MattR

I think it's up to the mb counselor. They're the one that has to sign off on everything.

@scoutldr, I can imagine the disappointment. Hang in there.

I think there's a huge fear, all across the BSA, that without eagle the entire program would collapse. It's likely true because that's how it's been run for a very long time. There has been this pinnacle achievement that is front and center and hard to work around. The problem is that the pinnacle has little to do with the aims. But it begs the question of what would it take to run a successful program without a pinnacle achievement? It couldn't depend on parents that have mapped out their kids' lives. It must have a solid program. I think it would still require learning lots of skills, but maybe the scouts could have more say in which skills. Maybe rather than fcfy it should be learn to create your own goals in the first year. Rather than seeing all the check boxes, scouts and parents should be seeing teamwork and independence. There needs to be a framework that the scouts can wrap their heads around and also gives them enough guidance to get going. But it seems to me that it needs to be much less restrictive than eagle. Rather than tell them this is the mountain you need to climb maybe just telling them to start hiking is a better approach. Just play the game.

Time for a rant. This has nothing to do with how people are arguing about this topic. That part is fine. However, ... Between this thread and the eagle at 12 thread, is there any wonder that scouting does not interest youth? It looks like this program is nothing without recognition. When my son was in soccer the entire recognition for everyone, youth and adults, was at the end of the season, at a barbecue. It lasted maybe 15 minutes. The coach talked about each kid. Some parent thanked all the adults that helped out. Then dessert was served. Done. The program, the reason why kids wanted to be there, was the games. There were no worries about adults making it all about them. No worries about youth progressing too fast. No eagle. No knots. No one and done. No FOS. No BORs. No round table. No OA. No Scoutbook. Certainly no adult recognition dinners. I just get the feeling that all these sources of argument are nothing but contraptions that adults created so they could feel important. Maybe the program shouldn't be so important. Maybe all the shiny objects should be thrown out so the kids can just have fun. The scouts need places to camp and adults that know how to teach skills. That's it. It's a lot like soccer. If it doesn't support that then chuck it. If people can't support that then they are no longer needed.

I'm the leader of our annual award show. I signed up to get someone else to do something. To be honest, though, this show doesn't really help units put on a better program so given all the grief happening this year this is honestly a waste of time. There has got to be something better we can do to help units.

Or the number of ornaments caught.

Welcome to the forum, @otakuforlife. Weird time or not, it's good to see new, enthusiastic people here.

Just my 2 cents, but 2 oz fabric seems really thin to sew patches onto. I've never tried this so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Scouting has been nominated for a Nobel Peace prize. I just googled scouting nobel prize and found a lot. Here's one. //www.scout.org/fr/scouts-nobel-peace-prize-2021-nomination "The World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), together with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), have been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, recognising the outstanding contributions of Scouting and Guiding that have empowered hundreds of millions of young people to create a lasting culture of peace in their communities for more than a century. The Nobel nomination was submitted by Norwegian Liberty Party MP, Solveig Schytz, former Chief Commissioner of The Guides and Scouts of Norway and a current volunteer for the Scout Movement."

In short? That is the longest title I've ever seen. As for the content I hate to admit it but Machiavellian comes to mind. There's a lot of that going on these days. The irony hurts.

A silver deer looks too much like a silver antelope?

Couple of points: Nobody is ignoring you. I for one am waiting to see what's left. A lot of people agree with you that fundamentally scouting can't go away, camping is fun. This is not the thread to talk about picking up the pieces. It's the thread about the legal gears grinding. That all said, it would be nice to see a young at heart leader that could focus us old codgers into moving past the BSA and dragging it forward. While I have my views I am neither young nor a leader.

What position do you see yourself having in the future? I agree with Barry that the ticket can make all the difference. Unfortunately for me my counselor couldn't care less.

Or maybe this is like buying a car and they're just dickering on a price. Remember, win all you can! Anyway, I wouldn't take it personally. It just is.

Fun pattern. I'm not cool so don't get the quarter reference. How light is it? 35 lbs is on the edge for me. Bear canisters and the gear I get with BSA treks seem to put me over, or in 2019 when we had to bring winter gear for snow.

That would be fun to be part of. I missed the video played after the inauguration of places all across the country. Was this clip in that? I'd like to see that whole thing.

That would be a challenge, especially this year. Kudos to anyone that gets it. I liked that outdoor activity group. Earn all those and you should get a different patch. How about calling it the Outing Award? Or the 3/4 of scouting award. Well, not sure of gardening MB, but the rest are a lot of fun.

Welcome to the forum, @Neckstock. What lads and where are you from?

Not sure where you live, but the los Angeles Meritime Institute (lami) has been our source for tall ship sailing. Our guys really enjoy it. BTW, you rent the boat, and it holds 30. So you do need to find enough people to keep the cost down.

