fred johnson

boomerscouter ... as long as the reduced fees, dues, etc are not tied to raising money and the raised funds can't be targetted to those who ran the fundraiser or the ran the organization. The funds of a non-profit are to be used for the purpose of the non-profit for the public good. Individuals raising money targetted to reducing their own costs is not being used for the public purpose of the non-profit. Requiring participation in a fundraiser is viewed as equivalent as dues because the public can't benefit from the non-profit without raising funds. I'm not an IRS or legal expert, but the trouble is not that this is hard to interpret. The problem is people want to continue as is and ignore the new IRS emphasis.

YOUR EXAMPLE IS BAD. You are misdirecting by "pay" having two connotations. One being where did the money come from. The other being who did the paperwork. Paying with troop funds is not the same as depositing money from parents in the troop checking account and then writing a check to Philmont. The troop only begins to pay for Philmont when the fundraiser earnings are used. If mom/dad write a check that is deposited in the troop account, the troop is not paying I have never seen a troop pay for a "troop" to go to Tomahawk. An individual scout, yes. Part of some expenses, yes. But troops never use general funds to send eveyone to camp. Heck, 10 people is $10,000 cost. You would have to be in a troop that raised a heck of alot of money.

Though units will set non-profit fundraiser participation rules, the IRS has already said that's not legit. It's conveying the private benefit of membership based on fundraiser participation where the result of fundraisers is supposed to be the public benefit of the purpose of the non-profit. It's imaginable that the unit instead of raising as much money could just charge the members more. Since there is a financial equivalent, it's private benefit.

SSScout ... The trouble is that you may "want" to have it different, but the IRS is interpreting the law. If you want a different interpretation, change the law. I must admit that the IRS is right in my opinion. Ignore the trinkets for now. Even the IRS states that some non-significant amount is okay in that it helps earn more money for the non-profit. The issue is that the money earned under the non-profit name is for the non-profit. Those that lead the non-profit or do the fundraising can't be the targets of the benefits because of their fundraising. That is self serving and using the non-profit good will to benefit those who did the sales. It is no better than telemarketers soliciting donations for policemen and firemen and then keeping 80% of the funds for themselves and giving 20% to the non-profit. At least in that case, those telemarketers submit tax returns and income tax statements. Beyond a token amount, scouts benefiting from non-profit is ethically dishonest. We are used to it, but it is. We all know it. We just want to pretend it's ethically okay. Heck, it's amazing what the human mind can justify. But that doesn't make it right.

I must admit too that I'm sort of miffed the previous discussions threads disappeared. Is it a web site bug or censorship? I'd like to understand what happened?

What is SMF? What do you mean by "archive this forum?"

We have had local groups use this one. http://www.blackbeard-cruises.com/scouts/

Sounds like he automated "Leave No Trace" almost perfectly. It's that almost that will get you.

Camp cards are great !!! I've bought several myself. They make sense financially and I'm always glad to support scouts. We don't sell popcorn. It's a horrible value. Walmart and Target sell comparative products for 15% to 25% of the price. It's really a cash donation with a thank you gift. I remember one year buying the microwave popcorn for $15 for the box. The outer card board could be peeled off to reveal other packaging and that exact product package could be bought at Walmart for $2.50. Ever since then, I do not buy the popcorn. Camp card on the other hand are absolutely great !!!

Best answer.

First, I'd exclude the extremes that seem to be about 5% to 10% of the scouts. The scout with a parent who pushes them to be in scouting but where the scout works even harder to get out of scouting. And ... the scout who's parents are not there and do not value scouting but the scout gets there and is really involved. After those extremes, I have a few thoughts. ---- Kids value what their parents value. If the parent shows through actions that they value scouting, the kid will value scouting more. ---- Most Eagle scouts have motivating parents that keep them on the path. I've only seen one or two scouts that gets there mostly on their own. ---- Most scouts face major distractions or even want to quit at some point. Having an involved parent helps them stay on-track. ---- Logistics are hard. Kids are busy and calendars are mostly full these days. Involved parents help kids navigate all the calendar confusion and avoid really screwed up situations. ---- Parent involvement is a good prediction of how far kids will go. So with that said, I always joke that Eagle scouts parents really deserve those Eagle scout parent pins. It's not a declaration that their kid earned Eagle. It's a symbol that they worked their tails off driving the kid, washing clothes, helping organize sleeping bags, etc.

