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@ChristianB - welcome to the forum. It strikes me that the core problem here is one of adult leadership. The Committee Chair should be working with the Scoutmaster to ensure that the Committee is correctly doing it's role. Further, the Committee Chair should be setting direction for the entire adult team to ensure that all the adults are working together so that the troop runs well. The Troop model in the BSA is that the Committee Chair is the leader of the adult team of the troop. That the advancement and finance chairs are feuding with the Scoutmaster is the Committee Chair's responsibility to sort out. Individual adult leaders should not be undermining the Scoutmaster on program questions. Advancement is the purview of the Scoutmaster. The Advancement Chair's role is to facilitate the advancement process, serve as a champion, and provide oversight of the advancement program in a way to identify when kids are getting missed. The Advancement Chair should not be deciding how quickly anyone advances. Again, the Committee Chair should be involved here. You want to do this the nice guy way, have a conversation about your concerns with the Committee Chair. Talk to him/her about the adult drama you see and enlist the CC's help in getting it cleaned up. The pace of advancement for a couple of Scouts is not an issue that should derail a well functioning troop. If you want to do this a bit more aggressively, go to the next Troop Committee Meeting. At the meeting bring up that you are concerned that there is friction between the adults. Be prepared to say that you see the advancement chair superseding the Scoutmaster on advancement and that it's a problem. Be prepared to point out that it's leading to Scoutmaster and his kids likely to leave. Call these folks out and stir it up. BTW - how big is your troop. This sounds like the kind of nonsense you see in very small troops where the adults politics are preventing the troop from growing. -
By HICO_Eagle · Posted
To some extent, I think a lot of this has been part of a long game to destroy the pillars of Western society and that while the aim of individual lawyers may have been money (for them or for the victims), the ultimate and primary aim of a growing segment of activists for decades has been to tear down "the Church", the BSA, the military, the police, etc. Tearing down the organizations does nothing positive for the current and future generations who could have benefited from the programs and teaching. All it does is leave a vacuum that various nefarious powers are just drooling to fill (and already has been filling in the mainstream media, public education, academia, etc.). -
I'd tell them to pound sand myself. I believe that quoting a cost of $250-$300 a year per scout to fund council operations is probably pretty typical. If you look, a council of 10,000 scouts probably does have an annual budget in the $3 million dollar range. The problem is that councils are expected to raise most of that through donations. The council is capped at $66, meaning that if they want to get all their funding through fees then they are limited to an annual budget of $660,000 for 10,000 scouts. They want to raise more, then they have to do it through real fundraising and appeals to families - not coercion through mandatory donations. Frankly, I would tell the DE that they can feel free to come and solicit donations. Tell him that you'll even encourage families to give. But, he's got to knock off the coercion.
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Hi @RichardB, As always, thanks for taking the time to share some insight with us on these topics. I've got very little insight how to communicate this feedback to national, please permit me to proactively share a few constructive thoughts. This is not criticism. Also, don't feel compelled to respond - I'm not asking you to defend this new program. I just wanted to share what I think are pretty common thoughts from out here in the trenches. Frist - and to be clear - I'm taking an open minded approach to this particular topic. I sat through the recent webinar and am likely to take the short term camp administrator training. I do this because I generally try to extract the value from these sorts of opportunities for our programs. My motivation is to run the best Scouting programs possible and I will take input from whatever quarter I can. Second - I would share the perception that this is being perceived as yet another bureaucratic imposition by national. No one I know likes this. If I, for example, look at the two things listed in the materials you quoted as the purpose: This seems fair. I would tend to agree with others that I don't see why this is needed all of a sudden. Yet, I can certainly imagine that national is receiving pressure to tighten up the application of health and safety rules. If this is part of the motivation, I would strongly encourage the national staff to simply admit that. We all can appreciate that liability rules continually place increasing challenges on everyone. The problem is that the language in the materials provides no compelling reason why national needs a new program for this. We have many thousands of very capable adults across the country doing a great job at this. To now say that these individuals need to sit through a course to teach them how to do this is a difficult sell and strains our credibility with these valued volunteers. I have inferred that this is for a) insurance reasons, b) to try and cut down on the number of safety mistakes being made. So I tell people that and they generally can accept it. If this standard is really about making programming better, then this needs to be communicated very differently. If this really is all about communicating and teaching best practices for event programming, then make this all about national providing increased program training for district and council volunteers. Hold seminars and webinars on best practices for events. Record them, put them on a website. Play it up. Provide some sort of recognition after a person has completed enough of the different units. Rejuvenate training at the local level and incorporate this into it. Imagine a yearly ongoing training for district/council event planners. Again, this could be great stuff. Selling it The problem NCAP has it that is comes across with all the excitement of a new rule from my state's Department of Motor Vehicles. It could be (and hopefully is) great stuff. Yet, it's being imposed on everyone. Pronouncements of new required training, new administrator roles, new forms and rules, are very heavy handed. Just look at the first paragraphs on the website at https://www.scouting.org/outdoor-programs/camping/short-term-camp/. The intro page on short term camping immediately jumps into the rules and standards. It makes national come across as being more concerned about the rules than about the program quality. In our area we do all these things. Other than filling out more paperwork, we do all of this. These first two paragraphs do absolutely nothing to make me excited about the national team's great work. Again, it's important for us all to understand why. There has to be value in it for volunteers and clear impact to local programs. If the value is not obvious, then people need to help us see the value. This is crucial. Volunteers will eventually comply to rules that are rolled out, but it costs National and the Council credibility with volunteers when decisions are imposed on them. Helping volunteers see the value goes a long way towards building credibility for national amongst the volunteers. Thank you! If you made it this far, thank you for reading through it all. I do greatly appreciate what the national professional staff does. Thank you very much.
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By CynicalScouter · Posted
National prohibits the insurance fee from exceeding $12. So no, your council is not following the rules. If they are mandating it, tell them to pound sand and contact National. If it is a "strongly encouraged donation", just tell them to pound sand.
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