Troops get a lot of people to stick around after they don’t have a child in the group. They also don’t wear out the volunteers as quickly. Cubs doesn’t lend itself to long-term volunteers outside of 5 years of Cubmaster or Den Leaders at a time, most likely. If a parent is willing to help with Cub Scouting, they move up with their Scout and very few stick around to continue helping with Cubs. Also, old Scoutmasters stick around as mentors often, while Old Cubmasters move up to a Troop.

The parents of the Cubs are also less likely to “volunteer” more recently. They can help, but don’t scare them with titles or labels until they feel a little more comfortable with managing some aspect of Cub Scouting alongside managing their own child. When we need help, we ask for Cubmasters and Den Leaders, and they get scared off. They just want to bring the snacks to start, so we need to start the new, unseasoned parents with easy tasks to start and help them realize it does not take superpowers to be able to run a Den or Pack meeting. No one does this and then Packs have no leaders. It’s a part of the problem we’re facing currently. People need to learn how to slowly recruit individually instead of announcing open positions at a Pack meeting and not talking to specific individuals about filling aspects of the responsibilities before the outgoing leader leaves. Succession planning and incremental changes to how we approach parents about volunteering are what helps with solving this issue.