Yeah, there are many arguments both ways. Another aspect I see is that a real informed choice rarely happens. Most brothers join the troop their first brother joined. Only one he's seen, family association and family pressure. Most den members follow the decision of the den leader and his son. Loyalty. Most packs feed the same troop until something happens. Then the pack feeds another troop until something else happens. Such trends and statistics reflect herd movements and not real "choice". It's much less about a real decision and much less about unit quality and much more about adult influence and adult friendships. Anyone who really things the current system promotes "choice" is fooling themselves. Heck, Eagle92's last comment reflected the reality. Scouts move in herds and usually follow their leaders. It's not a real choice. I'm all for scouts continuing and finding the right unit if the current unit isn't working. But there is a lot to be said for continuity, loyalty and helping make things better.

I agree that the Group Leader is the key role and needs to coordinate between units and help the units build on each other. You say it's like a commissioner. I think it's more like an active charter org representative and/or a larger group committee chair with sub-committees for each unit. Heck, there really should be one treasurer for the group and one recruiting program that recruits all ages and one training chair and .... PACK LEADERS THAT SUPPORT A DIFFERENT TROOP - I must actually disagree. I'd rather mentor and get interested parents to training and help grow new leaders than keep leaders that promote a troop in a different charter org. It's like the "Miracle On 34th Street" movie where salesman send people to the best deal even if a different store. That's the ideal. The best deal or the best troop. In this case, our troop does fine and has for years. We had one fall where we kept two kids that "needed scouts" that caused other scouts to leave or transfer. Those two scouts had more issues than we could handle and to be frank their parents used scouts because they had so few options with their kids. Those scouts are gone now and our program is fine. But those families/leaders now have ties to other troop. It is out of self-interested they promote the other troop. It's not because the other troop is better. It's because they want scouts to join with their sons. I can tell you stories about broken bones, tied up scouts, major bullying and such from the other troop. No troop is perfect. The issue is the other leaders promote the other troop out of self-interested. Perhaps, the best case is waiting until a set of parents develops a bad perception of the other troop. That will happen. It just takes time. But for the current leaders and as with Macy's in the movie, that can only last so long before management needs to re-align attitudes or go out of business. Ideals are good. What really happens is different (leaders promoting a different troop out of self-interested). But staying alive is necessary. So ... IMHO ... it would be best if I as COR removed those leaders or suggest they switch to the pack of the other charter org. I'm not sure if I will do that. Probably not. But it would be best for the overall youth program run by the charter org. IMHO.

I'm in favor of people doing what's best for their kids. If the school is bad, they can transfer. But there is a big difference between a bad school and shopping for the best situation. In my city, there are six normal elementary schools and one specialty (alternative teaching style) school. I only know one parent who has posted for the alternative style school. I know no one that has petitioned to attend a different elementary school. Otherwise, everyone attends the ones assigned. And those parents then join the PTO and school activities and make that school better. I've yet to see an elementary school in our area flounder because everyone is avoiding it. I think it's the same with scouts. If you want to switch, fine. Go for it. But it's a "switch". Otherwise, try to help your scouting unit become better. Teaching everyone to start from the beginning with the "shopping" concept hurts scouts.

