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 know that my daughter would have benefited from being in Boy Scouts (and I know my sons would have hated it), but in general I think what we provide to the boys is just as useful and important to girls as well.

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, there was a point where I was getting somewhat burned out and I felt that was impacting the program for the boys, which was why I stepped down as a SM a couple of years ago. However, when the troop needed someone to step up and nobody with kids currently in the troop volunteered, I decided that I felt refreshed enough that I would step back in and am really enjoying myself now.

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 with the troop leadership. I can understand your frustration though, because I wouldn't give up the past 13 years of scouting that I was involved with my boys, just the events we shared and the memories we made.

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 come up with workarounds. The main advantage is that it is free and we have used it for several years, so I am fairly comfortable with making changes (except when they change the way you make those changes). I am debating whether or not to change to a hosting site like Scoutlander or SOAR and potentially paying. I am afraid if we change and we have to have people use logins, we may get usage to drop. Has anyone used both Google and another webhosting site to be able to give me a comparison of other sites vs Google? Also, how much usage does your website get with the security on the website? We also like to use our website as a recruiting tool where people can see the things we have done and the security kind of foils that ability, in my opinion. Any thoughts on that as well? Thanks!

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 (although we are missing next year because of a lack of interest ).

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 adjust and be flexible !

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 boys want to change any of those they can. On a side note, we went canoeing this past weekend. Several of the boys that went are on the PLC. They said to me as we were floating down the river, "This is so much fun. I wish we could do this again next year." I told them that it was their calendar, if they wanted to schedule a canoe camping trip they could. They were surprised at that comment. The last couple of years, our former SM was kind of planning things as the year went along. There was input from a couple of boys, but not all of the boys.

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 large turnout on Saturday. It is a different meeting day and people are busy. But when it is on the same day as our normal meeting it would be nice if people showed up. It isn't like we have service projects weekly or even monthly. I am really frustrated, however, when in one week you can have 15 boys and five or six registered leaders (not to mention parents) that show up to do a hike but only 7 and one leader (besides me) show up the very next week at the same time, that shows me what the priorities are, for both the scouts and the parents.

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 an enormously hard time getting people to show up. So it isn't just the boring service projects that we have issues with. I agree that it is sad that we have to "incentivize" kids to show up although that does seem to help with some of your troops. That may be something I bring up to the PLC.

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 had about 15 kids show up to do a hike the week before. I know it is summer and I did have a few parents reach out and say that they couldn't make it because of conflicts, but most that didn't come didn't let me know. I expected a low turnout for Saturday, since that is an addition to the calendar, so we'll see if the turnout is even lower then. I am just curious to know if anyone else has issues with getting their scouts to service projects and any advice on getting higher turnout.

@@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.