I'm in my second year as a den leader, and over the last year I've bought a decent number of supplies/materials for den activities. My pack seems to do okay on fundraising, we don't sell popcorn, but we have two(possibly one this year) fundraisers that bring in $$$$, but I haven't seen the actual budget. Leaders get their dues reimbursed, but not live scan. The Cub Master has an art cart with markers, paper, glueguns, ect available to use.

Is it normal for Den leaders to pay for materials? I'm thinking of asking the Cub Master if den leaders could get a small budget for materials/activities, like $10/kid for the year. And if your pack does that, how does it work? Our treasurer is not fast at reimbursements, nor do I think he has much bandwidth for tracking expenses for 6 dens.

Just curious if there is an official rule on this? We used to meet as committee members with our cub master and committee chair to hash out the budget each year. Then we’d vote on it. Lots of excuses resulted in the CM and CC not ever scheduling a budget meeting, let alone giving us a budget to even look at or follow.

Hi all! My son is an AOL. He’s been in Cub Scouts since he was a Lion. He excited to be moving on. I was never a Scout and neither was my husband. When my son showed interest I became a den leader and have been one ever since. I also became swim certified so I could take the boys.

Now my little boy is going to make his own way with the Troop and I’m very proud. What should I ask or should he know to ask of the Troop? I guess since I have no experience or expectations I’m not really sure what makes a good Troop.

Any guidance is appreciated!

I have been super busy, and tomorrow have 4 Wolves and 5 Tigers showing up to my house for a den meeting. I have nothing prepped. And I will be speaking a conference for my job and gone 7-5 tomorrow. I'll be lucky if I am home 10 minutes before kids start showing up.

Any ideas you can share would be welcome.

Throwaway. I am livid. Just absolutely livid.

I am the parent of an Arrow of Light Scout. We have a troop that we share a CO with. We got the invite to go on a campout with the troop and did so. These guys are a hardcore, 100+ year-old unit. Run like the military. Many of the ASMs have been with the unit for 40+ years.

So we go and do the campout. Okay, fine. I am a mom and noted that not a single female leader was camping. Women are not allowed to be ASMs. Women can only be committee members. Women are not allowed to wear the field uniform.

I also know that there are other troops in the area. So I asked my committee chair at the last pack meeting about that. "Oh yeah, that troop reached out to us, but we are with Troop 123 (not the real number)." Huh? So our options are to go to this troop or get out? "Well, no, if you want to go see another troop..."

So I called or emailed 3 other troops. All 3 indicated they sent emails to the Cubmaster, committee chair, or den leader (or some combo) inviting our Cubs to open houses and campouts.

The committee chair is blocking them.

So I emailed the committee chair, Cubmaster, and den leader: what is going on? "We belong to this church, therefore Cubs go to the troop." And I guess I wasn't paying attention, but I look back and see that in prior years at crossovers, very, very few boys went anywhere else but the troop we are attached to. Meanwhile, many of them drop out; I wonder if it's because the troop is run by guys who have been in for 50+ years and run it like a military boot camp.

Is this unique to my den/pack? Do others have this "feeder" mentality?

We are looking into having a perpetual Class B storefront similar to what PTOs do with spirit-wear. In the past we'd do once or twice a year orders, but it'd never fail someone would join late and miss out. There are sites like Bonfire where you can design your own shirts and have them out there for order, but I'm polling the audience on what other options there are.

I'm hosting our pack Bake Off. I have some old(er) Cub scout award ribbons for 1st/2nd/3rd place and "I did my best." They all have scouting branding on them. I don't have enough ribbons and need to order more or order new ones. Does anyone have a site they use for buying this type of award?

Places like Crown Awards don't seem to have what I am looking for and a web search hasn't found much else.

Thanks!

One of our Scouts needs a ride home after camp. Can another mom and her son give him a ride or is there some 2DL prohibiting this?

*edit to add: I definitely had a lot more people show interest than I thought - thank you all! I’ve reached out to the first few to comment but if you’d like to be put on the waiting list for the next batch please let me know!!

*I got admin approval before posting so please don’t hate me 😂

I was wondering if any packs out there would be interested in trying a new app our key three created that has helped my pack immensely.

I’m the CC of a small pack and I was tired of getting a million questions, having to post everything to ten different channels, and retraining everyone to use scoutbook plus every year. So I decided to make our lives easier and with the help of my other key 3 we put this together!

I’m really passionate about the Scouting program, and I know how much time our volunteers already give. I wanted to create something that makes running a pack a little less like a second full-time job, so we can spend more time focusing on the actual Scouts.
Because let’s be real… none of us signed up to spend 30 hours a week. 😂

It has everything from den calendars that sync to your phone, event chatrooms, adventure tracking so your advancement chair can just upload it straight into scoutbook, budgeting and receipt submission to key 3, and so much more!! I’ve been trying to think of anything that my pack uses and put it all in ONE spot. My parents love it and have told me that this year has been so much easier in terms of communication, scheduling, and knowing where their cubs are at in their scouting journey 😊 We also send out announcements, to do’s, and it automatically lets our parents know if they’re missing any paperwork.

So that being said I’m hoping to have some other packs give it a try and see if there is anything I’m missing that would help your pack! Every pack operates a little differently, and while I’ve tried to think of everything my own pack needs, I’m sure there are things I haven’t even considered. If you’d be willing to see if this can provide some help with your communications and admin side of things, you’d be the perfect fit!

From,
A used to be very tired committee chair 😂

I'm taking over as treasurer this year. I was named treasurer in September, but with popcorn and the start of school, there hasn't been time to get me on the account yet. I will be added to the account and get access to everything this Saturday.

