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I gave up referencing myself a while ago, so I won’t link to the thread that shows this data, but here goes anyway … while BSA was mulling over including girls in packs and troops (under the corporate double-speak “family scouting”), there was a WOSM census that revealed that membership declined in nearly every European country immediately after their scouting organization incorporated girls. Recovery to where they would have the same number of boys as they did before desegregation would take decades, if it has occurred yet at all. The UK took 25 years. So, if BSA is indeed about serving
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Just curious..did the BSA do any risk analysis on any of these decisions? Or did they ask 3 people at the food truck and 2 said yes so they plowed ahead?
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Gays had very little influence one way or the other on membership until National decided to allow gays. That caused the exodus in numbers as well as as alumni funds. And that was the beginning of raising membership fees. Forcing scouting out of schools was done by the atheist. Non of the progressive activism really affected membership except for the girls. What really hurt the BSA the most was the financial support from past members. While liberal corporations taking away their support got all the media attention, it was the huge alumni pockets that hurt the most as National tried to
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When we hear BSA plans to simplify the program (for Scouts), is the fear moving it back to 1972 and skill awards?
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You had me going there for a moment. Then I remembered that National only makes program changes that serve the folks at National. I’ve been wondering lately what the Boy Scout program has that would attract girls over the Girl Scouts program. Then I ran into a BSA girls troop fundraising at a local store yesterday. These girls were in full uniforms with every patch they could wear appropriate for their rank. They looked really sharp and any Scoutmaster would be proud. I think these girls are attracted to the legacy Boy Scout program. Sadly, National is going to shuck that away from them l
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BSA lost a million and a half scouts from the start of Dale to lifting the ban on gay scouts. They fought 15+ years and cemented their legacy of discrimination against the gay community. Yes they are much more inclusive now, but 15+ years digs a deep hole of mistrust. GSUSA who avoided that mess has 700,000 more girls than total youth in BSA. That said, it is tough to determine if BSA numbers would be better now if they accepted gay youth at the same time GSUSA did. Loosing relationships with public schools was damaging, but I expect trends would have worked against BSA regardless.
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I remember the first year girls were admitted the annual report emphasized that some 77K girls joined cub scouts, but neglected to mention there were 91K fewer boys in cub scouts. That trend accelerated. Compare the number of girls in the programs today (175K or so) to the massive decrease in the numbers of boys served (somewhere in the range of -1.1 million compared to 5 years ago. Maybe it was never about "serving more youth." Maybe it was about serving different youth. Remember, Surbaugh said the legacy clientele was no longer good enough for the BSA.
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Bruce Russell; a prize winning political cartoonist of the WWII era. So, likely copied from a newspaper of the time. -
"Tells me that inclusivity isn't the problem. " There lies the problem. For whatever reason, the wider media has chosen to stigmatize BSA, and really other positive (with the known aberrations) groups such as traditional service organizations for adults, and too often our own civil servants. This has metastasized in the modern era of overly available media output with little control for the larger good. And this problem is rampant in our political machines, socalled entertainment industry, and our educational entities. I have no answer, other than to try and put the positive images forwa
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Did the addition of girls actually improve numbers? The chart doesn't indicate that. The various changes (and I wouldn't call BLM support and the LDS departure an "outside change") haven't brought in the numbers that we were told they would. The numbers in the Boy Scout program didn't change all that much from 1979 to 2019. Even with COVID, if the changes were to have had the desired effect, I would expect the bars for Boy Scouts to have remained the same, not 75% of the previous numbers. COVID has been over for more than a year and the numbers have dropped even more. Tells me that inclu
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Of course it is 5 years old. I used it to illustrate a strategic choice and the thinking process behind it. Let's not kid ourselves though. "Bringing scouting to more youth" is easy to rally around. Reality? BSA is serving 1 million fewer youth than 5 years ago. 1 million fewer (50% less) is not more youth. Perhaps it is a non starter for most of the youth as you say, but I'm not so sure. 50% of them are simply gone. In the last 5 years BSA has failed miserably at serving more youth.
