Re: Introduction
settummanque, or blackeagle (blkeagle@DYNASTY.NET)
Sun, 4 Jan 1998 01:18:54 -0600
I don't normally respond to intros specifically, but John's response cried
out "Say something positive here, please!"
So I will and I hope that others will do likewise if they are so inclined,
because what John Calkins is experiencing is also being experienced by well
over 100 other "John"s and "Jane"s out there (pointing out to the streets
from the window)!
John wrote in part:
>I love scouting and what it teaches our young men. Lately, however, I
>am becoming disillusioned with BSA and need a "pick-me-up". In the >last
year during my attendance at our monthly district meetings, it seems
>that all that ever is discussed is fund raising for the BSA.
It seemed that way because your District and Council is having problems
keeping afloat right now, John. It's not your fault nor the fault of other
Scouters in your District. Your Council, like 32 others this past year,
have been trying to "stave off" merger or consolidation with other local
Councils, and its unfortunate, but money is at the root of all of their
concerns and problems.
See, even though a Council can go out there and have a banner year with
youth and units, if they don't meet their financial goals, they cannot
continue to offer the same level of programming as the year before. They
cannot offer the same level of camping as the year before, and in some
Councils' cases, they have lost campers because they could not pay their
camp staff an increase, and therefore bringing them back for another year.
Some Councils have had to reduce "merit payments" to successful executives,
therefore causing them to either abandon ship or to move onward to another
career altogether.
It's the green.
>We never
>seem to get the time allotted to talk program for the boys. I hate to
>say it but I get the feeling that the BSA want the volunteers to raise
>funds for the professional payroll and have us ignore the boys.
Not so much for the professional payroll...but for those things that your
Council have been doing in the past and can't do anymore because of a cut in
income. See, when you and I were growing up in Scouting, the program was
well-supported by industry and "big businesses", by the military, by the
schools and churches, and by Americans at large. We gave to United Funds
and Appeals, we gave additional monies to what was then called SME, and we
probably even gave to our units too.
Today, United Ways and Appeals have all but turned their backs on the BSA's
local Councils...if not outright refusals, they have trimmed the amount of
money going to the Councils by somewhere around 30 percent. So, when a local
Council expected to get 32 percent of its operating income from United Ways
in the Council's territories and get only 17 to 19 percent this past year
and projected to get only 15 to 17 percent this year, you can see their
concern.
Also, "big businesses" want to see a profit from the monies they donate. We
in the Scouting business...ourselves and our professional counterparts
aren't doing that "sales stuff" anymore like we used to. We used to SHOW
them visibly each winter what Scouting is about and how their monies can be
used to assist and help that lone kid that NEEDS Scouting NOW! We can't do
it because we don't have the monies to put on the dinners, because many of
the big business leaders are stretched to the limits by being on boards of
many more organizations and groups than in the past, and because lots of
those big businesses have taken a stand (for good or bad) against the BSA's
policies and it's stands on Gayness, Girls and God/religion.
Our local Councils aren't trying to get us to "donate our proceeds when we
die" as much as they used to, because the approach they were taking ("You
make money now, we make money when you die") doesn't appeal to today's
adults that realize that a corporation (the BSA) is making money from our
deaths....and no matter how much we can make while we're alive, we want to
have some say in how the BSA is going to use our money after we're
around...and lots of those trust programs didn't allow that, but rather
placing that money into the Council's "General" fund.
Finally, we would rather give to "someone we know" than to "people we don't"
today. We've become more localized in our giving, more willing to give more
to the local Pack, Troop or Post than to the District or Council.
And it moves over to the other kinds of giving: this past year, the
Salvation Army, local newspapers' "Project Hopes", and even the Marine's
Toys for Tots programs all have suffered due to our forgetfulness and/or
unwillingness to look beyond our backdoor fence to others in our communities.
>More
>and more I see price hikes in registeration, awards, less ability to do
>printing to more widely advertise upcoming events. I see more Council
>get in our business to get money we manage to save from those events >to go
into the council coffers while the local districts are left to
>flounder in supplies (such as getting a decent supply of merit badge
>books into the local library for all the boys to have access to). I see
>the push to continually move the renrollment ages downward to get more
>boys (I've heard rumblings of starting to register 6 year olds in the
>program) which increase fees.
Again, all of those things have to do with the losses of monies that the BSA
nationally and within your local Council has experienced over the past five
to seven years. The BSA has been sued, and have had to pay out-of-court
settlements, they have had to increase the cost of the uniforms because they
went from several suppliers to a couple, and they had to pay a large amount
of retiring professionals when the BSA reduced its numbers of local Councils
from somewhere around 600 to today's 234, the numbers of Regions from 6 to
4, and the number of national outdoor ("high") adventure bases from 7 to 4.
The BSA and it's local Councils lost a lot of money when it also sold pricy
camping properties in order to reduce the number of camping properties and
to pay for the other materials.
>Finally, and this one irks me the most, we keep getting the Boys Life
>crammed down our throats and it isn't even anywhere near the quality
>publication it was 15 - 20 years ago. I am hard pressed to find even
>one article in that magazine that covers scout skills and offers ideas
>(new or old) to increase a boy's scout skills. There is always articles
>on sports and what Pack or troop xyz did for summer camp or on some >high
adventure outing. I hardly ever see the how to's in it.
That's because BL is first and foremost the "cash cow" of the BSA, John.
The BSA owns BL, lot, stock and barrel, and every issue sold allows the BSA
to use that money toward national events like the Jamboree and the OA
National Conference and the Exploring Biannual Conference. The BL sales is
VERY IMPORTANT to a professional, because professionals are "graded" on how
many units buy ("use") BL for all of it's youth. While you and I can
disagree on the content of BL...I can pull out older issues that are nothing
more than preteen talk and sports figure ogling with a dash here and there
of Boy Scouting....remember that BL is trying to appeal, like 50 or 60 OTHER
youth magazines today, to YOUTH (boys AND girls) that are interested in
adventure, cerebrities, and "frank talk" about things that matter to them as
YOUTH...having the BSA stuff in there, and emphazing that much of that
adventure can take place in a Cub Pack or Scout Troop; that many of those
cerebs started out or were influnced by Cub Scouting or Boy Scouting (or
both); and that "frank talk" comes from Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts whom "just
happen" to be youth leaders in their own neighborhoods.
BL isn't trying to explain how Scouts went camping and how did they fit
everything into their backpacks....the magazine is a tool to get kids to SEE
how much fun Scouting CAN BE and to influnce them to open the pages
repeately and to "check out them Boy Scouts and see what they're all abouts!"
I'll answer how we can "turn the tide" in my followup to this posting,
John...I'm running really close to the 200 line limit!!
Settummanque!
(c) 1997 Mike Walton ("no such thing as strong coffee,...") (502) 827-9201
(settummanque, the blackeagle) http://dynasty.net/users/blkeagle
241 Fairview Dr., Henderson, KY 42420-4339 blkeagle@dynasty.net
kyblkeagle@aol.com or waltonm@hq.21taacom.army.mil
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