

If the parents don't know we exist will the youth?

If this is the case, would we not be better off advertising to the parents?

In my opinion, a good program will keep the youth there, but won't necessarily encourage new youth to join.

Just a thought,

Stan

Stan, I think you really are on to something. You can have a great program, and kids will join a great program only if invited by a friend telling them how great Scouting is. Who is going to tell the kids Scouting exists if there aren't already sufficient numbers in the community? A great program will lead to excellent retention, and is necessary for decent recruitment (especially at the senior sections), but it can only go so far.

As a Beaver and Cub leader, I aim at parents, as they are the ones making the decisions about soccer, hockey, swimming lessons, karate, gymnastics, and yes, Scouting and Guiding. For Scouts and Venturers, you aim at the kids, as at that age, it really is their decision. For the junior sections, the word has to be got out to parents about Scouting, and how amazing and fun it is for kids, but also to build them as leaders. How do you aim at parents, though? Through places of worship? Television? Internet? Print advertising?

I just talk about Scouting all the time. I tell adults what I am doing with my weekends, especially when they tell me about their golf game. I tell them how a group of 8 Beavers put up a tent (okay, they had a bit of help, but you know what I mean) when it was raining. I ask for volunteers who are interested in the outdoors and working with kids at business groups I belong to. I wear my Scout stuff (hats, jackets, etc.) so people see the logos. I wear my Chief Scout's Award pin on my suit lapel, or my Wood Badge II pin. Invariably, these things lead to people asking me about Scouting, and so I have an opening to talk. In two years of recruiting, I and my wife have probably been the direct cause of 10 kids joining Scouting, who would otherwise have not known about it. Imagine if we all got five kids to join each year. Just five. There are about 30,000 adult volunteers, x 5, that is 150,000. How about 2 kids each. That is 60,000.

Word of mouth is cheap, but highly effective.

At the Beaver level, I think it is very important to get to know the parents if they are to feel comfortable about leaving their children with you for a weekend at the Cub level. Our family has moved and in our new location we are losing a lot of youth to Air Cadets because they are offering a full program. I think we have to be sure to offer the FULL Scouting program to the youth at all levels. There is a lot of exciting programming that we have to offer. We just have to be sure and offer all of it.

All that marketing to the parents and other adults makes sense and is good. Certainly that will get the parents who are looking for activities for their kids. I asked one mother, when her kid was in Scouts, why had she put him in Beavers? She said she thought it would be good socialisation for him. The other reason I hear a lot is to give the kid a male role model.

Showing the parents the leaders are safe is a big one. I have heard parents question that. Everybody is so paranoid about child abuse these days. We started putting a box on our school flyer covering PRCs, interviews, etc.

But once you have a good program, the best way of increasing enrollment I have found is school talks to Beavers and Cubs. Go in with a slide show of the previous years activities, camps, etc. The kids will go home and tell their parents they want to join. I think we got 20 new Cubs the first year we did school talks.

Yes. The weekend activities are normally a good talking point.

But word of mouth only goes so far.

I get a lovely box from Scouts Canada showing me how i can get more youth with posters, postcards and tattoos. What I would love to see is advertising like Girl Guides.

Someone said to me the only ad time Scouts could afford was at night. I said "Great!", that's when the parents are watching TV.

I feel the chances of getting a "net new" Rover, Venturer and Scout is not high. Mostly friends and relatives from my very short experience.

Cubs are more likely (kids start figuring out on their own what they want to do and can tell their parents.)

But I feel parents at the Beaver level is where the growth is. A large enough Colony will feed the rest of the program with youth. I think that relying on the Cubs to supply the program is not as productive. (Though if it's working, I'm not saying stop!)

I feel that a couple of billboards on a few major routes would increase membership more than "tattoos". Get the parents interested. Yes you will get the parents that view it as cheap babysitting (I am (WAS!!!) guilty of that) but quite a few will see the value if you run a good program.

Get the parents, you get the youth, and hopefully a few volunteers.

Stan
PS. I did like the items in the box, I just don't think it would be as effective as advertising directed at the parents.
PSS. Since everyone else has an opinion, I love the new uniform, but then I look great in red. (No more on that in this thread. Promise!)