I'm under the impression that everything has been pretty lax so far, but i would like to keep very clear records of where all our money is going to help build next year's budget. I know they have a spreadsheet where purchases are logged, but I don't think there's any tracking of cash purchases. For example, we paid for the kids to attend a haunted hay ride put on by the troop kids, but no one got a receipt or wrote anything up. When I asked how many kids we ended up paying for, the CC said 24 but didn't seem sure if themself.

Also, while I'm here, if kids earned having their registration paid through popcorn sales, has anyone heard of waiting to pay some of this registrations until next year rather than reimbursing families who had to pay due to a deadline or being new to scouts? Some kids were paid if their due date was later and they were already in scout book.

So basically it was a, “we have your promotional fishing poles, come get them. Also this renewal schedule change is going to be a hot issue, so come hear about it”. Okay, I’ll bite.

Gotta say, it was frustrating to watch. The volunteer district commissioner was trying to run it and the Council people were back-seat driving. I just wanted to scream, “shut up and let the man talk”.

The meeting opened with a word-for-word review of “S.A.F.E”, read from the website. Thrillingly awkward. The topic was the new recharter/renewal schedule. This could have been a pretty concise email.

The conversation became dominated for a time by some people pretty ripping mad about the Movo AI agent named “Sam” who didn’t address itself as an AI agent. - okay, I get it, you want to air grievances, but in the middle of the district commissioners pitch on renewal schedule changes isn’t the time. These folks somehow also refused to hear council mentioning that was fixed already.

At some point some council lady I didn’t recognize wanted to thank those people airing grievances for getting 20-30 new scouts every year, and mentioned that it was probably due to prompt replies to invitations/applications. It felt somewhat tacky, placating and pushing some narrative. I only got 7 but I responded to every invitation/application within 4 hours. I worked really hard for my 7.

I’m not sure what I expected, but it was pretty underwhelming and not a good use of my time. Honestly, with all the gushing over impressive membership growth numbers, I felt pretty inadequate. It was a meeting that was held because someone felt like a meeting needed to be held; not because it was necessary.

I've served at a school PTO where we did a hop-a-thon, where the kids jump around, have a good time. And each family can pledge money for their child that's donated to the PTO. When I look up rules and policy regarding this we aren't allowed to solicit money directly from people, has anyone done something like this?

Also there seems to have been a more acceptable policy with soliciting for items that would be donated to a raffle. Anyone have experience with that?

Essentially I want to have this really fun activity for the scouts and I was thinking of making it open to the public as well as partly a recruiting effort, but just for kids to have fun.

My daughter and I are attending a Council event next weekend for Webelos and AOL Scouts. No one else from her pack, den, or the local troop are attending.

Food is not being provided. Can anyone recommend some meal ideas for the two of us? I’d rather not bring a ton of equipment. I have never built a fire by myself and my experience cooking over a fire is super limited.

Is there guidance from Scouting about fire safety specifics? Previously my group had either a fire guard or at least someone who acted like one but they moved on to the next level and now it’s absolute chaos. I had multiple 5yos trying to get INTO the actively burning fire pit. Is there a hard rule that under 8 is observing only? No adding to fire?

I’m curious if den leaders in larger packs are starting to get creative with how they run meetings. My scout is now a Webelo is getting completely checked out completing the required adventures. And he’s not wrong, he’s been doing bobcat, physical fitness, citizenship, etc., since kindergarten with very little change. As a leader in a Webelo and Tiger den, I’m getting bored myself basically running the same meeting for both dens. I would love to pick and choose parts of those required adventures and add in more of the adventures that would make things more interesting for the kids. Thoughts?

I’m doing youth protection training. The youth protection video says that youth children can only tent with the same sex parent/guardian. So my daughter can’t go to camps if we don’t have her tent with another kid? Her mom’s not in the picture and she’s often the only girl…

I'm having a lot of trouble researching the rules for AOL camping with the potential new BSA Troop. My AOL den has been invited to an upcoming BSA campout. Are the parents of AOL scouts allowed to attend? Do the scouts sleep in tents together?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. The rules seem polar opposite for cub scouts versus BSA and trying to wrap my head around this transition period.

Anybody have any experience in one of the test councils with this pilot program for 4 and 5 year olds? Is this starting too young and leading to program fatigue? Particularly wondering what your thoughts from those of you who are fellow currently registered Cub Scout volunteers and leaders or current parents or Cub Scouts.

I have a pack of like 40 kids, and we like to do 2 overnighters a year. One as an outdoor camping trip in spring and an indoor camp in late fall/winter. We are doing Toledo Zoo this fall. We have done Silversides and Kalamazoo Airzoo in the past. But with 40 kids, adults, and siblings we are reaching a group size pushing 100. I know the Airzoo will not accommodate that many for some reason. (The place is huge ... idk) Silversides is always cool, but I am looking to see if anyone has any other ideas/ locations to try. For the Cubs and parents, outdoor camping isn't really an option for this time of year. There is always Cabins at like D-Bar-A but I would like some variety. I like to budget like $50-70 per scout for this trip. Thanks.

My kids are new Wolves. We went to a Council summer resident camp this summer and just did an overnight family adventure program at the same camp. Between the two experiences, my kids will have completed the Wolf archery adventure requirements after demonstrating the whistle commands.

What I’m unclear on is the process for approval. These adventures are greyed out in Scoutbook, seemingly indicating that only certified instructors can sign off on them. Is that correct?

We have a leader who does not have any kids in the Pack. Can they bring their older kid who is a member of a troop to a Pack campout? I've read all of the rules and haven't found anything explicit. It is mentioned several times that Cub Scouts is family camping, so I don't see an issue with it. The kid isn't very active in the troop so it is uncertain if the scoutmaster would officially designate them as a den chief.