Organizing a Cub Parent weekend

Early Program Planer

• Decide whether and when event happens.
• Find an advisor.
• Find a director.
• Reserve the camp ground early.

Event director

• Don't do it alone.
  Either find a co-director or splitup responsibilities and find a program director and a logistics director. You really need somebody to bounce off ideas.
  Schedule meetings with key co-director.
• Reserve (or check reservation) of camp ground.
• Choose a theme.
  Find books about the theme. Talk to the librarian at a children's library.
• Call last years director and ask lots of questions.
• Make a rough budget.
  Decide on advertized cost per person.
• Discuss things with advisor.
  The professional advisor has other things to work also: don't expect them to have an elephant memory. But: they have done similar things before, so listen.
• Inquire where and how to order patches
  Draw your own, or, use a catalogue. (Personally I prefer organizing a good event and having the patch ready on time and I don't care about original artwork.)
  You probably need a week or two to decide.
  The patch company need 6 weeks to deliver. (Costs more if faster).
  Patches cost less in larger numbers.
  Ask your adviser which patch companies are trustworthy. (You care about them meeting promised delivery schedule; for a cub event you don't care whether they sell extra patches to collectors.)
• Determine maximal occupancy.
  Find out which resources are critical.
  (In Boulder Creek: cooking, seating arrangement for dinner and parking will be your limits. For a cub event: camping in BCSR fits 50% more people then the kitchen could feed. For a boy scout event you won't rely on the kitchen...)
  Talk to the ranger.
  Consider external parking; send letter. (Wasn't worth it at Boulder Creek)
  Go to camp ground and figure out how many tents fit on each site. (Council records may be unreliable.)
• Find a cook.
  Find an assistant cook.
• Find key staff
  Try to get experienced staffers which knows how things work AND find new staff with fresh enthusiasm. (New staff is necessary not just for your event but to foster knowledgable people)
  If staffers have children remember they need to spend time with them. If husband and wife is staffing, plan for one full time job.
  Don't micro manage: delegate authority.
• Find staff for
  BB Gun, Archery,
  Swimming: (life guard).
  Boating: Safety Afloat certified. (Hard to find!)
  Scouter's own, Registration, Parking. Master of Ceremony (campfire)
  All the activities.
• Find junior staff
  You'll need them for lots of things and the camp fire, odd jobs etc. This may be easy for directors with connections to boy scouts, but it can be hard for directors with only cubbing connections.
• Promotion
  Make flier for pack leaders (early for planning purposes)
  Make flier for registered cubs
  See separate instructions about fliers. Getting the promotion right makes the difference between filling the camp or staying there alone. Since many cost items are fixed filling the camp is financially much better then saving postage or printing for promotion.
  Write an article in council newsletter. (Twice; its not that well read).
  Announce the event at roundtable. (please no boring announcement; rather demonstarte an activity. Twice).
• Plan a staff meeting
  Reserve the room. (Snack)
• Invite staff for staff meeting.
  Invitation for staff meeting is important: It sets a tone and can motivate your staff. By phone; ask for address and send letter.
• Activity ideas.
  Have enough activities; not all will work out for a variety of different reasons.
  Write your activity ideas down; you'll add more over the next months. Make it a combination of reusing good old activities and a few new untried ones.
  Consult:
  • Cub Scout Leader How To Book.
  • Old program helps.
  • Old and new pow wow books.
  • Last years event.
  Do you have activities for different age groups? There will be younger / older siblings.
  Decide on rough schedule of events to inform staff early. The detailed schedule can be made rather late in your planning.
• Conduct the Staff meeting
  Have lots of activity ideas ready but be open minded.
  Staffers ideas should be respected but you should not rely on them for ideas. (Staff meetings can overflow with new ideas, but there can also be a big silence. You must make sure that after the meeing is finished the program planning is "done". You may have new ideas but you will not have another chance to recruit people in charge).
  Trust and engage your staff. Let them do activities their way; ask them to prepare their activites themselves. But you want to be informed.
• Make a detailed budget.
  Never mind who makes the official budget. You need to know roughly how much of the camp fee is available for
  • advertizing (fixed costs)
  • food
  • program
  • support of non-paying people
  • reserve/profit
  on a per person basis. The reason you should use a per person basis is that per person numbers are familiar. An average person like you or me might not have precise instincts how much food for 300 people should cost, but we will immediately notice if real per person numbers would look wrong. (Think food costs per eating person; I'm not so sure how to think about activity costs.)
• Decide on WHO makes the menu plan
  Involve the cook; buy something the cook knows how to prepare. Ask a store what will be be in season at the time of the event.
• Phone all staff.
  Figure out whether they have problems. Give guidance or encouragements.
• Make a "map" of the camp ground.
  "Instructions" for cub scouts.
  "Instructions" for parents.
  Do this late; it is not easy to predict where to place each activity. Don't under-estimate how much work this is (I needed more then 4 hours, the second time I made a map of the same place!).
• Materials
  Talk to the ranger; check out the "trailer" with materials.
  Flags.   First aid kit. Kitchen utensils.
  You will need materials for manned activities (and games and stuff for extra activities).
  (I made good experiences with the principle that the person in charge of an activity is the person in charge of aquiring the materials. This will cost you a few dollars extra but save you lots of gray hairs compared to centralized more thrifty shopping.).
  
• Get "cash" for shopping
  Council needs a few days to authorize checks. ( My DE used to advance money from her own pocket because of my poor planning).
• Go Shopping (food)
  Rather have your trusted person go shopping; I'm notoriously bad at shopping food.
• Talk to ranger (again).
  Know what and how he expects you to clean up.

Registration

• Prepare registration.
  Think through registration at the campsite. The information flow from council office to your event registrar can be a source of confusion.
  It helps if the information is available before the event.
  I found it easiest to assign camp sites to packs. You need the numbers to be able to do so.
• Conduct registration.
  The registrar needs to know what to say when people come.
  Have an easel so families can leave each other notes.
  The registrar will need to fill the last open jobs: Help cook. Serve food. Help lead game.
  It is very helpfull if the registrar is able to look at the arriving people and assign jobs to extra parents. (And NOT pester a single mother which besides her cub scout son has to watch a four year old and a baby.)
• Parking.
  In Boulder Creek parking is difficult and needs a person with authority to arrange the cars. It is impossible for a single person to be both registrar and parking master for cub scout events. (It might work for boy scout events).

Just before the event

• Go there the evening before.
  Make a staff meeting with staff present; Never mind that not everybody is there yet. Discuss the event.
• Talk to your registrar

While the event

• Don't schedule any work for you; you will be busy solving unexpected problems. If not, you have earned to enjoy the event. People will want to talk to you.
• Think one or two time slots ahead.
• Walk around at least once and see the activities; you might want to do some changes; staff might want to talk to you.
• Check whether the cook gets help; check whether helpers get time off.
• Trust your staff. Most work hard in their area. However, you are the only person having the overview over the whole event and might see a few "fires" to fight.
• Ask for help cleaning up well before people are gone. You might be pre-occupied just when people are leaving.
• The food line... One of these days I will write down a few thoughts about how to avoid having hour long food lines.

After the event

• Call volunteers for their receipts. (Once the adrenaline is gone, some will be slow with their receipts.)
• Make a post mortem meeting (key people only).
• Whom do you need to thank?