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Interesting article, but it is five years old. On the other hand it reinforces what I have said from the start; that allowing girls is a good thing, and the issues the so called experts raise are pretty much non starters for most of the youth. As always, the adults cause the most waves. The likelihood of coed is almost a reality, and it will in time be just the norm, though a few specific troops likely will still remain.
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And let's not forget that as late as 1990 about 18% of boys in the target population age were in a BSA program and that percentage was still about 15% in 2000. I believe it slid down from there to about 9% by 2017 when Surbaugh and the higher ups decided there were two paths forward. One was to juice the flywheel with laser focus. But, Surbaugh and others thought that meant becoming a "very small, boutique organization serving what's probably a legacy clientele" (quote from article referenced below). So they decided to transform into something else--a saving grace of bigger is better because a
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Fascinating graph. It explains a lot. The rise in scouts was tied to the baby boom a lot more than I realized. I joined in 1971, which was both about the peak and near the end of the baby boom. I don't know what happened in 86 but there was a big bump in cub scouts but no change boy scouts. The other thing I noticed is the connection to the family savings rate and this graph. Nobody even measured it before 1950 because it was so low, but then there was a huge surge in the 60's and a drop off mid to late 70's that has been going down since. Maybe I'm seeing what I want but the lesson to me
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So..if there are folks who were at the Annual meeting, what else was put out as solutions to the decreasing membership numbers. Did any in attendance stand up and scream "how can we fix this before we go out of business" or just death by powerpoint? Name Change....personally don't see hundreds of thousands of youth flocking the council offices to sign up Coed Troops...is the official position that this too will increase membership? Seems like existing co-located units MIGHT merge into one but that isn't assured. CO still have the say. Slides on how many girls are in
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In the first three decades of our troop it was an NRA club as well. The SM owned a ranch and it had an arroyo. He built a range in the arroyo where the scouts trained. We still have remnants of that in historical items, including an interesting journal of names and scores, along with ammunition used. Sam also ran the local camp range for years, and then someone else from the troop took it over. During WWII, all the members that went in the service were marksmen or experts. Below is an interesting target that apparently was used during the War years. I have no idea where it came fr
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Sadly, that would truly not surprise me in the least. So many of our challenges relate directly to people being too self-centered or simply completely clueless. That, of course brings us back to why Scouting IS still important, if we could just work the basic programs with arm distant adult mentoring. Oh, and lock the lawyers up unless they have a valid reason to be let out. If our society would simply "live the twelve" and see that foundation for what it still is, and was with a few sad exceptions, we would maybe be better off. But blinders seem to have taken over the role of glasses and
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May 11, 2024, Mississippi Valley Council : ADAMS COUNTY, Ill. - An ammunition shed at Saukenauk Scout Reservation’s shotgun range caught fire Thursday, destroying $8,000 of ammo. Mississippi Valley Council Scout Executive Ricci Dula said the shed, constructed as a Wood Badge project, was gutted leaving debris on the range. Only leaders and the reservation’s ranger were onsite at the time. “We’re still determining the cause of the fire,” Dula said. “Nobody was harmed or at any risk of being harmed. The Mendon Fire Department did an exemplary job; the fire could have bee -
Stage 1 .... We are well past this now, but were there in the 80s and 90s.... Another characteristic of stage one decline is the loss of the adventurous, open-minded, searching orientation for continuous learning. Answers are believed to be found in the years of experience, which might be useful, yet often can be blinding in new situations. Typically, generational and positional gaps present themselves with one-up-man-ship dynamics by those with positional power or organizational tenure. The past filters the present so that a true future cannot be created without showing “due” and “respec
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2 gold devices. Or here's a wacky thought... ask the Scout to read the requirements and tell you what he thinks he has earned!
