Troop planning ensures a safe, fun, varied, and engaging troop program that allows for as much scout leadership as possible. Our process breaks down planning into scout-sized pieces and has adult mentoring and coaching to ensure success.
The troop adult and youth leaders review last year's program and decide on broad goals for the coming year. This provides structure of what to plan during quarterly planning. This is normally held in December.
The Troop Scribe prepares a draft calendar looking about 1 year out, and fills in already-known information such as school calendars, dates of regularly scheduled meetings, and district events. He also lists items that need to be planned based on the troop's annual strategy. These are held in February, May, and September. At the end of this meeting, the troop should have a full year's calendar planned including decisions on campouts and a scout designated to lead each event.
At the monthly Patrol Leaders' Council, the youth leaders look at upcoming plans for the next 3 months, review progress toward planning upcoming events, and plan specific activities for two months of troop meetings. Each planned item is assigned to a youth leader or patrol to manage. These happen monthly on the first Thursday that doesn't conflict with holidays.
The appointed Lead Scout, Lead Scoutmaster, and Outdoor Coordinator work together as a team to plan and execute the campout requested by the PLC. This process starts months in advance.
The Scoutmaster, Senior Patrol Leader and Assistant Senior Patrol leaders have a phone call discussion to go over the next upcoming few meetings. Sunday or Monday evening is a good time for this call.
Following each troop meeting or event, members of the Patrol Leaders' Council briefly meet to discuss how the event went, and ensure planning for the next event is on track. This meeting should be very short, about 10-15 minutes maximum. (The meeting is named for the "Green Bars" on youth leader patches)
The Scoutmaster, Assistant Scoutmasters, Committee Chair, and invited adult leaders meet to discuss troop operations with a focus on mentoring the youth's efforts to plan and execute the troop program.
The Committee Chair leads a meeting for the committee members and parents to provide updates on troop operations and needs and approve budgets and policies for the troop.