by James Tonin, Clubspaces Editorial Team

Most Scout packs follow a similar meeting format:  an opening or welcome ceremony precedes a game before items of pack business are discussed and the floor is opened to participants and parents.  By the time goodbyes are said, anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours has gone by.

You might be finding that your pack meetings are stretching later and later into the evening with each passing month.  If you want to keep your pack meetings brief, good planning is essential.  Here are a few tested-and-true tips on how to cut down on the time you spend in a meeting without having to axe any of the fun or necessary items of business...

Make a Plan
Chances are you, like many Scout packs, have fallen into a pattern which each meeting more or less follows.  Your membership, too, knows how things run and what gets discussed at a pack meeting.  However, that doesn’t mean you’re bound to anything. Draw up a tightly-scheduled plan for your meeting, allowing only a few minutes to get things started and relatively brief allowances for entertainment – while you want the meetings to be fun, they’re held to discuss pack business.  That requires being businesslike to a certain degree.

Stay on Schedule
When you make your meeting plan, outline time allowances for each segment of the meeting and stick to it closely.  If the game you’re playing is starting to run too long, end it and call everyone back to order.  If question-and-answer periods are running over time, encourage parents with outstanding questions to call or email a Scout leader afterwards.  However, make sure you don’t sacrifice your accessibility – you want to encourage open and active participation from parents and Scout members.

Prevent Distractions
Keep everyone’s attention focused as the meeting moves forward.  Discourage digressions, keep the item of business at hand the center of your discussion and stay on track.&nb sp; There’s a time for fun--you scheduled it, remember?  Keep fun for fun time.  Keep items of business for business time.  It all comes back to solid planning: if you create and stick to a solid meeting plan, you’ll soon find that you can cover everything you were out to get done while slashing the minutes of your meeting down.  Shorter, better-organized meetings are more likely to drum up parental participation in the pack, from which everyone benefits.