How to run a successful event that the boys will love, be well received by the adults and leaders, and stay under budget at the same time.
Show Notes:
- USSSP: Campout and Camporee Programs
- How to build a better budget (Scouting Magazine)
Transcript:
ScoutmasterDave has been helping staff district events for many years. I have been running our district camporee for about seven years, and there isn’t a season that goes by that I don’t lend a hand to an event or two.
If you’ve never run an event of any kind, there are a few key points to think about before taking on the task.
The first of which is, what is planned activity.
While many of the events in my district follow the same event offerings every year, the Camporee is different. Each year it has a new theme, and new events. The majority these events however are based in scout skills. In general there’s a first aid type event, a physical fitness type event, a fire building type event and a knots/lashings type event.
Between all this we craft a program that puts a new twist on these skill bases. One year for instance we build trebuchets, and another year we had boys lasso saw horses among other events.
Once however you get “what” you are doing down, you need to design it in a way that is cost effective. The budgeting aspect of it is what gets most of these events into trouble.
In the event I run I try and stay close to budget, while I don’t aim for a zero sum, I feel my job is not to create an event as a fundraiser for the council. That being said, they of course get their taste.
Coming up with a budget first, and then working the events, any giveaways or prizes, and food for staff members and cracker barrels lets you take the events and allocate funds based on the budget, and not the other way around.
Next up is staffing. The last few years I’ve been able to have a core staff and then pull 1-2 people from each unit to help with events. This works well, as it lets you tap people who don’t normally get tapped to help. This however is a double-edged sword. I’ve have help who were superstars and really took on the event, and then there’s some help that disappear after lunch, never to be seen again.
Staffing is one of those hard ones, because its very easy to keep going back to the same well time after time, eventually the well runs try, as most folks get tapped for lots of events.
Promotion is another aspect of the event, as you definitely don’t want to waste your time running an event that ends up having very few people, and participation is one of the factors used to come up with a budget. With few people attending it’s easy for your event to go into the red rather quickly, so I like to be conservative.
You want to create a buzz about the event through patch design contests, exciting themes, or events that the boys WANT to participate in.
It all comes down to the leadership though, as most of the avenues open to you for promotion are at other events, roundtables or email blasts to leaders. In some instances I’ve even called, emailed or cajoled leaders in person to get them to sign up. But this is what works for us.
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 running a district event.
