Summer Camp

The results of the Troop coffee fundraiser are in, and we netted $7,600 to surpass our goal of $4,000.  We probably have another $500 to come in from some stragglers.  On top of this we received $6,000 from some institutional sources, so we have what we need to greatly subsidize the costs of our under-resourced families and their girls in our 30-Scout Troop.  We will use some for some equipment purchases and make a Friends of Scouting contribution to our local council (something like $1,500).  The rest we will save to begin building our long-term fund for stability.  Thanks to everyone for the many good suggestions.  We used every one of them. Note to Liz:  There is no girl-specific Web Site template out there at this point.  We wrote ours from scratch after we figured out how we would operate.  Then we did our best to determine what an 11-13 year old girl and her parents would want to know about that implementation and wrote to that specific interest in our very-urban environment.  We talk directly to that girl except for my “Scoutmaster’s Letter” to the parents — but even that is very specific to our urban all-girl implementation.  I will say the writing of the site turned out to be the way we ended up understanding our challenges and deciding how the Troop would launch and operate.  The site has been a huge hit.  Our new parents love it because it is beginner-friendly and explains the basics without using any Scouting lingo or abbreviations.  While not relevant to our use of our site, it is interesting to note that it has been viewed by 2.2K discrete visitors since going active on October 1, 2018, including viewers from 40 countries.  Maybe this is just a typical result for troop web sites — I just don’t know.

In my experience there are several factors as to why young adults do not stick around. College is indeed a big one. One issue I faced when I was under 25 was that other adults refused to view me as a fellow adult with the same knowledge, abilities, and skills that they had. As a 21 year old OA chapter advisor, that was a big issue with others on the district committee I sat with. I was either told I don't know what i'm talking about, or ignored all together. I had to use my allies on the committees to get my ideas across fro the benefit of the Scouts. Worse case was the SM who wanted me to alter the troop's OA election results. He actually followed me into the parking lot, cursing me out and saying I had no idea what I was doing in the OA.  But the #1 factor I see now affects the 18-20 year olds, and we need to keep them active. The problem is thatr National no longer counts them as adults in regards to YP guidelines. I remember the stink that happened when National tried to implement the policy immediately, and troops started complaining to the councils and HA bases because they would have to cancel trips because they were relying on the 18-20 y.o. ASMs as the 2nd adult. If the young adults do not believe National trusts them as adults, why should they stick around?

Read Green Bar Bill Hillcourt's books.  That will help

There are older brothers of our scouts, with great skills that they learned in scouting, that I would like to tap to help with our Scouts BSA girls -- were they not away from home attending college.   There are also older cousins, male and female, in their twenties,  with Eagle Scout and Venturing backgrounds,  that I would love to tap to help out -- except that they live out of state.  We live in a town which people leave at age 18.   And to which people move at around age thirtyish,  already married,  and either with preschool children, or thinking about soon having children. 

The www.ScoutsBsaDcGirls.org website is great! Our troop ended up going with using the services provided by bsahosting.org    Our committee member who was looking into this liked that the website came with email lists for the troop with a reasonable privacy policy that did not involve selling our data.    They have a template troop website that a troop can customize.