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To me, one of the hard parts may be dealing with the egos of the adults from the combined units. The fight will be over who's in control. This is the way we did it; no, we did it this way. Does not change the cause of the failed units. Until we address the reasons youth are not coming or staying, scouting will go the way of G-scouting.

I joke with scouts that dens have numbers, patrols have names!” But, I get your point. The challenge is finding that charter organization who wants to support the program you have in mind.

As we again are looking at our over a century old troop folding due to the many issues with program and leadership for a broad enough program, I reviewed the concept noted.  I could see that it would be viable in some ways, but finding a way to keep the separate units' tenure could be a challenge.  On the other hand, it might be viable with some tweaks to fit the histories and such, but cooperative programs.     Does anyone know of something like this happening?  How do you work with the historical elements?  I find myself recollecting that in the thirties we had a Sea Scout Patrol that was chartered separately, but was still part of our larger unit.  We had a troop charter and a secnd "Patrol" charter for the crew.  That seems a logical concept now.  thanks for reviewing this.  

The problem isn't necessarily salary bloat, it is that the resource has been mis-applied. To survive, scouting is going to have to devote more resources towards unit operations even as unit numbers decrease. That's because the bar is always being raised due to incidents and liability issues. One of the huge issues facing scouting is the degree to which it has always relied upon volunteers. Volunteers and volunteerism, though, are in general decline. Unlike other youth organizations and many nonprofits, scouting has never developed strategies to cope with this reality, largely because it requires re-engineering structure far beyond consolidating councils. Apart from not having the bodies, scouting also lacks reliable expertise. You can't train unpaid volunteers enough to be considered expert in some of these areas. The aforementioned Range and Target sports is one example. In the years ahead, that is an area where scouting is likely going to be forced to either contain those activities to places where it can provide professional level supervision, provide direct paid unit support, or contract with third party providers. 

I dont think we can cut enough salary bloat to save the camps; save some maybe, but there is going to be winners and losers.