A link to the requirements for merit badges inside SB, without having to start a badge on one of the scouts profiles to see them, would be helpful. Otherwise, toggling to these via Google gets confusing.
And it would be cool to be able to send MB Counselor names and contact details to scouts from the search list, without assigning them, so that scouts have options to call. How do others share Counselor details?
Have you seen the references section? Would that work for you?
When I meet with a Scout to discuss Merit Badge Counselors, I have the Scout write down the name(s) and contact information for the MBCs. If there is only 1 I am suggesting, the Scout can write it (in pencil) on the Blue Card I just signed. Since many Scouts do not have the ability to communicate electronically and it is the Scout’s responsibility to get the information, not the parent’s, I prefer to treat all Scouts equally and have them all write the information.
@MaryPeterson,
Most of our scouts aren’t connected to Scoutbook yet, so there’s no way to share MB info with them electronically. Given the age of our scouts, I don’t expect that to change very much for a year or two…
So, given that, when a scout tells us he wants to work on a particular merit badge, we verbally give him the contact info for a counselor, and it’s up to the scout to open the communication with the counselor. For the most part, our boys aren’t going outside of our unit, unless they’re going to a council merit badge day or summer camp, so it hasn’t been a big problem.
Hi, Mary,
I generally start off by asking the scout if he has a counselor with whom he wants to work. If so, I run a quick check on whether or not the counselor shows up on our council’s list. If the scout doesn’t have contact info for the counselor, I will provide what’s on the council’s web list.
If not, I discuss a couple of counselors with the scout in person, and have them write down the information.
I remind the scout about the YPT rules (no one-on-one, etc) and remind them that having the parent or a buddy present it their best way to satisfy this. If I happen to know that there’s another scout who recently started a badge, I might suggest that the two of them team-up for meetings with the same counselor so that it’s easier to meet the YPT requirements.
Yes, very familiar with this. We just hoped to share names internally as we are encouraging scouts to access SB, too. It is time killing for the scouts to write out manually and many repeat requests as they get lost. No surprises there!
Maybe if the Scouts has to hand write their Blue Cards each time they would take better care of them.
We as leaders should not be doing as leaders what they should be doing for themselves.
Hi Ed,
I agree. This step comes before the blue card- they don’t lose those. They lose the names to call, pre-badge.
Mary
You can view all Merit Badge Requirements on Scouting.org on the Merit Badges page – this is the resource you should direct all scouts and scouters to, and you don’t have to login to anything to view all of the requirements.
There is a link within Scoutbook and on the the new help.scoutbook.com website - and they both link to this same page/section on scouting.org
We also make our scouts complete their own Blue Cards - as part of the “Why are you interested in this Merit Badge?” process – but if we have a number of scouts doing multiple cards - e.g. for Summer Camp or a Merit Badge University / Event - you can add multiple Merit Badges and use the Scoutbook feature to print Blue Cards for them. (Also saves me some work in signing multiple Blue Cards as well!) 
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