fred8033

Not a simple question. Scouting will survive. It has a strong legacy and many desire the program to continue. ... I look at today's youth. Couch bound with internet and video games. We need an outdoor program emphasizing fellowship and adventure. Will BSA survive? I think so. It won't be as rich for decades, but it will. In reality, it doesn't really need much to continue. BSA is it's intellectual property and vision. Perhaps the question is whether it will keep Philmont, Sea Base, Northern Tier and the Summit.

@T2Eagle is right. Id add on further. Coordinate with your DE or your a council staff. I'm sure there is a plan of communication even if the plan is that they have nothing yet to say this month. It is okay to push back on the DE. If you are getting curious unit leaders, let the DE know that you need something. In our district, it's the DE's job or even above him. I've yet to the RT commissioner or other volunteers speak to it. They are just not speaking from a point of knowledge. About as far as I'd share without good coordination is letting scouters know to look at articles on Bryan on scouting or other guided sources. Beyond that, I'd focus on the next district camporee or membership drive or MB weekend or ...

Great comments. I've been in multiple troops. Some of the worst scouting experiences we've had are in highly structured troops that often bragged about boy-led. Reality is it was boy-led and adult nagged. I think @InquisitiveScouter is exactly right. Scout's objectives may not be your objectives. Football and cards are great activities as they give the scouts a chance to socialize and connect. That is one of the most important aspects of scouting. Scouting is social. A successful scout builds life-long friendships. The only caveat I'll give is that not all scouts are the same. I'd encourage troops to find or choose at least one activity; maybe more. Maybe it's a hike to the highest point. Maybe it's a swim or exploring or ... something. If patrols or individual scouts don't want to participate, fine. BUT, try to give them the opportunity. There will always be some scouts that are not fully ready to socialize without guided activity. There will always be some scouts who know their parents are waiting at home for the scout to tell them what they did that was meaningful over the weekend. Oh, we hiked the XXXX up to XXXX and saw XXXXX. Or we earned XXXXX. Or we visited XXXXX. If the scouts choose the activity, you'll often see the scouts apply constructive cajoling to encourage participation. Hopefully, constructive pressure. ... BUT, ya know. If the scouts want their free time to de-compress and relax, fine.

I've seen several of our council level recruiting events. They bring in tens of scouts. A hugely successful event brings in a hundred. Usually the new scouts that were already going to join. They attend because they are aware of the event by having brothers or sisters or neighbors already in cub scouts.

I think we going back and forth over nothing. DEs help unit volunteer scouters and those unit volunteers do almost all the work. Council professionals help at the more indirect level of advertising, assembling materials, mapping out which areas are served, etc. The DE may help start a unit with a few meetings such as visiting the principal or a pastor; holding a recruiting night, etc. Beyond that, the local scouting is all unit based volunteers with the DE being the face of the council. Large councils tend to have more resources to staff the indirect level and the location of their offices is just not that important.

Yeah, I don't believe it. Units recruit. District execs start new units and support unit recruiting. Councils fund raise, plan and advertise summer camps, etc. Councils are extremely valuable, but the concepts of the past need to be rethought and resized.

Administratively, districts could provide the face-time; as they do now. Beyond that, the key face time is in the unit.

Sad. I can understand, but sad. Our council has at least three or four camps near. At least two less than an hour from downtown. Perhaps it's my view that the traditional scouting "office" building is not needed anymore. Yeah. Perhaps it's not the perfect answer. Perhaps an concept adjustment is needed. The issue is the cost of the council office properties is huge compared to the number of scouts served. I'm betting in my council, it's about $40 per scout given the pre-pandemic number of scouts ... not including staff.

I'd hope. GAAP is generally accepted. I've seen some. Some are posted thru non-profit sites. Per BSA: https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/financeimpact/pdf/local_council_accounting_manual_2014.pdf "Local councils are required to prepare and present financial statements in conformity with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which are established and promulgated by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). " I believe the statements are audited too by outside accounting agencies.

My personal opinion. The time of small or medium sized councils is past. Youth scouting is face-to-face. Council scouting is administrative and benefits from efficiencies of size. Times have drastically changed. Physical infrastructure has always costed money. Now, technical infrastructure requires skill and cost but gets drastically cheaper as it scales out. Plus, scouters don't need to drive into the council office for almost anything anymore. Recharter online. Buy advancements online. Get trained online. Attend RT virtually. Except for massive states where it is a 10 hour drive edge-to-edge, I see little reason to have more than one council a state. One thing that might help is to leverage the camps for scouter training for scouters that are far-away from the local council. I'm always confused why scout offices are not located at the camps. I've assumed it's from the days of driving in; hitting the scout shop and needing a physical presence to be seen by the donors.

I agree. It's a common and a reasonable answer. Another version is periodic furloughs. Work several weeks. Take an unpaid week. It's a chance to provide some income; help a company ride out hard times; preseve skills/knowledge; provide the potential of a continued career after business resumes. This stuff ain't easy. Every executive / manager / lead I've know takes this stuff really hard. I remember my dad as a manager drive home with tears because he had to lay off best friends and put others in hard situations. I remember a senior direct and myself in an elevator on the day of major layoffs and we were both really shaken. This stuff ain't easy.

