Jun 12 2010
Are Professional Scouters Necessary?
Is This a Valid Concern?
On a LinkedIn Discussion Board this week, I read a statement from a Scouter who said
“I don’t see the value professional scouters bring to the table…
“What I am seeing is weeks to approve Tour Permits and months to approve applications and to get Boys Life into the hands of the scouts. The problems the professional National Staff should be solving are how to improve performance so our volunteer leaders don’t burn out because they aren’t getting the speed necessary to make scouting operate within the confines of their schedules.
“In order to execute a successful program, I need BSA to operate within my schedule…2-3 hours a week max to plan and execute our den and pack meetings and extra activities. If they cannot do this and I have to fill in the gaps to make our activities happen, they are truly unnecessary.”
A Lot of Those Problems are Clerical
The problems he indicates (tour permit delays, membership delays, etc) are likely administrative backlog issues that could be worked out within the local council. For example, local tour permits do not go to the National Office – only National Tour Permits do. Membership is all entered locally by a council registrar. Unfortunately, some smaller councils do not have a dedicated registrar whose sole job is to handle membership.
Back in the 20th Century, when I was professional scouter, we would pile unit recruitment packets on our registrar’s desk and we would try to negotiate with her to get our membership done ahead of someone else’s. Sometimes, that cost us lunch, sometimes a car wash. Regardless, we were at the mercy of the registrar. She took her ultimate direction from the Council Scout Executive – not us. She also had to work within the constraints of the old mainframe system that connected by telegraph line to the National Membership System. Then original forms were mailed to Dallas and a council copy was stored locally. This all took time.
The Local Council Professional Staff
. . .does not have as its job description to conduct your local pack or troop program. They are there to support you, but so is your pack or troop committee (volunteers), your district or council commissioner staff (volunteers as well), your district committee (volunteers), etc. The National organization produces program helps in Scouting Magazine (that you get as part of your registration), Program Helps manuals, and a pretty robust Website full of volunteer resources.
If the program is working correctly, your leaders should all know your District Executive, but your scouts should never see a professional scouter, except at camp, or at recruiting time, or when he is invited to one of your activities.
My first day on the job, my Field Director handed me a list of about 100 names and told me to contact each person on that list at least once a month. For the entire time I was a District Executive, I did that, usually just to say hello. Now, I worked in two exceptionally good councils, with excellent management and tremendous training for their entry level people. We didn’t have much turnover – I think we even went a couple of years at one point without any staff turnover on a staff of about 15 – so my experience is probably not normal. However, it SHOULD work that way.
Universally, the local council professional staff has three major responsibilities: Membership (recruiting boys into the program and working with Charter Organizations to start new units), Manpower (recruiting volunteers for committees, unit leadership, etc), and Money (raising money – Friends of Scouting, Sustaining Membership, whatever your council calls it).
Beyond that, Scouting is a Volunteer organization.
Hi Todd,
I am also following the discussion on the Linked In discussion board, and I noticed it has changed from a discussion about whether the amount of money the Chief Scout Executive makes is high or not; to a discussion of whether all professional scouters are paid too much/do to little/ etc. Having worked as a professional scouter, I think I was a tremendous bargain for what I was doing with and for the volunteers versus what I was getting paid. I did have my share of problems that I could not resolve, or was not able to resolve as quickly as the volunteer and myself would have liked, but overall, I think professional scouters are necessary to the organization. The problem as I see it is that, to a certain extent, professional scouter and volunteer scouters have two separate areas of concern. The professionals are geared towards expanding and growing the number of youth, adults, and units that are active, and fundraising to cover the costs associated with the programs that the local council puts on (and their own salary). Volunteers are interested in getting the best program they can for their scouts, for the most bang for their dollar. I believe these things can be mutually supporting on both sides, but I also think that few professionals and volunteers take the time to understand where the other is coming from. I know from my own experience that the district committee that I was working with did not always see the need for FOS presentations; community outreach, etc. and that the pressures of my job kept me from placing their priorities at the top of my list sometimes. I do think that there needs to be much more transparency on both sides for all areas of concern.
Peter,
Excellent points. I think early in my Scouting career (I spent 10 years in professional scouting), I tended to lean too far toward unit service and got really involved in several units in my first district, four small rural counties in extreme northeast Georgia. In fact, I’m still friends with several of those people I met in those days, now 20 years later. I was young and single and sold on the program aspects of scouting, often to the frustration of my supervisors, who wanted me to learn the “business” side of things. After a few years and two districts, a forward thinking Scout Executive gave me the chance to become a council program director, a position I held in two different councils for a total of seven years. While that was a great job for me, I quickly learned that you can get stuck in a position like that, or worse, get typecast as a “program” guy.
So, now, as a volunteer, I serve in training, and do speaking engagements on the early history of Scouting – not only here locally, but on a more national level as well.
I started this blog to have a forum to talk about these kinds of issues and http://danielcarterbeard.net in order to share some of the history of Scouting that I have learned over the years.
Thanks for checking it out!