Congratulation Letters
for those achieving
BSA Eagle Scout or GSUSA Gold Award

We all want to do our best to recognize the achievements of the rank Eagle Scout and the achievement of a Girl Scouts Gold Award in our Units. For this purpose, letters are sent out to individuals that take the time to respond with congratulatory letters to the Scout for their achievement. As a way to emphaasize the achievement made by Scouts who achieve the Gold Award or the Eagle Scout rank, Leaders should make every effort to get several special or important leaders to send congratulatory messages to these outstanding youth.

We would like to offer the following tips that have been found helpful in getting the recognition for the youth.

1) Be sure to allow plenty of time for these letters to come back. Some take awhile to respond. Mail the requests out at least 3 months before the Court of Honor to be sure and get the majority of the letters back in time to present them.

2) Write EAGLE SCOUT somewhere on the envelope. Preferably in the left hand bottom area allowing room for the post office to put the bar code under the address. This will speed up the process of it getting to the proper channels for the letter to be sent out.

3) Use mailing labels and a database program to print them. There are a lot of addresses on this list and it is easier to print them out instead of hand addressing all of them.

4) Use the recommended letter format placed here. It is a standard request format that includes all the information that they are looking for including place, time and Scout's name. Also the leadership position in the unit of the person that is requesting the letters of recognition for the Scout. When sending notes to people asking for letters of commendation, please include:

• The Scout's FULL NAME (not just "Sparky" or "Jimmy" but "Samuel James Jackson" or "James Ray Morrison")
• The Scout's TROOP NUMBER AND COUNCIL NAME (the Troop number is that white number on the red background on his left shoulder; the Council; the Council name appears on that patch right above it), and
• A SHORT DESCRIPTION of the Eagle Scout Service Project. - Many people writing a letter to acknowledge an Eagle Scout or Gold Award would also like to know how the person earned the badge. This gives them more than just a "congratulations, Johnny, on your achievement" line and also can allow the letter to be a bit more personalized than boilerplate letters.

5) Place the letters in a safe place when they start arriving. They will trickle in at first and then some days you will be bombarded with them. It is easier to sort them out later than to try to as you are getting them in the mail.

6) When it is close to the day of the Court Of Honor, or presentation to the Gold Awardee, purchase a binder and page protectors instead of a photo album. Photo album pages are generally smaller in size than a page protector so you have to do some creative folding to get the letters that generally come in 8 1/2 by 11 size to fit.

7) Sort the letters according to type. This makes for a nice transition to read through and the Scout can re-arrange them if he chooses to do so later.

8) When presenting the letters for reading at the Ceremony, do not read all of each and every letter. Instead, select passages of a few that stand out. Find ones that mean something not only to you, but also to the Scout according to the things that mean things to him.

**** Remember**** these are only tips.. they are what have worked from past experience. If you find something here that you don’t think will work for your situation, then feel free to improvise!

Don’t forget to send letters to local dignitaries also.. and to your chartered partner and those who benefited from the Scout's Eagle Project.

Sample letters in Microsoft WORD format for EAGLE are HERE and for GOLD AWARD are HERE
(with these files, right click and save as) Replace the blue text with the correct info

Expect a delay in requests sent to Washington D.C. as mail sent to Governmental officials and agencies is still being processed for Anthrax decontamination.

In the tables below, incumbents who will be leaving office as a result of an election, resignation, or other reasons, are shown in RED, while "Acting", "Elect", or newly appointed (but, as yet unconfirmed or installed) officials are shown in GREEN. last updated in 2004 (but even though officials change, offices usually stay the same)

To identify your Senator or Congressman, see this web page: http://www.congressmerge.com/

Additional addresses can be found at Scoutmaster Calvin Gray's website: http://www.troop405.org/eaglelist/index.html
and on the Redwood Empire Council's website:
http://www.recbsa.org/eaglerec.html

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