I just realized something. I don't mind the topics of the Belt Loops. I think it's great that scouts can get together and play kickball or badminton and get something to remind them they did it. USABILITY ... I just hate the belt loops. If my son earned 20, I'd have a nightmare trying to put them on a belt and put the belt in the pants and then somewhat regularly wash the pants. The belt loops would be in a drawer and never used. PRICE ... Plus, the belt loop is too expensive. It should be a buck or less. And you get a pin and a belt loop for close to the same thing? What? And the pack pays once for the pin and once for the belt loop. What? PRESENTATION ... When belt loops are presented, they are usually still in the card board with the plastic cover on them. Does not look nice. But it's the only way to keep labeled and somewhere to put the person's name. I guess you could tape it to an advancement card, but we don't do that. Just looks poorly presented. Give me a pin or a patch. Heck, I'd like to see a patch jacket be more common.

Our troop recruits and invites Webelos to join us on any camp out that logistically would work. We also provide a calendar of events and cleaned up roster (last initials only, etc). We even volunteer to help at events if we can get scouts to sign up for it. And we have a November camp out that targets Webelos and we teach them skills and ask them if there is anything special we should cover. We also have two den chiefs in other units. ================================================== ====== But several troops in our city are very gung-ho over-the-top recruiting now. The troop that is getting most of our cub scouts now has threads into at least four packs if not five. They start contacting the potential scouts and scout leaders when they are Bears. We were used to 6 to 12 months in advance. And they are at 80+ boy scouts. I think they would be happy if they had all the scouts from our city. So now I'm stuck as CC of our troop and COR of our pack and our troop ... where the pack leaders are tied to the other troop and promote that troop. For years the pack fed our troop. It changed and now it's almost impossible to change back until the other troop screws up again. ... SO ... If our COR wants a strong program, it seems only logical that I should remove the pack leaders that are supporting the other troop and suggest they join the pack of that troop's COR. Why should I sign off on pack leaders that don't support our troop? Their sons joining the other troop is prima facie evidence that they don't support the COR. So why have them as our pack's leaders. Seriously. The idea of a COR is that the COR wants to run a youth program. Why have leaders that promote another group's youth program? I'd rather have a weaker pack that supports our troop then extra leaders that don't support our troop. The point is the BSA program design does NOT make sense. ================================================== ========== If the argument for troop shopping is that there are bad troops, then, ... because there are at least as many screwed up packs ..., BSA should promote pack shopping instead of leaving so many youth to join bad packs. Every pack should put flyers out to all the local schools and let the supposed best pack win and let the other packs die. (not serious, but this is the parallel of troop shopping) Or have big city wide join scouting event and people choose the pack they want and let the others wither and die. (not my suggestion, but it's parallel with troop shopping) I fully believe that the imbalance between healthy and flailing units is a result of this troop shopping and the structural separation between packs and troops. It starves fresh leadership and lets units continue for years with flaky programs. It's a problem that's very well known at the cub level as by the time leaders are experienced they move onto Boy Scouts. Then at the Boy Scout level the good adults tend to clump at troops with good reputations leaving other troops to wither or continue flailing forever. You don't have enough new energy coming in to drive improvements. So you end up with a cycle of growth and sickness in packs and troops. It's a bad program design that leaves way way too many scouts and volunteers in weak units and leaves them with bad experiences. Every time we state that we know there are half the packs/troops are poor units, we are also stating we know that half the people registered in scouts are having poor experiences with scouting. It's a bad design because it depends on a COR but then subverts the COR by having the charter org chase the same scouts again and again. And if for no other reason, it's a bad design because one charter org can only have one charter org rep who then oversees two units where the units don't have to support each other. A better design would be each unit can have a separate charter org rep. Zero requirement for it to be one charter org rep per charter org. Oh wait ... the COR is a voting member of the district and BSA. And each charter org can have one. A fundamental change needs to occur. Personally, I'd really love to see adopt a UK approach where the charter org is a "scout group" and there is a natural progression between the levels and a strong relationship between the units. http://scouts.org.uk/about-us/organi...cal-structure/ ============================== Perhaps the very first change should be one re-charter. Don't recharter a pack and troop separately. One charter renewal. One check. One membership list. That will get the adults talking and working together. Only makes sense. Heck, our pastor always looks at me weird when he has to sign two different charters, sign two copies of the charter org agreement even though they are one charter org and they only have one charter org representative. It's a broken design that needs changing.

