Recruitment and Advertising

Why OSG | Starting a Group | Group Organization | Record Keeping | Finances | Recruitment | Volunteers | Youth Protection | Inclusive Scouting

Recruitment is one of the most time consuming parts of leading a group. Even established groups will have attrition, so it is important to think of this as an ongoing process.

Generally if you are thinking of starting a scout group, you may have a few families in mind who are interested in scouting together. These core families are a great pool to recruit your initial leadership team from.

For an established group, most of your leadership pool will come from the families of the scouts interested in your program. It can be difficult to get volunteers. One strategy if you are struggling with finding enough leaders is to guarantee a spot in your group for the children of leaders.

There are several ways to get the word out about your group:

Focus on the social media platforms that are most likely to reach parents of school-aged kids (or near school-aged kids). This can be a shifting landscape. Consistency of posting is key for engagement.

Facebook is a good place to have a presence. You should set up a public page for your group. Generally groups have selected “community organization” as the group type. At some point, you may also opt to have a private Facebook group for your members.

Instagram can be linked to your Facebook page and you can update both together since they are both owned by Meta.

YouTube is useful if you will be posting any video content.

X (formerly Twitter) is becoming less common these days, as it has lost much of its user base, but you still may opt to get the appropriate handle there.

Discord is popular among younger users and may provide a good platform for interacting with your members. Keep in mind that you must maintain two deep leadership practices in electronic communications.