pargolf44067

Totally agree. My daughter was in Girl Scouts for her entire school career and her last group of leaders was great. However, some troops she was in before we moved had NO outdoor trips. My boys thought it was hilarious that my daughter went down to camp for a day and learned how to build fires with pretzel rods! The overall program was not impressive in my opinion. I thought BSA had some arcane rules and was iron fisted. Nothing compared to GSUSA. I think having girls in would be good in general, however, as others mentioned there would be an adjustment period needed. I don't kno

That was very well done. Can't imagine ever seeing that here.

Kind of off topic, but there used to be a scout troop (adult leaders) that sold beer at FirstEnergy Stadium to raise money right by the section that I had season tickets in. I always thought that was not really appropriate. Guessing they didn't file the appropriate fundraising paperwork with council. I haven't seen them in a couple of years, so maybe people caught wind and stopped them from doing it.

Thanks @@KenD500. I've been a merit badge counselor for 11 years and SM for over 7 and never knew about this publication.

Welcome to the forms Zachary!

First of all @@Stosh, major props to you for keeping your energy up while running a troop that is down to 2. Good luck with your open house tomorrow. I don't know that I would be as energized at this point. As far as fight or flight, I have never personally been in a position to have to make that choice. There are a lot of posts on this forum that would make me want to "take flight." I agree with one of the previous posters on here, everyone has their own breaking point. I have been lucky and have never been close to that point in any scout group I have been involved with. However

Welcome to the forum!

I guess I am just happy for any leaders that want to volunteer. If someone is an Eagle then they know the program and (hopefully) understand what the process is. Not saying all Eagles are great scout leaders, just saying that if someone who happened to be an Eagle and whose son joined my troop, I would certainly not make it difficult for them to join or make them feel unwelcome!

I was hoping for that too!

I have to say as Scoutmaster, I would give my right arm to have an Eagle Scout dad volunteer in my troop! So that makes me wonder about the troop as well. There are strong personalities in many groups and sometimes those strong personalities can hinder the development of that group, but sometimes those personalities can work together to provide great developmental opportunities. The important thing is your sons. If they are having a great time and they see that it is boy led, then give the troop a chance and do some of the things that Stosh said to help slowly build the relationship wit

Welcome to the forum!

We use Google for our website and it has it's advantages but I am getting frustrated with maintaining it. It is frustrating when you try and do something and they have changed the way they have you do it. We did a survey on our website a few months ago and it worked one way. Everyone was able to get into it without a problem. I tried to do a survey last week and they changed the way you have to do the survey and I had issues with some of my parents being able to do it even after I changed it to share with the public. People have an issue getting to the pictures sometimes and they have to

For regular summer camp we only go about 7 miles away (believe it or not it is NOT our council camp) in part because it is close. We have gone there for the last 15-16 years. Part of the reason we like it is because it IS so close as we have had a hard time in the past getting people to be able to commit to a full week off, so we have parents/leaders that will trade mid-week. It makes it easier to do that being so close. It is also relatively cheap compared to other camps that I have seen the cost of. We usually do a HA camp every summer as well and go to Philmont every third year (alt

One of our neighbor troops go there every year and really enjoy it (it is not our council camp). Their boys really like the Pipestone tradition.

All three packs I was involved in over the years when my sons were in Cubs used to do the show and sell and sell individual bags for $1 so that people would feel that they were contributing something without getting raked over the coals. Not sure if that was "legal" or not, but it certainly helped sell popcorn at the show and sells. We only did that for the show and sells though and not door to door. FYI, my boys have been out of Cubs for over eight years, so I am sure things have changed

No wonder you love your council so much !

@ totally agree with that! If you aren't willing to help others and do your part to help yourself, you shouldn't expect the help in return!

Like @ I see no inherent evil in having some balance. $25k seems like a lot but if you have 62 scouts that might not be a totally crazy amount. Where I have an issue is if half of your boys can't afford to go to summer camp and the old SM and his cronies won't help pay part of the way. I think the boys should be paying for part of it on their own through fundraising or family but if there is quite a large balance that never gets used it is completely wrong on the committee's part. It's amazing you still have 62 scouts if half of them can't do summer camp and you overcharge for other events

At the risk of using a "Lazarus thread", I bought Volume I at the scout shop today (we had a good laugh at how volume II was going to be released in May but wasn't). I wanted to pick it up before our annual planning meeting on Sunday. Has anyone used these in the year since they have been released? I was curious how these were compared to the old ones. The boys will probably have to do a mix of both the old and the new for this year.

I hadn't really thought about it yet, but I guess that 1/1/16 is coming up quick. I'll probably mention it to the PLC at our annual planning meeting in case there are things we need to put in our plan for the year ahead. I'll mention it, as well, to our parents at one of our monthly parent meetings as well so they are aware of it. I have a boy that crossed over this year that had a 2010 book that he got from a former scout, so I probably need to reinforce this a couple of times with my parents. This will definitely be a great learning opportunity for our boy leaders to learn how to adju

We are having our meeting in a couple of weeks. They boys have the list of monthly themes that are available and they will pick what themes they want to do. Similar to @, our scout year runs September-August. We already have September planned because it is a camporee on one of the Lake Erie islands that we had to make the reservations for in June. They boys decided that they wanted to do that. We have a Klondike that we do every year and Polar Bear that we do every year (although the boys don't have to, they always want to) and we have a Thanksgiving campout that we do. However, if they

Here's the deal. The boys wanted to help the food bank with some organizing of their food pantry. While we were there, the director of the food bank asked if we would take part in this large project that they had coming up in a couple of months. The boys that were there said that we would be happy to help. So, yes there was some adult nudging in the initial idea, however, the boys agreed that they would help when they heard what good the food bank did for their neighbors. I get that people have a lot of different service committments to hit. Like I said, I don't expect us to have a la

To be frank, it was kind of boring, and the volunteers running it were somewhat disorganized. However, when we have an organization that we have helped before (our local food bank) that specifically asks us to help with something are we supposed to say, "I'm sorry, that sounds kind of boring for our scouts. So we won't help."? And we also had issues with people showing up to help a kid with his Eagle Scout project as well (and that included hammers and saws and paint and all the fun stuff). This young man had shown up at everyone else's project throughout his scouting career and he had a

Last night we had a service project that we did for our normal Monday meeting to deliver bags for food collection for our local food pantry. We are going back out on Saturday to collect the (hopefully)filled bags. I was disappointed and a little frustrated with the turnout we had for this project, especially considering that it was on the same night as our normal meeting and it was out in the nice weather. We only had about 7 kids show up for this and only one other registered leader besides me. Thankfully, we had parents that were willing to stay to help out. As a point of comparison, we

@@packsaddle, I don't think Quasze was inviting them to leave. He was just noting what the two of them had said in their posts. I hope we don't lose good leaders but I am afraid we will. I know there are a lot of people that have strong feelings on this, but as I said before, I am in this to help boys become leaders and help them grow. I don't agree with what BSA does all the time, but if I am helping young boys become a young men and have fun while doing it, that is what matters to me.