Starting a Venturing Crew

Starting a Venturing Crew can be a great way to bring the values of Scouting to a new group of young adults. Venturing is a co-ed program for youth ages 14 to 21 that offers high adventure and leadership opportunities. Here are some steps to help you get started.

Steps for Starting a Venturing Crew

Find a Chartered Organization: A chartered organization is a group that agrees to sponsor your Venturing Crew. This can be a school, church, or other community group. The organization will provide meeting space, support, and guidance. This is the very first step for starting a Venturing Crew.
Recruit Advisors and Committee Members: You will need a group of adults who are willing to serve as Advisors and Committee Members for your Crew. These individuals will help plan activities, provide guidance, and ensure that the Crew is following the rules and regulations of the Boy Scouts of America.

Get Trained: All Advisors and Committee Members will need to complete Youth Protection Training and other required training courses. This step in starting a Venturing Crew will ensure that everyone is knowledgeable about the rules and regulations of the program.
Complete a Program Capability Inventory: This inventory will help you determine what types of activities your Crew is interested in. This can include outdoor adventures, community service projects, and leadership development opportunities.
Invite New Members to Join: Spread the word about your new Venturing Crew and encourage youth to join. You can send out flyers, post on social media, or hold a kickoff meeting to generate interest.

Elect and Train Crew Officers: Once you have a group of youth members, hold elections for Crew officers. These individuals will be responsible for leading the Crew and organizing activities. Make sure to provide training for the officers to help them succeed.

Starting a Venturing Crew can be a rewarding experience for both youth and adults. It offers opportunities for personal growth, leadership development, and fun adventures. By following these steps, you can create a successful Venturing Crew that will provide a positive experience for everyone involved.

Learn More about Venturing

Venturing is a program that helps young adults grow personally and as leaders, emphasizing outdoor activities, community service, and personal development. Adult volunteers provide guidance and support as Venturers pursue their goals. The program emphasizes outdoor activities, community service, and personal development, and offers a wide range of activities including camping, hiking, rock climbing, kayaking, community service projects, and leadership training. Learn more.

Video: What Is Venturing?

Comments

17 responses to “Starting a Venturing Crew”

Scoutmamaof4

October 17, 2011

Just for the record, the proper terminology is ‘Venturing’ Crew, not ‘Venture’ Crew. Venturers in a Venturing Crew, not Venture Scouts in a Venture Crew.

Good luck with the Crew! Venturing is, in my opinion, the best thing to happen to teen since the invention of pizza!

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Barbara

January 12, 2012

How do you obtain a charter if you are not connected with a church or organization? Someone who is independent.

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1. Scouter Mom
  
  January 12, 2012
  
  We have local hobby shops who charter Crews. Some sports teams are chartered as Crews. You can also see if there is a local VFW post, Elks Club, etc who would be willing to charter you. I am pretty sure you can even just get a few parents grouped together to charter a unit. Call down to your local council and ask. I’m sure that if you tell them you want to get a Crew started, they will help you find a way to do it.
  
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Rsanders79

April 17, 2012

This was very helpful. Thanks for posting this.

One other comment…
Scoutmamaof4, you are one of MANY people who, on forums concerning this topic, have felt it necessary to nit-pickingly correct someones venture/venturing terminology. Why is this even worth mentioning?

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1. cindy
  
  July 22, 2012
  
  BECAUSE, our program, venturING, is named that way from national, and that decision came down over 15 years ago.
  
  those of us self described terminology police feel the compelling need to educate those of you who persist in not following training guidelines, which do establish the proper terminology for our program as follows:
  
  program name: venturING
  youth member: venturer
  adult member: advisor, associate advisor, committee member of a venturING crew
  
  our program name strips on our class a uniform shirts tell you all you need to know: VENTURING, BSA
  
  got it?
  
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  1. Scoutmaster
    
    September 21, 2014
    
    Within a Boy Scout troop there may be an optional Venture Patrol – a patrol made up of boys 13 or older who are capable or willing to take on more daring or tasking activities. This is one source of some of the confusion. It is very easy to kill a good message with bad delivery. Might I suggest that whenever someone wants to ensure the correct terminology is being used that it is done as an independent message rather than a direct response and correction of someone’s usage of a term, and perhaps that it can be in a helpful tone such as, “For the record …” or “to avoid confusion, I just want to point out the difference …” rather than a direct confrontational approach?
    
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2. Jay VanKirk
  
  September 13, 2014
  
  It sure seems nit-picky …but it has the same slippery slope shared by incomplete uniforms, poor attendance, and loss of goodwill with public relations from not wearing the uniform. If you don’t inform yourself enough to call your own group by the correct name, or care enough to do so, it is an indicator. Perhaps the confusion is just because a lot of folks don’t “look it up?”
  
  A “venture” is just one undertaking that presents some risk and offers an uncertain outcome.
  
  Venturing is what a crew does, because they organize and carry out numerous ventures.
  
  A venture that turns out to be exciting and memorable is an adventure.
  
  The crew-members are therefor Venturers! – not ventures. Please be good role models by showing respect for our language and for our Scouting Organizations. The difference between nit-picking and caring gets blurry sometimes. I think it is important for our BSA members to all get this detail correct – and not so important for the general public.
  
