How do you figure that only aiming to increasing female membership is acceptable?  I also don't see any mention of this as a recruiting event.  It's a camporee.  Those are for active Scouts, not the general public.  Is demographic-based Scouting events where we really want to go?  That seems to fly in the face of universal brotherhood and becomes an "othering" type of program.  

Agreed. That concept should no longer be done. I’m not in support of coed troops, but I am also not in support of girl only camporees or summer camp weeks. 

Lol. Hmm, in theory? Whose theory? I learned these facts from interviewing hundreds of scouters, parents, and scouts. And, the experiences of scouters in other states verify my results. So, I'm confident with my analysis.  The prime reason for the burnout is Tigers. The number of volunteers, including the parents, nearly doubles the desired number of volunteers to manage the whole pack program. If you read the present discussions on the forum, you find that many units are not recruiting even the minimum ideal number of volunteers for their program. So, they don't have a pool of non-burned-out adults they can alternate into the program. What you often see is dens doubling up to take up slack for the burned out volunteers or just finding warm bodies to basically babysit through meetings. Either way, the meetings aren't fun and families are too busy to endure boring programs that keep asking for their time and money.  Whats really bad about the problem is that even if a family sticks it out to finish the cub program, they have such a bad taste of scouting that they done even consider continuing to a troop. Which, is why the national average of crossovers to troops is less than 50 percent. In my opinion, to even try and approach the problem, National has to cut the Tiger program from the Cub program. But, the number losses are too scary, so the whole BSA program continues to bleed. Barry  

Fewer people read a local paper anymore, where news about scouting used to be. Bad experience/ didn't like the unit is why what percentage left scouts? If they had said no time, not interested, etc then it's an issue of other activities crowding out scouts but a negative experience is a big red flag to me. What's worse is the "people don't know they can be in any unit." I read that as whoever asked the questions is blaming the unit leaders. "Don't like the unit? Find another, problem solved." Yes. My experience was being a den leader is the toughest job because neither the scouts nor adults help out. Add to that the program being repetitive and I had to put on a weekly program on my own for 8 kids. It was only 2 years for me but do that for 5 and of course the parents are exhausted. I never saw newly entering parents that were cub leaders want to jump in at the troop level. There was always a 3 to 6 mo leader gap. That was great in that it gave them time to also learn because we had plenty of adults helping out. Now, however, the new parents are pressed into service as soon as possible. It's really bad when the key 3 are new to a troop. They mean well and they have hearts of gold, but it's usually not good. I've seen units collapse because nobody will step up. The leaders were great, they tried to find successors, they finally told the parents it's time, they left and the units folded. Rather than blame the adults that won't help out maybe some consideration should be given to why it's so much work to put on a successful scout unit. The idea of an hour a week is the easiest scouter joke to get a laugh. At one point I was telling new parents that close to one hour of scouter time was required for each scout in the troop per week. 50 scouts meant close to 50 hours. Troop meetings, committee meetings, conferences, campouts, records, keeping gear and buying patches. OA, roundtable, training, PLC coaching, eagle coaching, .... and it doesn't include MB counselors. Parents see this effort and back off for a reason. Hence, my request to simplify the program.

Ok, makes sense but shouldnt be that way in cubs. In theory each Lion and Tiger den is starting a new Den Leader and soon there after picking up an assistant. When the lead starts to get burned out the assistant and that lead should be able to swap positions. From a committee standpoint at cubs the committee should be rotating to avoid the burnout. Let us not kid ourselves, most of the committee positions are just show up and answer a very narrow range of questions; if you have an experienced CC most of the committee is just breathing oxygen and hopefully learning something in the event that the CC gets hit by a bus.