School Night to Join Scouting is right around the corner!!!

If your unit has already scheduled your School Night, please get us the details and complete your unit flyer and poster request HERE. We will get flyers (or peachjar) set up for you and make sure your event is on our master list.

• NOTE - completing this form (in detail) will be CRITICAL in 2019, as we are participating in a geofencing effort to help promote Cub Scout recruiting.  Be sure to give us specific date, time and location information as well as physical addresses for the Schools you recruit out of!

School Night to Join Scouting, or SNJS as it is often called, is a recruiting event held at every elementary school to give the youth served by that school an opportunity to join Cub Scouts. It is a cooperative effort between our district membership teams and our pack leadership. Join Scouting Night should be a fun informative night for prospective families. The goal for the evening is to register youth in Cub Scouts and welcome their family to your Pack.

SNJS can occur throughout the year, with primary emphasis on the Fall and Spring. SNJS should not take place on the same night as “Back to School Night", otherwise known as open house or meet the teacher night, or the monthly pack meeting.

For many parents, this is the first experience they have with Scouting, so their initial impression is crucial. If parents leave with from a bad experience they may never give Scouting another chance. For this reason we all need to work hard to ensure that the new families feel welcomed and informed. Remember, parents trust us with their most precious treasures: their children. We must always do our best to meet their highest expectations.

At the bottom of this page you will find resources to assist you with your Pack's SNJS event, including a planning and goal-setting form, checklists, agendas and even a script.  Your Council and District teams also provide support and assistance with flyers, yard signs, posters, school visits and with the conduct of the SNJS itself.  Once again in 2019 we will make use of School Night Ambassadors.  These district volunteers (or staff) will assist you with planning and goal setting and will participate in your School Night, arriving with all the supplies you need to run the event (except of course any unit-specific items like calendars, rosters, display items etc).  Units should also designate someone in the unit as a New Member Coordinator.  A job description is located in the resources section, but this role is designed to make sure that all new Scouts and families feel welcomed and included in your Pack from day 1.

We will once again be conducting SNJS training events for unit leaders on the following dates:

• June 25th - 6:30pm at the American Legion in Shelbina
• June 27th - 6:30pm at the LDS Church in Tipton
• July 9th - 6:30pm at Wesley United Methodist Church in Jefferson City
• July 11th - 6:30pm at Community United Methodist Church in Columbia

We will provide pizza and drinks, so please RSVP HERE to let us know you will be coming.  We will also once again have a special t-shirt for your New Member Coordinator which will be requested in the RSVP process.

If your unit is unable to attend one of our SNJS training sessions, contact your DE, District Membership Chair or Council Field Director David Harris at the council office at 573-449-2561 Ext. 203 or by email at David.Harris@Scouting.org to set a time to go through it all.

We will publish a master list of all of the School Nights to Join Scouting on our IWANTTOBEACUBSCOUT page which can be found here (this data is gathered through the flyer/poster ordering link above - please understand this is a very fluid document and it will be updated every few days).

The Hallsville and Columbia School Districts are moving to an e-flyer system called PeachJar. Cub Scout Packs will still submit a request to our office with what they want on the flyer and then we will submit that to PeachJar for approval and distribution.

Here is what you can expect for your unit’s fall recruiting:

1. We will still create a “flyer”, but it will be delivered electronically through Peachjar.
2. The specific details are still being developed, but we will provide units with a template for use in giving us all the pertinent information for their school-night “flyer”
3. Flyer “uploads” will be coordinated through the office via an account we have already set up with Peachjar.  Packs SHOULD NOT create their own account and pay for this service!
4. We will still be able to use posters and yardsigns, and be able to conduct boy-talks prior to school-nights
5. The use of Peachjar will dovetail very nicely with the upcoming online registration system from BSA.

Much more detail will be forthcoming during our school night training later this summer.

 Online registration is live!

Here is a link to some QUICK TIPS and the official Online Registration website with more tools and resources.

2019 SNJS Resources are shown below.