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Because, like, people aren't producing material ancillary to he MBPs already? And well-meaning scouters aren't recommending those to e boys instead of the MBPs? If BSA makes the no-frills product available with an active registration (maybe via my scouting) for cents, not dollars, they might actually see an increase in revenue. Then we can provide better integrated service. The troop librarian could be informed of which MBs scouts are looking into, and make a plan to purchase hard-copies of the ones not already There could be a "request a blue-card from my SM" button. The SM could get a list of counselors nearest the boy's home or school. Because other plajurists won't be able to provide those integrated services, the motivation for pirating is gone.

Arrow of Light ... In case your boys were in Cub Scouts and earned it.

A policy for when paperwork flows don't proceed as usual? I doubt it. Keep calling the CO and COR, until you get a response.

Okay, maybe I'm too impatient. But I didn't see anywhere in the 2016 Annual Report about online MB publication sales. While we're talking about ease of use, why does any BSA online literature have to be in .pdf format? ASCII text with jpeg images. HTML formatting with minimum style settings. That way the user could choose his own font. Downloads would be insanely fast. The sales model could be direct for pennies via national scoutshop accounts - not unlike magazine subscriptions ... bypassing the resellers.

double post

I wonder what the sales figures are on BSAs online MBPs (https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2014/09/03/merit-badge-pamphlets-leader-guides-fieldbook-now-kindle/)

It's taken years of my crew giving back to the troops in our community to convince tan-shirt scouters that we're good for them. If a crew suddenly has its own youngn's to tend to, how likely will they help develop the program of neighboring troops? Crews of 11-21 year olds would tick off troops who will accuse Venturing of stealing more of "their" boys and camps who lose fees from boys who would otherwise attend them. And your working assumption is that these revamped venturers won't muscle in on Boy Scout activities? How'd that work for Jamboree? Our districts' camporees and klondike derbies welcome any interested crews. There goes any pretense of needing to keep unisex patrols away from coed patrols. Finally, thanks to BSA and NESA's overselling of the advancement method, if you ain't given girls a trail to Eagle, or entrance into O/A, you don't have an equivalent program. I'm just not seeing how Venturing-extended-younger is viable, and even if it is, how it provides parents of girls access to the brand they trust.

Oh, then drawing out (and laying in) the footprint is absolutely important! Maybe with a tape measure vertical to get a sense of volume.A "three man" tent means "casket" to abominable snowmen. That said, I've relied on garage-sale $1 two-man 24" tall pup tents for years. (With some modifications ... Replaced poles with heavyguage aluminum from a retired dining fly. Got tougher stakes, etc ...) Remind your audience what they save on canvans can be spent on coffee. But, know in advance what they've getting into. Really, if they have a buddy (or a few) who will loan his gear for a few weekends, that's the best way to learn what's important to them.

As long as the water-players aren't in vicinity of the electricians ...

Lest we take the sports metaphor as universal dogma ... WPa's smaller high schools have fielded the occasional female football player or wrestler to some degree of success. In that sense, BSA is more rigid than American varsity football. It's a big country. Carry on.

Chalk drawing tent footprints, maybe? Whatever you do, have your boys be the lead players in the video.

Venturing scouters adhere to age segregation about as much as boy scouters adhere to sex segregation! (Oh, that reminds me. I said that I'd ask some officers to comment on your idea this spring. Never got around to it. Too busy chanting under the stars with the N/A dance team -- among other things. Sorry about that.) Worse, I think we will have a lot of boy scouters gripe about any successful coed program cannibalizing their units -- even if numerically that doesn't happen. Worse yet, no matter how much spit and polish you put on Venturing awards and recognition, special interests are still gonna whine that it's not Eagle. So, you'll still have these activist editorials ripe with targeted swill. At the end of the day, I don't see how Cub/Boy aged Crews will be much different than a parent looking at a list of troops/packs and seeing "Boys", "Girls", "CoEd" in the margin and choosing which one(s) are right for his/her kids.

I'll admit that, having met people who've grown up with co-ed scouting, I'm fairly convinced that the need for a unisex scouting program is more local than global. But, I don't think that's being dismissive ... at least not any more than I think I'm being dismissive with my sincere doubts that women, having been denied access as a youth to BSA's most touted recognition, are being held back in life to the detriment of society. If there is a pervasive demand for unisex scouting across the nation that is not present worldwide (except maybe in Saudi), then honoring what the lion's share of American parents are requesting is a principle all of its own.

I guess there's no principle that I can think of that would oppose coed scouting ... except that it would alienate parents looking for that unisex experience. Certainly when I started in Venturing, some scouters felt that I was abandoning them. I was able to dispel those sentiments by personal example. It's much harder for an organization to shed that image of abandoning its base.

Oh but the sheer joy of those snowball fights in the circus tent!(That would be the 24-man donated by the national guard. We used it exclusively for our winter campouts.)

