Providing a year-round, quality Scouting program should be the goal of every Scouting unit. The Ideal Year of Scouting helps you develop an annual program plan, a budget to go along with that plan, and a fundraising plan to reach your program goals. The result is a well-managed, well-financed Scouting unit. Use the resources below to start your Ideal Year of Scouting today. Below are resources to help units successfully plan their year.
Be sure to view the Council Calendar to see important Council, District, and International Events and Dates.
How would you like:
- A stronger program for your scouts at less personal cost to you?
- More parental involvement?
- More scouts camping?
- Better retention?
- More funding with less time spent fundraising?
- To eliminate out-of-pocket expenses for your parents?
- Enough money to do all of your activities?
- Scouting to be simpler, easier and more fun?
Every year the families in the pack get together for the annual program planning meeting. This process is lead by the Pack Committee Chair and all families should participate. This meeting should be held in June or July to plan all the pack meetings and pack activities for the coming program year.
Resources
In Scouting, planning is a two-phase process. Long-term planning results in an annual calendar and a set of unit goals for the year. Short-term planning yields detailed plans for one month’s meetings and outings—and sometimes a little more.
Be sure to keep parents involved and informed. The unit’s program calendar and budget information needs to be communicated regularly to families, especially at the start of the program year. By sharing the unit’s program plans and budgetary needs, you can help newly recruited youth and their parents gain a greater understanding of just what fun is waiting for them during the unit’s entire program year.
Resources
Let’s talk about one of the key factors that can lead to a successful year for your crew: the crew’s annual program plan!
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what keeps Venturers in the program. They like to have fun, do really cool, challenging activities, travel places, and meet others. However, in order to make all of these things happen, a crew must plan and prepare!
Research conducted by Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, Indiana, showed that a common element of strong units is that they all have a good annual program plan. This plan, which is created a year in advance, is then shared with all families in the form of a calendar. A shared annual program calendar will attract more families and keep Venturers involved in the crew.
Here’s an example of how a crew program planning process works; keep in mind that each crew is unique and may find another method works better for them. This is simply a guide that can serve as a resource.
Before Making Your Plan
- Make sure your plan is following your crew operating procedures or bylaws. Once the crew holds their officer elections, the new officers should gather together and hold a Crew Officer Orientation. During the orientation, each officer will learn their role and collectively start planning for the upcoming year.
- Gather information that will be useful when planning for crew events, such as:
- Dates of key school and community events (holidays, exams, proms, homecomings, graduations, field trips, etc.)
- Dates of any events by your chartered organization
- Dates of any district or council events
- Data from completed Program Capability Inventory Information sheets (PCI) from parents and others who might offer resources
- Data from Activity Interest Surveys from each member
- Information about events your crew has hosted in the past (prior annual program calendars)
- An idea of the crew’s goals
- Presence of interest in working towards Venturing awards
- Once all of the information is gathered, plan to hold a crew officers’ seminar, where officers plan the coming year’s program. This can be done in a variety of fashions; some larger crews choose to just involve their officers, while others have their whole crew participate in the planning process. Some crews even hold weekend retreats, so they have plenty of uninterrupted time to plan!
The Crew Annual Program Planning Conference
When planning your crew’s program calendar, there are a few things that may help lead to a more productive meeting. It may help to meet in a setting where you can write down ideas, and allow everyone to see what is going on. You want to ensure that everyone has a say, so that there are events that represent everyone’s interests.
- The Crew President should lead a discussion on your crew’s goals for the coming year. Write the goals on a flip chart or eraser board and narrow them down to a final list of goals for the year.
- Brainstorm ideas of what the crew might do based on your Activity Interest Surveys. Write them on a flip chart. Remember, don’t critique the ideas while brainstorming.
- Evaluate the ideas you have developed to see if they match your Program Capability Inventory. Do you have the resources needed for each idea?
- Vote to select which programs to participate in.
- Expand your basic program by adding support programs and activities leading toward your big activities or activity.
- Once you know what events you want to hold, figure out when they will occur. Draft your plan and calendar, including big activities, meetings, support activities, and key dates that apply.
- Officers will then approve the final calendar.
- Assign activity chairs for larger events.
- Distribute the annual plan and calendar to the Venturers, their families, and the chartered organization representative.
- Throughout the year, reevaluate your plan, and make modifications to the calendar as needed.
- After you hold each activity, conduct a reflection to identify what went well, what didn’t go well, and what you can do differently next time. Make sure to put these notes in your crew history file; these updates will help during your next planning cycle, even if you have a new group of youth involved.
Resources
These tools will help to ease the process of creating newsletters, revising calendars, keeping members and families informed, and helping Venturers manage the crew more effectively and efficiently.
- Activity Interest Survey
- Use this survey to help develop the crew’s annual program plan of activities.
- Activity Planner Sheet
- This tool comes in handy for planning a well-organized activity.
- Boys’ Life Resources
- Boys’ Life produces a number of useful resources such as a planning calendar, planning charts, and other program helps.
- Planning Your Crew’s Annual Program Budget
- These help make crew budgeting straightforward.
- Crew Operating Budget Worksheet
- Excel version.
- Guides to Unit Money-Earning Projects
- Program Capability Inventory
- Use this resource to help get more adult volunteers involved with your unit, and to get those who are already involved even more engaged.
- Canva or Adobe Spark
- Online graphic design platform for creating beautiful newsletters, social media posts, flyers, etc.
- Just a few of many non-BSA options.
- Crew Resources