Don't worry about that. As long as the scout is mostly self-sufficient, most scoutmasters are glad to have one or two attend with them. As long as the match up works. In another words, a scout from a relaxed troop probably would not do well in a strongly regimented troop, but the reverse would probably be fine. In our city, I've seen it happen regularly. Our troop has done it several times and other troops have done it several times. It's no big deal.

I've seen this multiple ways. One is to create a mobilization plan for notifying scouts based on an emergency. It was okay, but I don't care for that style because it won't be used. I prefer something real with this. The one way that I saw it done that I like is at our summer camp. Every scout has to participate in a mobilization drill for storms, lost scout, etc. It's written down in the camp scout leader guide. The scout could read and explain and then explain his role in the plan.

Agreed. Our SPL always brings visiting Webelos / youth up front to introduce them and often gets the scouts to play a game for everyone to meet each other and learn names. What I'm frustrated at are the Cubmasters that view troops as a source of labor / resources such that if you don't bend over backwards for them then they will go elsewhere. Here are the types of requests we get lately? - Can you provide X scouts to help with our pinewood derby? - Can you provide scouts to staff our auction fundraiser? - Can your scouts teach these Webelos requirements? - Can you lend us X tents, dutch ovens, etc for our next event? - Oh, we can't attend any of those camping dates. Can you reschedule the camp out? Any of them are fine, but the way it's done these days it's like a pressure point of help us or we will go elsewhere. Also, it's not our gear to lend. It's the scouts great. It's not our time to commit. It's the scouts time. The BIG TROUBLE is that many troops are now bending over backwards for recruitment and mis-representing themselves and mis-representing the experience scouts will have in their troops. **** Troop shopping is perverting the Pack / Troop relationships. **** We've always taken the approach that we will get the scouts we get and we'll be happy with it. We don't want to be the largest troop in town just to be the largest troop. But there are three troops in our city that want to be 80+ members and we've just been hovering around 40 members for years. Now, our associated pack is tied strongly to one of the 60+ member troops that really focuses on recruitment and we are hosed. And to be honest, we're okay with that. There are fewer cubs then before and we don't view our top three jobs to be to be marketing, marketing, marketing. Others want to do that fine. We don't. When we drop under 20 scouts, we'll merge with another troop.

Ya know these discussions bring up a key part that really frustrates me. Stop asking what Troops can do for your pack. Boy Scouts do not exist to serve packs. Boy Scouts want to camp, hike, canoe, throw a football around and socialize with their friends. Asking them to go out of their way to help packs do things is very noble, but it's also fighting an upward battle. Run some events for the packs? I run away from troops that do too many pack / troop events. Those troops usually have adults assigned to market the troops to the packs and have a heavy adult overhead on the scouts. IMHO, I do not think it is an indicator of a good troop at all. If anything, it concerns me about how much the adults are running things. Den chiefs? Many scouts want to be den chiefs but it rarely works because of #1 scheduling conflicts (need to virtually double your scouting time because of separate meetings, separate place, separate days, etc) and #2 how to get there, coordinate and plan (non-leader parents don't want more driving / tracking especially for something that doesn't advance their son). In my experience, den chiefs only work when there is a yonger brother involved in the den ... AND the parent strongly encourages it. If your cubs want to choose a good troop, stop looking asking what troops can do for your Webelos. Ask more about what have they done this last year and what are they doing the next year. Watch a troop meeting from the back of the room. And ya know, if you are in a good pack with strong relationships with other adults that are in the associated troop, don't discount that. Your happiness with the adults leading the troop will greatly influence the success of your scout. IMHO and avoiding extremes, I think it is far more important than choosing the right troop.

