The Patrol Method
Lessons and questions of Scout leadership and operating troop program
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LATEST POSTS
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I agree in that the focus is always on recruitment, not retention. I also think part of the reason for that is that the reasons for poor retention are unpalatable and not what leadership wants to hear. It isn't so much that "bad" units are pushing scouts and families away, it is that the entire organization has become so poorly designed and managed and unworkable that it is very difficult for Scouting America to produce a high quality, consistent product at the unit level whether that's across country let alone across town. The organization needs to re-engineer itself around providing a good product at the unit (parent and scout) level, instead of organizing itself around what has become the Scouting institutionalized monolith. There are so many touchpoints that simply don't work for most parents and kids and there seems to be little recognition of it or appetite for changing anything. -
By Eagle94-A1 · Posted
Don't forget costs. National fees are up. Councils are implementing their fees on top of that. Then uniforms and books. Then activities. -
Yep; lots of selfish and greedy people. Meanwhile, back in the trenches we struggle on to live the Twelve and carry on the Spirit as designed. , -
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/us/politics/pentagon-scouting-america-lawsuit.html It's just a rinse and repeat of the same people looking for any way to throw mud on scouting from any angle. Look at this guy suing to get the MOU from the pentagon. Literally nothing changed on the Scouting America side so this dude is on a fishing expedition to see what he can sue about next. This is what scouting is up against, a constant barrage of people who hate the movement and will do anything to dredge the name of through the mud at any chance. This MOU non-sense was basically over-and-done and we were all moving on, now Hegseth is going to get a burr up his you know what and the movement is going to come under fire again. -
We're basically wrapping up the very tail end of crossover season here in my district; we know right now that arrow of light scouts who have not crossed are basically never going to join a troop. This time period has led my district to look at who the "winners" and "losers" of crossover season are; the results are staggering. Over half of our districts troops received ZERO crossovers this year. When we (district committee) looked into this we noticed a trend. The units that received ZERO crossovers had all of the same attributes in common. Units with untrained leaders, small leadership groups, and little to no advancement of current scouts were the big losers that received no crossovers. We also identified "super losers" in the crossover situation; these were units (we had multiple) that have not received a crossover in 2 or more of the past 4 years. We are very concerned with those units as they are in a situation where they have a structural gap of little to no young scouts for the older scouts to lead, and in a few years (if they troops survive) they will have no older scouts to lead the potential younger scouts. I know other activities are pulling families away from scouts; however, I think bad units are also pushing families away.
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