We are lucky that we have a large primary, intermediate and middle school all perched smack dab in the middle of the city subdivisions that my group operates out of. We can go to those schools with marketing swag from SC and talk to all the parents until we're blue in the face... we might pick up a few. But the last 2 years we have started the fall season with the first 6 meetings being full-on bring-a-friend nights. We promote this idea to all the youth... giving them and their parents invitations to pass out every single week. And the result of the efforts of those kids is that our group has doubled in size. Adult promotion to other adults... or adult promotion to groups of youth is OK. But when we create a program that kids can't get enough of... and won't stop talking about.... and then we send them out into their peer groups to spread the word.... that's been a real home-run for us. But it's also a strong message to us as well. We can't sit back on our pockets and get complacent. They can leave as fast as they've joined if we don't keep it new and exciting. It's good for all of us to do that just so we don't get complacent about the program ourselves. Same ol', same ol' is a group killer. The more youth we get... the more it challenges us to just keep trying to bring in more. And it's the youth that are the best marketing tool we have.

getting to parents at beaver age is key. then we have to keep the kids and parents. one complaint I have heard from parents is that we dont encourage car pooling, so if we do 3 camps, a couple of outdoor activities and they are all more than an hour away the parents end up with too large a time comitment. that might help.

I still wonder, are we losing kids because there are more activities out there than before, or different ones, or are we just not cool enough.

it could be that there are more choices, ie indoor soccer, dance etc that were not arround 25 years ago. but I dont know if thats the case.

I think you have to have a REALLY good Beaver program to retain youth to continue with cubs, and then you need a really strong cub program to retain them through Scouts.
Our group got two new cubs this year that transferred from other groups, because those groups just did not have strong leadership. Luckily they decided to transfer and not drop out completely, but how many did drop out from those groups?
I think it comes down to leader support and training, as we have found in the past few years we have really grown our group, just by having a great program with lots of variety.

I think you have to have a REALLY good Beaver program to retain youth to continue with cubs, and then you need a really strong cub program to retain them through Scouts.

Agreed on the retention aspect. However, our records show that few of the kids who start early continue through to the older sections. That being said, it is easy to get Beavers and Cubs off the street, but much harder to get Scouts. As an example to read the graph below, if a kid starts in Beavers, 36% will only last one year, 11% will stay three years, but only 4% will stay in Scouting for six years.

one complaint I have heard from parents is that we dont encourage car pooling

We used to have the leaders car pool our Cubs to a camp 45 minutes from our village. We cut this to reduce the effort of our leaders, and told the parents they had to drop and pickup their kids. We expected to receive complaints, but had no issues at all. The parents figured out carpooling for themselves as needed.

Thats an interesting graph. thanks. shows that for long term retention there is not much point in going after vents. seriously the one year turnover is huge, average between sections of 40%. thats too high. if we only keep 40% of new youth in any given year or program our recruitment is not matched to our retention.

on car pooling I am always amazed that NONE of our parents get together and split up the almost 2 hour drive to winter camp. I think once 2 parents did that. other than that there is just no car pooling. heck if we asked one mom to work something out among all the parents it would be relativly simple, but then we would be organizing and have some liability

I don't agree that it isn't worth going after Vents if you want long term... Remember the Venturer program is only 3 years, and an ok percentage lasted that long.... and some lasted even 7 years which would involve 4 years of Rovers (or being a Leader?).... i'm not sure if the graph even includes becoming a leader.... If it doesn't, you can't expect 12 years out of a new venturer (well, I guess in theory you could... 14+12=26.... so that would allow for all the years of Venturers and all the years of Rovers.....)

Remember the Venturer program is only 3 years, and an ok percentage lasted that long.... and some lasted even 7 years which would involve 4 years of Rovers

Sorry, somehow I had a data transcription error. Graph has been updated. But you are correct in that anybody starting in Venturers is only going to last four years at the most; starting in Scouts means seven years at the most. But the key is that most kids starting in Beavers and Cubs only last a few years.

I saw some data today that showed the UK as 35,000 kids on waiting lists trying to get into Scout groups. Those are mostly Beavers and Cubs. Some parents put their kids on the waiting list when then they are born!