Airplane companies and airlines have their own mandatory reporting for incidents; effectively analogous to BSA mandatory reporting of incidents. In that case, I'd look for FAA to report the numbers. https://www.faa.gov/data_research/ I'd really like to see the same independent numerical reporting for crimes including CSA. This is one possible place to put the data. I'm 100% sure there are others. https://bjs.ojp.gov/data

This is the one place where I differ. I'm okay saying BSA must report out. I just don't think any organization does well reporting ugly statistics on itself. Like any organization, BSA wants to look good. Specifics get explained away or defined away or plain old lost. It's just too tempting. With mandatory reporting laws, society has a great opportunity to independently roll-up incident numbers and investigate problem areas. The question is who should own those numbers? FBI. GAO. HHS. I really think it's a bad idea to trust numbers from any organization when those numbers would make the organization look bad.

Yep. Agreed, not an exoneration. Paper registration may or may not make it into the office for months. Often only at recharter. Often got held up for multiple reasons. Signatures. Money. BSA depended on millions (literally millions) of volunteer helpers. Unit paperwork helpers were usually registered, never their full-time job. Our unit membership person probably had one week a year where it was six hours work. Then probably an hour a month after that. Usually, just another parent in the pack / troop. Only in the last two years did our school require volunteers to be registered and background checked before they started helping / interacting with students. It is the same with scouts. When I look at our local sports clubs, they have yet to make that transition. I'm not defending BSA or attacking it. A paperwork system where you may or may not get the paperwork in a timely way with manual checks and names that shift is problematic. I just think that was a sign of the times though. Not an exoneration at all though.

Be patient with my statement. I am one that viewed the IVF files as doing something where organizations didn't. And in many ways, I still believe that. ... I won't go into the thought process now. With that said, the re-entrant issue I can understand. Experienced scouters have always seen the challenges getting rosters and training records right. We would have people missing from the roster for years or people still on the roster that had been gone. I remember realizing registrars often had a district file with post-it-notes with apps that were missing signatures or did not have money or recently training certificate.... They were waiting for the DE or a unit volunteer to come in and help address the issue.. Other times, an in-between person (volunteer or professional) would forget to drop off the app. It's only in the last decade where the roster is "mostly" current. AND, only this decade where it's emphasized that all the paperwork needs to be processed before you volunteer. This seems to follow a larger trend. Our local schools are doing that too. In 2004, I helped at my kid's elementary school. No app. No ID. Nothing. Just showed up. Now, you can't help at school or chaperone or ... without first comleting the background check. So, ... I can fully see how the paper systems were really hard to track volunteers when they slightly changed their name or moved between states.

Thank you. I had not heard that of BSA and glad it's not the case. My simple reading of your writing inferred BSA did that too.

Could you provide a reference to a few? I know that is a fair representation in the Church abuse scandals. I am not familiar with case examples here. IVF was about exclusion; not relocation. I've seen case files of a few volunteers who subverted their IVF records. I have not seen examples of BSA moving people after abuse incidents.

There is no need to take a cheap shot at another forum member. I have not always agreed with him, but Skeptic has been a meaningful contributor on many different subjects for 15 years. Though his post baits the edge of lawyer bashing, it is relevant to the topic of a judge reviewing questionable conduct by those in this case.

Areas of concern "All camping is mandatory" is not normal and extreme. I'm hoping it's a misunderstanding. Or, the context is misunderstood. Units can have "reasonable" attendance standards for attendance (See BSA Guide To Advancement). Mandatory and 100% are not reasonable. Normal It is normal to enthusiastically encourage camping / outings. Involvement is a huge predictor of future success. Camping within three weeks of joining is NOT unusual at all. In fact, it's fairly normal. We often had scouts who's first meeting would be March 1st to March 7th. Then, their first camp out was a weekend in mid/late March. In fact, I'd argue it is really really good to get new scouts on outings as soon as possible. I agree with an earlier post. If you have concerns now, those concerns will continue to grow. ... If you can, try out the troop to see if the concerns are valid or not. BUT if you can, look at other troops too.

This is another stumble during the ugly dance we call chartering. Who's leading and who's following? Who's responsible? BSA needs to move away from a "membership" model and move toward a service fee model for using the BSA program. Or, BSA needs to take ownership and responsibility for the units.

I have experienced many apps. I'd encourage you to use ScoutBook for roster and advancement. It has a nice interface and it's the official source. Calendar, communication, finances, etc. I'd be really tempted to use a combination of Google Documents and Facebook. ... OR as our troop did ... the scouts communicate with each other better than we could. Though I have not used ScoutBook much over the last year as my role has changed, I found it only useful for tracking roster, advancement and after-the-fact records (hiking, camping, etc) I'd strongly ... STRONGLY ... encourage families to log into ScoutBook to see their scout's records.

Well understood. I agree. Perhaps I think of it wrongly. I think of it more as ... how much money does BSA have to contribute?. Even to the extreme pain level. Let's separate that cash, protect it to pay debts including victim claims and move on. The CSA claims should be against that protected trust ... and also the insurance companies.

We've often debated why LC/CO protection in another companies bankruptcy. I finally saw in another thread something that I've probably asked before (and forgot the answer). It's BSA's bankruptcy being used to settle a lawsuit. Why would insurance companies receive protection? The insurance company is not going bankrupt. It really seems the scope of the bankruptcy must really be shrunk.

$100m spent in 2021 (guestimate). Divide by 365. Approx $300k per day.