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A panda walks into a bar and eats shoots and leaves OR A panda walks into a bar and eats, shoots, and leaves. Let's eat, Grandma! OR Let's eat Grandma! Commas kill! Or, at least, the lack of one can cost you money! https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/think-commas-don-t-matter-omitting-one-cost-maine-dairy-n847151 Without the comma, the clause causes confusion, but grammatically belongs to its immediate predecessor only. With a comma, it would be an independent clause, and therefore an additional requirement for all. The preceding "or" makes this more potentially more co
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To earn the Cycling Merit Badge a Scout rides a minimum of 150 miles if taking the road cycling option, or 52 miles if taking the mountain bike option. (NB if they do Motorboating they have gone a minimum of a mile, if Horsemanship 60 feet). I do not interpret 2a to be 100. miles in addition to the merit badge, I interpret it to be including the badge. So, if taking the road cycling route the Scout needs an additional 50 miles above and beyond the Cycling Merit Badge. This does illustrate some of the inequity in the award, it is easier to achieve road cycling than mountain bik
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National Annual Reports
InquisitiveScouter replied to RememberSchiff's topic in Open Discussion - Program
And love this one from Stage 2, Undisciplined Pursuit of More - Coinciding within this stage is the loss of key talent. “The right people” begin to leave because the organization has lost sight of its core. Mediocrity permeates performance as tenure supercedes actual performance or growth economies forgive incompetency. Either way, the organization regresses developmentally from people first to product or strategy first. The flow of cash and/or profits hide the inefficiencies so that cost growth is compensated by price increases instead of greater efficiencies through disciplined action a -
National Annual Reports
InquisitiveScouter replied to RememberSchiff's topic in Open Discussion - Program
Hmmm... Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation - Grasping for salvation suggests the organization has lost awareness of the soul of its own greatness. (check) - Change for change sake through a series of “silver bullets”, such as leaps into new technologies, new markets or new businesses become the thread of searching for the “home run” that can bring the organization back into the black (check) - The gap between the ideal and what is real gets larger as “hype precedes results”. No longer wedded to the brutal facts, the focus shifts to imagineering the organization’s saving grace -
Random thought this morning, what happens when people realize that Tenderfoot is a derogatory name for a beginner and people get upset at being called a "Second Class Scout"? Is that suddenly where BSA/SA will put its foot down? Seems kind of arbitrary. If you can change the name of the organization, why can't you change the names of the ranks? On top of that, why have ranks? The rest of WOSM doesn't have ranks, except for the top one in each program. How inclusive is it to say you can't be a certain rank if you haven't spent this certain length of time as the previous rank?
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I gave up referencing myself a while ago, so I won’t link to the thread that shows this data, but here goes anyway … while BSA was mulling over including girls in packs and troops (under the corporate double-speak “family scouting”), there was a WOSM census that revealed that membership declined in nearly every European country immediately after their scouting organization incorporated girls. Recovery to where they would have the same number of boys as they did before desegregation would take decades, if it has occurred yet at all. The UK took 25 years. So, if BSA is indeed about serving more youth, the strategy chosen is a very long term one — quite an anomaly for any American organization. -
Just curious..did the BSA do any risk analysis on any of these decisions? Or did they ask 3 people at the food truck and 2 said yes so they plowed ahead? -
Gays had very little influence one way or the other on membership until National decided to allow gays. That caused the exodus in numbers as well as as alumni funds. And that was the beginning of raising membership fees. Forcing scouting out of schools was done by the atheist. Non of the progressive activism really affected membership except for the girls. What really hurt the BSA the most was the financial support from past members. While liberal corporations taking away their support got all the media attention, it was the huge alumni pockets that hurt the most as National tried to walk the political tightrope. Barry -
When we hear BSA plans to simplify the program (for Scouts), is the fear moving it back to 1972 and skill awards? -
You had me going there for a moment. Then I remembered that National only makes program changes that serve the folks at National. I’ve been wondering lately what the Boy Scout program has that would attract girls over the Girl Scouts program. Then I ran into a BSA girls troop fundraising at a local store yesterday. These girls were in full uniforms with every patch they could wear appropriate for their rank. They looked really sharp and any Scoutmaster would be proud. I think these girls are attracted to the legacy Boy Scout program. Sadly, National is going to shuck that away from them like they have been doing to the rest of us for years. Barry
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