Wood Badge and Adult Leader Training

I think we can all agree that the BSA at every level needs to be able to pay its bills. That includes year round capital and program expenses including salaries and related costs. District professional staff do have to generate a part of that but there ought to be ample time spent on membership recruitment/retention, unit support and cultivation of district and council level volunteers. In my council in the last half dozen years we have gone from 7,000+ volunteers to less than 1,000. It is insane to think that with that kind of a loss that you can even maintain, let alone grow the program. There are a lot of problems/issues and no EZ or quick fixes. 

In my 30 years as a professional and over 20 as a volunteer I always wanted to know the 'lowest' number of registered youth each year since kids stay on the charter until reregistation time. The low number is generally closer to an accurate count of active youths vs 'total youth served (registered) during the year. Districts always carry 'inactive' youths but it is insane to carry 'paper units and members'. Certainly in councils where the management beats professionals with threats of termination if they don't hit their numbers there is that temptation to keep your job or to try to get a promotion but I always felt that would come back to bite you in the butt. Still, I felt that putting 'fake' membership on the books was and is rare. Check out my post on Charter Reps if you want to know who can alert the board to such an issue. The council board should be well informed about the workings of the council and concerned about any area of service, funding and membership where there is a failure to perform properly. It would be great if everyone in every profession lived up to what we hope the program instills in our young people. 

From that Atlanta article, "Eight Scout officials are believed to have participated in the false record-keeping, said Tom Gay, president of the council's board of directors." I know the articles are from 18 years ago, but in this digital age, black eyes take much longer to go away... And, you know there were more involved in both councils... just didn't get implicated in it... And other councils did the same. Think any of those folks are still left in the organization?  I do. Yet another shining example for the mission of BSA, "... to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Scout Law."

Hard to grow when I'm the only one doing anything.  I don't expect every parent to be as dedicated as I am, but I expect them to at least participate when we have a pack meeting.  How hard is it to cheer for a Scout when they receive an award?  The only reason we have den leaders is because I told the parents that there will be no den unless they do it.  Another den got ADLs because the DL failed to put in any advancement for two months.  Their kids were getting no awards and they got fed up.

So you're pack is small which limits your access to adults. Think about the pool of volunteers something like this: There are only so many adults that are at the same time capable of volunteering and able to volunteer. So what you have to do is grow your pack to a level of scouts that gives you access to enough capable and able adults. Typically that number is 30-45 scouts.