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TD

May 21, 2012

I think that people nit-pick about the term because Venturing means something completely different than “Venture” as in “Venture Patrol”.
Venturing Crews have differnet training, methods, expectations and to some extent, values than Boy Scout Venture Patrols.

Some people think all of us are Cub Scouts. Honestly, would you not correct someone if they called your unit a Cub Scout Troop?

This brings up the point that BSA really should change the name “Venture Patrol”. It just confuses a lot of people. BSA has MANY committees that work on this kind of thing. They should be working on this ASAP.

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VenturerMom2090

December 31, 2012

In regards to proper use of terms and grammer, there are a least two ways to respond to corrections. One way is to be courteous and thankful that someone is being helpful and generous by sharing knowlege. The other way is to scoff at that person and call them a nit-picker. Maybe those who choose the second response should refer to the Venturing Oath: As a Venturer, I promise to do my duty to God and help strengthen America, to help others, and to seek truth, fairness, and adventure in the world. The Venturing program is the young adult program of the Boy Scouts of America, therefore the Scout Law also applies to Venturers, it states: A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, HELPFUL, friendly, COURTEOUS, KIND, obedient, CHEERFUL, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.

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Dan (Minnesota)

December 31, 2013

Question #1:
When you were originally forming the Venturing Crew, how many adults did you have going in right from the beginning, 3 or 5 adults to sign up with the BSA? We are in the process of forming a Fire/EMS/Public Safety Crew here in Minnesota and wanted to go with a Venturing Crew rather then with Exploring.

Question #2:
Pro’s and Con’s? Any regrets you’ve had on forming a crew and are you able to keep the kids interested after a length of time in the crew?

Thanks for sharing your Venturing information on this page. It made for a nice read and gave us a shot in the arm to start actually forming a crew after all these years.

Dan in Minnesota.

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1. Scouter Mom
  
  January 1, 2014
  
  It has always been my husband and myself as the primary adult leadership for the crew, with another parent serving as Committee Chair and a couple of other adults from our parish as the committee.
  
  Our Crew serves as our parish youth group. We like being chartered as a crew because of the insurance coverage, the access to facilities such as cabins, and the additional program it provides through local Venturing events. Our crew is small – about 6 to 8 core teens with a few others occasionally joining in. We are still going after four years. We had little activity last year after most of the original members moved on to other activities. But we were able to successfully recruit in a new group this year which has breathed new life into it.
  
  I think it is important to understand that Venturing crews often serve niche groups of teens. While some are large, many are fewer than a dozen youth. If you are going to keep the program going long term, it might be better to consider success as serving a few teens well rather than establishing a large program.
  
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cubmom

September 10, 2014

My 14 year old is not enjoying Scouting like he did and we have been considering strting a new Crew to help pick up the enthusiam. Thank you for this forum and the chance to lear from those who have already succeeded in creating a Crew.
How did you go about finding a Sponser? Should this be an adult responsibility or the boys? Are girls required from the start or can a Crew be started without girls?
Thanks gain!

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1. LaVue
  
  February 25, 2015
  
  We had a “”Let’s Consider Having a Venturing Crew” meeting with my grandkids, their friends, and some of the older Boy Scouts. The teens all wanted to do it so both adults and teens discussed possible sponsors. We wrote them down, discussed if they would be able to furnish a place to meet, then numbered them in order of our 1st choice on down. We considered churches that the people present attend, Lions Club, and VFW. Our 1st choice was a church, a church member said he and his son would ask at the next church board meeting. The church said yes so we had another planning meeting this week. The adults decided which positions they wanted so we will be turning in our Venturing Crew paperwork next week after all the applications get the needed signatures. We happen to have a co-ed crew but you can have an all-boy crew or an all-girl crew, they are all fine. If you have a co-ed crew you have to have an adult female leader at all meetings and activities. Good luck!
  
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Aileen

August 3, 2015

Hi, Interested in starting a crew, like the idea of a patrol off our troop. Could that include girls? Would be much easier to use our existing committee? Any thoughts.

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1. Scouter Mom
  
  August 3, 2015
  
  If you want to include girls in your activities, you should form a Venturing crew. Check with your local council. They’ll tell you how to get started.
  
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2. Erin Howarth
  
  January 17, 2017
  
  Aileen: in our council (Cascade Pacific) we are trying to promote something that we are calling vertical scouting in which a pack, troop and crew all share the same committee (and chartered organization), so you can start a Venture Crew with your troop committee, that is entirely appropriate. Everyone ends up with multiple registrations, no extra fees.
  
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PJ Keeler IV

January 23, 2017

As a former District Venturing Chair I feel I need to urge caution over the “multiple adult registrations. I have witnessed too many cases of burn out or Units imploding because in truth a Crew needs a complete set of different primary leaders than a Troop. The Troop will last, but unless there is constant recruitment for the Crew, 95% of Crews don’t make it past either the “3year bubble” or if lucky “5 year bubble”.
My Crew is on it’s 14th “generation” and that has been very tough at times, so please recruit extra leaders. It is called the “truck factor”, meaning how many adults have to get hit by trucks before your program is blinking red.

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