Planning the Year
Reserve the venue
The event needs a check-in area and enough rooms to run several boards at once, with some set aside for project proposal reviews and some for final Eagle Scout boards of review. Churches, schools, and chartered organizations with classroom wings work well. Pick one regular day of the month so units can plan around it, and reserve the whole year’s dates at once.
Find out when the venue builds its calendar. Many don’t book by calendar year, so the request for next year may be due months before January.
The event is typically the fourth Tuesday evening at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Cumming, Georgia. Scouts check in at 6:30 pm and boards start at 7:00 pm. The church calendars June to June, so the room request for the next year goes in each July. Holiday months move a week earlier.
Build the sign-up
Scouts need a way to reserve a slot, and you need a roster to plan from. One sign-up per year with one date per month keeps it simple. Give each date a slot type for each kind of appointment:
- Eagle Scout board of review
- Service project proposal review
- Adult volunteer
Make it clear on the sign-up that a slot is a reservation only. The Scout is seated if their paperwork is complete at the event.
The district advancement chair builds next year’s SignUpGenius each September, with the three slot types Eagle Rank Board of Review, Service Project Proposal Approval, and Adult Volunteer. The scheduler software can import that sign-up with a SignUpGenius API key, so pre-registered Scouts are recognized at the door. See Setting up the sign-up for what the import expects.
Tell people where to find it
Get the sign-up link onto the council’s website, next to the council’s own Eagle Scout information, and into unit leader channels such as roundtable. Scouts and parents look there first.
Once the new SignUpGenius exists, the district advancement chair asks the council to link it from the district’s Eagle board page on the council site.
Decide how boards get staffed
Every board needs adults. A final board of review, in the Guide to Advancement’s words: “There must be no fewer than three and no more than six members, all at least 21 years old. They need not be on an advancement committee nor be registered with Scouting America, but they must have an understanding of the rank and the purpose and importance of the review.” Count on more adults than boards, because an adult can’t sit on a board for a Scout from their own unit.
Each Scout brings three adult volunteers, such as parents, committee members, or family friends who are at least 21. They sit on boards for the other Scouts at the event. The district has no separate volunteer-recruiting program; this is what keeps the rooms staffed.
Set up the equipment
If you run check-in on a computer, you need an admin laptop for the event chair and one or more sign-in stations (tablets or laptops) at the door, all on the same network. See Scheduler for what the software needs. Venue Wi-Fi is often weak, so plan to install software updates at home, not at the event.