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Your idea isn't new; the BSA has made these kinds of promises since the creation of the program. I do agree that at this age, cost isn't as much of an issue as the cub program, but a results-based program is very subjective. And most of the time the adults go the easy route of Eagle for their results-based program. However, youth at this age aren't advancement-driven. I found that most Eagle-driven programs lose 70% of their scouts by age 15 because advancement gets boring. Adventure-driven programs thrive because they are fun in the outdoors, and because independence in the patrol method drives more maturity in their growth. Go look at units where scouts age out, and you will find they are more scout-run with adventure. Also, adventure-driven programs typically have a high number of Eagles because the scouts are in the program a long time and earn the Eagle requirements by simply participating. Barry

Putting on my Membership Chairman hat. Almost 95% of scouts in troops come from the Cubs. If the youth aren't recruited in Cubs, the troops will have to recruit from other sources. When National added additional requirements to the Tiger program in 2000 (increasing meetings to every week, an adult required for each scout), many units were unable to meet the new demands, and the Tiger numbers dropped significantly. That drop became obvious in 2005 when the troop membership suddenly dropped. If you don't get the Cubs, you don't get the crossovers. Barry

We are not making participation mandatory for Scouts or parents. In Scouting, there really isn't "skin in the game" unless you want to put it there. Yes, this is it. When I had the reins of the Troop, we went camping every month, with two or three big events every summer... 50-miler backpacking trips, week-long beach adventures, 50-miler canoeing, 100+ mile cycling trips, etc. Now that I have pulled back a lot from the Troop, there is no one who is willing to put that much effort into the program. So, the numbers are dwindling. Agree with you wholeheartedly... young men want adventure, not academics.

It is dying. And the majority of folks do not want to put quality control measures. They want 'High Speed, Low Drag" advancement and increasing the number of Eagle Scouts. They would rather celebrate the 13 or 14 year old with all 130+MBs than the troop that is doing trail work on the AT, or the troop running Red Cross evac stations.

But the mergers are going to come slow, they're all fighting them, they only do it (looking at you Long Island & Northern MN.) when they simply have no other options and national forces them to do it with no cards on the table.

Supposedly, if every CO in a county petitions to leave and join a council, it can happen. BUT every single CO has to agree to it. I do not know if they have everyone on board or not. But I told them to have patience as mergers are coming.

Ran across this interesting article today. There have been a lot of complaints on the rising cost of Scouting driving families away. Seems that youth sports are also seeing rising costs.. https://www.foxnews.com/media/youth-sports-crisis-skyrocketing-costs-price-out-parents-threaten-childhood-health

Registrars are extremely overworked this time of year, and usually until February/March One of the ways we found more Scouts were registration audits. We asked each unit to give us a list of their active Scouts, and compared it to the charter. I can tell you Scouts who should be on charters were found not to be on it, and other Scouts who should have been removed from the charter, were still on it. I know I still find that I have found folks still on charters that I took off the last year, and missing others, even with My.Scouting.Org. You cannot take off the ones still listed, but you can add the missing ones. The December 31st number doesn't actually come out until March. They do have a grace period. I have heard some pros joke about "December 42nd"

I do not know about today, but I know about back in the day. The #1 membership stat was the December 31st number. That was the one used in reports, media, etc. It is also the reason why a lot of councils had recharter December; delinquent units are still on the rolls until February or March. Rational was that paperwork was a pain, and it can take that long to get things fixed. The #2 stat was the June 30th number. That was used to set goals, see how much work will need to be done in Round Up, etc. Finally you had a monthly stat, and that compared to the previous years monthly stat. That is why you can see different numbers supposedly covering the same thing. While some will say it is "apples to apples," It is more like Granny Smith Apples to Gala Apples to Red Delicious Apples.

@Tron, Since FOS has dried up, and only 1 unit in the district goes to the local summer camp, The "troop" is being charged $37.50 per Scout in addition to $100 recharter fee. Next year it goes up to $75/Scout. That is in addition to the individual 's national registration fee, council service fee, and insurance fee. That is $120/Scout. So a family with 4 Scouts in the program costs $480 individual fees plus $150 for "Fair Share", plus unit dues. And that doesn't include camp outs and summer camps. I know folks say scouting is cheap compared to sports, but there are a lot of folks who cannot afford to do sports, but could afford Scouting. Not any more.

Another pet peeve... Scout camps that are not designed around the Patrol Method. What we have mostly these days is a Troop-amoeba campsite with individual Scouts doing their own individually tailored programs during the day. And, they are being given merit badges without having done the work. (Yes, there are exceptions, but this is the general rule, in my observation...) The hidden message is that advancement is the primary purpose of Scouting. If the flagships of the councils, the council-run Summer Camps, are not pushing the Patrol Method, then they work at cross-purposes with units who are trying to do it that way.

A different thread made me think of this and I think it fits here better than there. I think my pet peeve is the scouter who claims "My program is great, my troop has X number of scouts!" and this literally comes from a discussion I had with an SM recently. The SM's troop went from single digits to over 40 in 2 years; he's running the same program he has always run. He refuses to consider that some of the success is not his program but the fact that his town went from 6 troops to 2 troops and the other troop is ready to fold. The dude snaps and screams at scouts but he's become the only option in his town because he has a solid charter and a dedicated donated space to hold scout meetings 7 days a week 24 hours a day.

