First Cubmaster Job: Creating a Leader and Committee Resource Guide

A funny thing happened working my Ticket… I became Cubmaster

Back before I went to Wood Badge, I had been approached that our Cubmaster might need a replacement due to a potential job change. Slightly terrified, I agreed to be plan B if needed, and made taking the Cubmaster training one of my Wood Badge tickets.

Fast forward three months, boom, I’m now incoming Cubmaster effective January 1, 2019. As Will Ferrell said, that escalated quickly. I’m honored that I was asked as I very much respect our outgoing CM and the fact that he would trust this position to me.

One of the things I’ve struggled with since I became a leader is that there was no map of what to do or what was expected outside of the online or in person training. I’m type A+ personality, so I don’t like surprises and always prefer to have plans (multiple if possible). Last year, I created yearly plans for each den rank as I wanted to map out the handbooks to give my Cubs every opportunity to experience every adventure. It was incredibly helpful to know how each week would go, and was easy to move around if we found something took longer or shorter to complete. I had three Wolves who ended up being superachievers by the end of the year. I went on to create Summer Jump Start Guides to help the Cubs earn adventures over the summer break while out with their families or attending various summer camps, which allows them to make Scouting a year-round part of their lives.

So, when I was voted to step up, I decided I wanted to put a little organization in place. I love binders with sorted information that I can build upon, something I’ve done a lot over the last 16 years of running a non-profit animal rescue. Since our leaders and committees are in various stages of new to experienced, I wanted to be sure that the information I was presenting would appeal to all and not feel redundant.

Last night, I put together the first round of my new Leader and Committee Resource guides. My hope is that these will get built upon each month at the meetings with something being presented that will be of use and help each in their role with Cub Scouts.

The first page is a roster of all our leaders and committee members, their positions, and phone numbers. It never hurts to have an actual reference.

The divider behind that is our calendar. I printed through the end of this Scouting year including pack and council activities as I knew them, but we’ll have to make changes already.

After that, is our entire pack meeting plans from January to December. Our previous CM used the online plans and I thought they were great. Each meeting, a leader picks a section for their den to do, and it helps to make sure each Cub is participating in the pack meeting program. So I went ahead and mapped out for the entire year so if someone needs to work something into their planning, they have it.

My thickest section of the binder is Cub Opportunities. There are so many award opportunities outside of the handbooks that don’t get explored during the year. So I printed out the ones I have been doing with my dens (and hope to see us do as a pack) as a reference for leaders to consider implementing in their yearly programming. This section includes:

Additionally, I don’t think many understand the Journey to Excellence (JTE). We have one committee member who fills everything out, but I don’t think she gets enough information fed to her to really be able to see how our pack is shining. So I made a JTE report form that can be filled out by each den leader when doing things as a den and submitted, and also included a copy of the JTE scorecard so they understood what makes up the JTE criteria.

Very few of our leaders have earned knots, mostly because I don’t think they understand how. So, I included the forms for them to track their service and completions that can be turned in and be recognized for their hard work in providing a quality program for our Cubs. This section includes:

It’s not fancy, but I hope it becomes a valuable resource. I’m also working on a Cubmaster Guide that will be able to be handed off to my successor so they will understand what is expected as their role in our pack.

**Update August 21, 2019**

For our summer planning, I created a Scoutbook guide for each of the leaders as we were going to move all our advancement tracking to Scoutbook so leaders could be responsible for entering on their own.

Since we had to also recruit new Lions and Tigers leaders, I also included this great handout I found online that specifically targets them since they are usually newer to Scouting.

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I’ve had a few questions about my patches and pins.

The patch on my right (under my name tag) is the Autism and Scouting patch. This is a self study program any leader can download for free. You purchase the patch through their website: https://www.autismempowerment.org/autism-scouting-program/

The pins under my knot left to right:
Baloo, NOVA, BSA Emergency Prep, and God and Me Mentor.

Obviously, the neckerchief and woggle are because this good ole Beaver is still working her ticket.

The round patch around my crest (they put that on a little high but I haven’t been motivated enough to move it) is the Messenger of Peace which leaders AND Scouts can earn.

The walking stick has the names of each of our Cubmasters since 2000 engraved on it. Each CM gets to add their own to the stick, so I have a little project ahead of me as several of them went so far as to add their totem too.

Some additional notes based upon questions I got in the Cub Scout Volunteers facebook group:

1. Those who plan to do this, I made 12 binders in all. I did all the copying at OfficeMax and with the BSA discount card (that info is on my site as well), it brought it down to under $20 for all the printing. It took me about three and a half hours to assemble everything though. I made the covers in MS Word, bought the index dividers at the dollar tree, and the binders came as a four pack from Walmart (not available online but in store).

2. For the calendars, I used a template I found online that is editable in MS Word. Scroll to where it says 2019 OpenOffice calendars. I selected the grey middle one. I did have to make the font size 10 in order to fit into the blocks where we could still write on them in the meetings.