A yearly planning meeting helps to set the schedule of trips, meetings and responsibilities while giving everyone a voice.
Show Notes:
- Snacks and frequent breaks help planning meeting go smoothly.
- Yearly Planning template in MS Word (editable) format.
- Boy Scout Program Features (Amazon)
Transcript:
One of the goals of this video series is to keep it short and on topic, and not ramble from topic to topic. This video picks up a bit from the last video on running a meeting, in it I mentioned our yearly planning meeting, which I believe is a helpful topic on its own.
Our yearly planning meeting is held between June and the end of August before our season starts in September.
At this meeting all the scouts and leaders are invited to attend. Here we have some clear goals to accomplish. We want to 1) set who the service patrol and program patrols are for each month; 2) Choose where we are going to camp for each month of the year. 3) Choose the theme for each month and 4) Decide on any historical trip we are going to take for the year. It’s usually set at 1 per year.
For those unfamiliar with the concepts, service patrols, in out troop, handle the flag ceremony at the start and end of the meeting and are responsible for cleaning up the area putting all the troop gear away at the end. The program patrol handles the content of each meeting, but as I think on it, these are two great topics for future videos.
The meeting is also a good opportunity for the boys to interact all together and bond over a common set of tasks. All in total it takes about 4 hours to accomplish if the boys are focused. So, we plan for 5 hours, and we break for lunch, which the troop provides at no additional cost to the boys.
To accomplish all this everyone gets a planning sheet that I designed and customize each year. It contains all the meeting dates for the year, accounting for weeks where we don’t meet for holidays, or other reasons we can’t use our normal meeting space. It also included key dates for council level activities that we normally take advantage of, and school holidays that may interfere with trips and such.
To simplify things each patrol gets at least 1 month of service and program, and usually 2 per year. By picking a theme, the program patrol has the opportunity to focus on what they want to do during their month using the theme as a guide.
When it’s all complete, the adults have a list of where we are going so we can book in advance, and the boys and parents have an idea of what the year is shaping up like. Everyone gets a say, and it usually works out pretty well, but this is what works for us. I’ve included this recent example in MS Word format for to play with in your own troop in the show notes.
Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with the hope we can all learn together.
I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was the yearly planning meeting.