This idea that we're breaking norms or rules by asking for something that will help us out sort of illustrates the problem. If the council's primary focus was on helping units put on a better program then the answer would not be, no, you can't do that. It would be let's figure out how to make this work. @ValleyBoy doesn't want to wait months to get paid back but the council wants to keep records. Okay, settle the accounts at the camporee and write down what was paid for, generate receipts for the accounting system that can be put in the following Monday. If they have enough cash they can finish it right there. If not, how about having the DE write a check on a council bank or just ensuring that it will take no more than a week to have a check sent out. None of this is complicated, it just takes a mind shift from being driven by rules and being driven by a desire to help units.

Thank you, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I don't want a bank account, I want an accounting system account. I don't want to handle the money, I just want it known that when I submit receipts it's charged against the excess we brought in the camporee before. Not only can we keep costs down for scouts but the council can figure out how the money flows. Okay, I can understand the confusion. They do have an accounting system. And it has just enough resolution to satisfy the IRS. But accounting systems can be used for a lot more than that. The question is why $600/scout/year? My council's accounting system can't give much of an answer for that. If each district had accounts for, say, events and training, then they might be able to answer questions as to whether they're helping units or not. My council has no idea at all how many scouts go to each of our events. I would give them the checks and the receipts and that would be recorded in the same account that holds every event put on in the council: district, council, training, merit badge fairs, camporees, pinewood derby, all of it. Of course, I suspect they couldn't even answer the question of how staff were paid. There was a time, and it might be back, that new DEs were taught how to file for food stamps because the council was running out of money at the end of the year. I said this before but my events had a couple of fees that we had to charge for the council that was something around 35% of our expenses, that went into paying for one of the staff's salary. The fees were called something like insurance and something for the DE, who never showed up anyway, but it was really about covering salaries. I understand that my council might not be the poster child of well run but I suspect it's close to normal. My guess is that councils that are around major metropolitan areas are still getting plenty of donations and are doing okay. We have a physically very large council that covers a lot of not so great farm land. We do have 2 of 5 districts that have towns in them that are doing okay. The rest of our districts are just in relatively poor areas when it comes to donations. That's why I keep hammering on the $600/scout. I want every kid in my council to see the value in scouting. We would get enough cash that we just took it before we sent the money in. We always had records, that were much better than the council's, in case anyone asked. Nobody ever did.

A friend of mine is an accountant and did see the books. There is no accounting system set up for my council. There is only one account. Nobody could ask, for example, what is the net on a summer camp? Is it making money or losing money? Each camp should have it's own account, I'd think. So yes, we have repeatedly asked and repeatedly gotten nowhere. One of the council staff is solely funded on volunteer run events bringing in enough extra money to cover this person's salary. So does this mean the "budget" covers salary for all staff? Who knows? But this still evades the issue of value. What are we getting for $600/scout/year? Nobody can answer that question because there's just one giant pot of money. When I was the district camping chair, one thing I asked for was the ability to have my own pot of money. If I bring in extra money on one event then the next I could charge less. The goal would have been for the district to spend all the money it brought in. Instead, we were forced to start over for every event and also pay a tax to the council to cover salaries of paid staff. Also, giving us some storage would be nice so we wouldn't have to borrow from troops. Collecting pioneering poles from thinning out the trees on camp property. Not having to pay for rope out of my own pocket would have been nice. Replacing the axle on the canoe trailer so we could use the canoes at a camporee would have been nice. A really nice one would be to encourage DEs to support district staffs for doing things like ordering patches, showing up and encouraging events. Maybe if the emphasis was on supporting units, and that's what camporees are intended for, the DE's might notice that a great way to help district camping chairs would be to get them together once in a while to share ideas. They could pass around entire camporee themes and really make it much easier on those district volunteers. It all gets back to misplaced priorities. My council, because it's focus is on itself and not the units, got itself in a money bind that has since forced the entire staff to spend most of it's time begging for money rather than supporting volunteers. By support I mean asking them what they're struggling with and then helping them find solutions. The basic idea of the scout program is pick an outdoor skill, make a game of it, play the game, repeat. The hard part is keeping it fresh. The council should be helping with that.

I wasn't wearing my moderator hat. Continue burrowing. I believe the rest of your post contained many shoulds, that aren't happening. No disagreement there.

How is it that a discussion about council budgets went back to a discussion about volunteers? Cost of running a council, and whether there's value for that cost is being related to how good the volunteers are. That tells me that the $600/year should entirely go to helping those volunteers. This is why budgets need to be transparent. And not at a one page view but where all the money is spent. If it turns out that camp infrastructure (dining halls, showers, wifi, etc) is where all the money is going and none of this is helping the volunteers put on camporees, and nobody really cares for the summer camp, then the money is going to the wrong place. This is what I meant by tough questions. I just know my council, but this idea of supporting volunteers is not happening. When some council says hooray, we will lower fees because FOS was high enough, all I can think is the parents donating more money is just delaying the inevitable. Cost keeps going up but value does not. That's not a recipe for success.

All of the angst is about the cost of running a council and the fact that most of that is covered by donations. It's $600/yr/scout in my council. Add in the fact that we talk about how boring eagle required MBs are, is there really a surprise that parents are questioning the value of scouts? Trust me that I don't enjoy this but this is one of those hard facts that needs to be addressed.