I almost want to open a topic tangent. But it has been discussed before and there is no good answer. COST OF DRIVING SCOUTS I've driven scouts for years in minivans and large vehicles. I often drive six or seven scouts. I remember other parents who show up driving to the camp out and their cars are full such that there is a question if they can take one other scout. It usually does not bother me because it's my choice and I enjoy driving and just listening to my son(s) and their friends interact. You learn a lot as a fly on the wall. But sometimes it crosses from a choice to taken for granted that you will drive and when you don't big problems occur. Our troop has discussed it. What's fair for mileage reimbursement? Right now we don't do anything except in extreme situations such as 100+ mile drives one direction. Even then, we reimburse the driver a token amount. It is more a thank you than the actual cost. So what is fair? I drive five scouts and pay 50 miles each direction and another parent drives two scouts. So what's fair? - Credit the family ten cents per scout driven per mile? That's a lot of book keeping. But seems fair. Five scouts 100 miles round trip credits the driver $50 dollars. Each scout incurs a charge of $10.00 for that trip. It's realistic but it increases our camping cost a lot. - Require each person to drive to camp X number of times? What if they drive two scouts and another drives six scouts? Lots of sports programs require volunteer or pay. Just not sure what is fair for driving reimbursement.

Most councils offer lone scouter summer camp opportunities too. ... or go with another troop to summer camp. Summer camp is a big part of the program and it's sad to lose the experience. But I must admit I could not afford $700 for summer camp every other year.

dedkad - Yeah, if the scouts are told they have a choice, then you need to honor the choice. BUT BUT BUT ... You experienced the one reason that I so so detest the current BSA cross over concept and the troop shopping concept. There is no shopping to choose the Pack to join when transitioning from Tiger to Wolf. Heck, Tiger is sort of a pre-"Cub Scout" rank. Similar, there is no shopping when going from Bear to Webelos even though "Webelos" is more like Boy Scouts if done right. So why emphasize the cross over at Boy Scout years. Scouts can change units at any time. That's great if you are in a bad unit. The trouble is is the current troop shopping concept damages relationships and efforts such as you describe in your original article. Our troop had good relationship with two packs for years. We decided to help two difficult scouts. Now, those scouts caused bad experiences and long established relationships have changed. All because we decided to work with some scouts. Our experience now is that we need to not take that approach. Our troop has to "ALWAYS BE MARKETING" to compete with all the other troops in our area. So, to be honest, we've suggested a few potential scouts that look challenging check out those other troops. And, we will quickly cut ties with scouts with anti-social behavior. Because the currently designed program requires us to focus more on marketing our troop and avoid damaging our troops reputation by working with kids that really need scouts. I'm one of the few, but IMHO and in my experience, the troop shopping concept is bad. Period.

$260 - Week of summer camp run by local scouting council $140 - Week of summer camp run by our troop. We sometimes do both. $700 - Sounds like high adventure. Sea Base was about that price years ago WITHOUT transportation. Your troop might be doing some special summer program this year. IMHO, troops should offer a normal priced summer camp each year. The high price forces some scouts out.

You actually have many questions here. "Can you?" -- Sure. There is no rule against it. Assuming your charter org is a non-profit, non-profits often donate to each other. "Should you?" -- IMHO, that is your real question. You are asking about a hard rule to avoid resolving the internal disagreements and politics. No, there is no hard blocking rule to use to avoid having this harder "should you" discussion? Personally, I have no issue with it. But, if your troop's adult leaders are not on the same page, I'd invest time getting them on the same page. Your committee chair may or may not have a good idea. Having one committee chair over the pack, troop and crew could have big benefits. But the troop committee chair's first responsibility is to the troop. I'd ask her politely to keep the troop leaders meeting to addressing troop issues. Starting a pack and venture may or may not be part of that agenda. But your leaders need to decide that.