The Importance of Recruiting

What is recruiting, and why is it important?

Recruiting is the act of going out and telling people about Sea Scouts, then bringing them back to join your ship. This can take many forms. Recruiting can be anything from talking to your friends and dragging them to a meeting or other event. Recruiting can also be more formal such as making a presentation for another youth group, or other organization.

Recruiting is how Sea Scouts got to its centennial year, and recruiting will be what gets us to our bicentennial. If your ship does not recruit, then chances are it will fold in a year or two. As horrible as that sounds, it is the truth. If recruiting is not happening, then there is no new blood coming in. If there is no new blood coming in then in a couple years most of the crew will have aged out, graduated, moved, or just fallen off the face of the earth.

So recruiting is important. Now how do you go about doing it? Where do you start? This may be a surprise, but you don’t just go out and start talking to people willy nilly. There has to be a plan. This plan should have two parts. The first part of your plan is how you are going to recruit; are you going to make some posters and brochures to put up around town, or are you going to focus on talking to people. The second part of your plan is more important than the first. This part of your plan addresses what you are going to do with people who show up to a meeting for the first time. Just because someone shows up once does not mean they are going to stay.

Check back tomorrow to see some suggestions for getting people in the door.

Here are said suggestions.

Parker Smith,
Western Region Boatswain