We have the infrastructure and paid staffing of 1970 when the program had 4 to 5 times the participation rate. I think we could increase participation but I don't think we're ever hitting the 1970 membership number. We could perhaps reduce some camps to primitive camping only and mothball them for brighter days; however, we just don't need the number of camps that we have. In my state we literally have double the number of resident camp slots each summer than there are scouts in the state; the councils are fighting each other for scouts, all of the camps are suffering. FOS is already dead in many councils, the constant money hustle has everyone burned out. We have to address the central office problem of scouting; too many chiefs, not enough indians, we need to consolidate councils to save the program. What exactly is a unit fair share fee? Is it different than a council fee somehow? Costs are nothing in scouting. Literally nothing compared to everything else. We lose scouts every year to club sports (especially baseball). Parents in my area are ponying up literally thousands of dollars a year, sometimes every few weeks for cycle after 8 week cycle of club sports; mandatory attendance policies for parents in the bleachers and driving. Some sports are worse than others, the sports leagues are in league with the varsity coaches; my daughter is being told that "it is heavily recommended to play at least 3 seasons of club soccer at $800 a pop if she wants to retain her varsity slot"; my buddy is ponying up $3200 every 8 weeks for club volleyball to retain his daughters slot on the varsity team. I'm lucky that my daughters league(s) are all local, my buddy is being forced to go to regional events which takes him sometimes 3 states away as a mandatory driver, and then he has to fork over extra for hotel rooms. Club sports are growing exponentially; what are we doing wrong that club sports at their insane cost are growing and growing while we are retracting and retracting? As I started stating above, I don't think costs are driving their choices. I will channel my inner Stan Lee and ask the question "What If?"; what if the issue is results based and not cost based? I would make the argument that if we (as a program) had a guarantee that if a scout was truly active and attended X number of meetings and Y number of weekend campouts, and at least 1 resident camp a year that the scout would X ranks and Y merit badges in every 12 month period our recruitment would double and our retention would move into the 80% range. I was just looking at my troops roster due to renewals coming due for most of the troop in a few days. We have 6 scouts dropping for sure, no chance in hell of retaining them. 4 of them have no chance of making it to Eagle, 2 have been lost to club sports at age 12 and did not make Scout rank since crossing in March. We have another 10 potentially dropping; 1 made eagle and is moving on, the other 9 are all inactive due to club sports and are way off any reasonable pace of making eagle. This is going to be a tough hit and a big ego bruise for the SM if we really lose 14 scouts in 15 days; it's going to cast a shadow across the whole troop.

Ok, what other side losses would there be? Sold camps and properties Loss of other jobs. Staff and camp personal Even more loss to FOS due to the loss of local connections. Most likely a house of cards that is falling apart. I'm not sure if it can be reversed under the current system.

When I was a DE, my district had 45% of the current membership numbers. And that was just 2 counties.

About 2 councils worth of scouts. Look at all that administrative bloat. That's easily 1.6 million more for program if they merge down to 2 councils and fire 8 scout executives.

I do wonder what the "Actual" BSA National Numbers are at this point. Nobody really knows. Nobody knows where to get the information. Most people have stopped asking. Main success is judged by funds raised. Most of our council staff is focused on getting cash, to support all the staff that is raising cash. In our district we have and continue to lose troops and packs, but not sure there is any effort to save any of them or figure a way to stem the tide. We have not witnessed an actual DE or other council staff in the wild in forever. It's not that we have a bad relationship, that would infer our units actually knew who they were, we literally have no relationship. There are maybe 20 units in the district (though I think less) and one would assume they may come by annually to see what's up. In the end BSA (sorry SA) will likely not end with a bang, it will just not be around the professionals that were supposed to be the managers and provide vision will go raise money elsewhere.

Thank you so much for sharing this! We are the writers of this book, and we are happy to chat with Scouts and volunteers about this new series. You're the real heroes of our story!

Some folks had signed up with an organization that you agree with, and over time the organization changes their ideas in an attempt to attract new members..

North Carolina includes: Last Dec / This Dec / % change 070, Old North State, Greensboro: 3284 / 2794 / -14.82% 414, Daniel Boone, Asheville: 1381 / 1244 / -9.92% 415, Mecklenburg County, Charlotte: 4380 / 4286 / -3.29% 416, Central NC, Albemarle: 2541 / 2546 / +0.20% 420: Piedmont, Gastonia: 3903 / 3702 / -5.15% 421, Occoneechee, Raleigh: 8170 / 8189 / +0.23% 424, Tuscarora, Goldsboro: 1839 / 1351 / -26.54% 425, Cape Fear, Wilmington: 2125 / 1954 / -8.05% 426, East Carolina, Kinston: 2597 / 2355 / -9.32% 427, Old Hickory, Winston-Salem: 2586 / 2468 / -4.56% And I'll include 596, Tidewater, Virginia Beach, VA, which extends down into NC: 3934 / 3777 / -3.99% And in the aggregate, all those councils: 36740 / 34616 / -5.78%