For those of you starting from scratch or rebuilding a battered inventory ... I would just like to point out that $160 buys a whole lot of tarp, netting, chord, and parts. If you have one volunteer with a quilting machine and another with a good rivet tool, think long an hard about your options. If I were a scout, I would rather spend more time making and less time fundraising. This achieves a lot of Fred's objectives and offsets the problem of ditched responsibility. Plus, if I cross paths with a unit whose tents have a silk-screen logo with the tagline "Handcrafted by the boys of Troop/Crew ___", the leaders can expect my personal delivery of espresso and biscotti.

We have scouts invest in their own tents and hand them down as needed. The cons are lack of uniformity. It does make setting up and taking down a little rougher for newbies. QM is only tracking tarps and patrol boxes. The pros are boys getting wider experience helping each other with a variety of tents. They learn to care for their own gear. More ingenuity with tarps and hammocks, etc ...And (what I missed from growing up in a troop who supplied the tents) a boy graduates and has his own tent/tarp/netting -- ready to face the world.

Sounds like a fun crew, and your expectation for growth is reasonable. Regardless of potential conflicts with your meetings, I would encourage you to send one or two venturers to your VOA and report back the next week. In the long run, this will make sure your crew adds to the flavor of district and council activities. Because of that, I wouldn't inject patrol method as a structure for the crew. Getting everyone up to speed with the venturing organizational structure will be hard enough. In a year or two, the ones who are really interested in leadership training will attend NYLT and get to practice the PM there. There's no point in you being critical of other troops' poorly implemented patrol method. But, what you can do is raise the expectations of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts by making sure they are fully responsible for what does and does/not happen in their own crew. Eventually, through advisor conferences and such, you can encourage them to do the same in their respective troops. The hardest part of advising, I found, is getting a youth to tone down the rhetoric of how an adult-lead "home" unit is messing with them, then getting him/her to reflect on how to be an agent of improvement.

How closely do you monitor this? Supposing that a scout was trained for den chief, then becomes a PL, so he has his red-bordered trained patch on when he swaps in the PL patch. Is that really a ding on inspection? I mean, he still is trained as a DC, and it's clear that he's an untrained PL. Once he gets trained as a PL and is awarded the new strip, how soon does he have to swap it in? Suppose another scout goes from PL to DC? Once he gets training does it matter if he hasn't swapped out the trained patch? Maybe some SPL's could keep track of such things. I'm grateful I never had to! My understanding is that NYLT trumps all. So that strip replaces any trained strip and goes on the sleeve under any, or no, PoR. But what if a scout (or venturer) completes NYLT then becomes a DC? Once he/she gets trained for that position, what does he/she do with the red strip?

@@George, have your current venturers gone through the Venturing Leadership Skills Course (either by taking a weekend out to do it -- as recommended, or by you presenting the material in small bits at every meeting)? That will help them get a sense of how they should perform. What organizational charts you present beyond the venturing model depends upon where the youth are coming from. I've always had a mix of boy scouts, girl scouts, and non-scouts who weren't interested in competing against one another -- their attitude was much like what Balsillie observed in that quote that you found. They attended different schools (some with intense rivalries), so they got plenty of that in sports, band, and theater (all competitive activities). Many craved time in large groups and preferred to attend Venturing Officers' Association (VOA) activities where they could have social time with like minded youth. (One council officer called it "structured unstructured time.") Some wanted to hike the tar out of our region with a handful of buddies, and others really were craving time to talk with adults about hobbies and professions and life in general. I've found myself spread pretty thin. (Like I said, a wild ride.) So, we don't pursue an activity if there isn't a youth stepping up as activity chair (or an officer claims it as their pet activity). That includes responsibility for research, sign-ups, and collecting forms and funds and reckoning with the adult treasurer. That's another reason why we move away from the patrol method. Crew officers should assume many of the responsibilities that get assigned to the committee members of most troops. (Periodically discussions in the patrol method sub-forum arise regarding responsibilities that adults have assumed, depriving boys of agency over their troop.) Have your youth appointed officers. Have any attended your council or area VOA?

Mrs. Q got me a tickpicker for Father's Day. The notion of me using my fingers, or a spork really annoyed her.

Sure you can. I tell my young adults that their Eagle patch is a violation of the insignia guide, but if they are okay with taking a hit on inspection (which we rarely do) they can keep it on. On the other hand, if they share their cigarettes with youth, they can expect summary dismissal.

Welcome to the forum and thanks in advance for all that you do for the youth. And, advisor to advisor, you're in for a wild ride. My crew has varied in size from 5 to 40 over the past 12 years. At no time was a patrol method warranted. Rather, subgroups in the crew centered around interests, e.g. Philmont contingent (aka, hike a month club), Seabase contingent, ski group, blood drive managers, etc ... Each of those had its own activity chair or two, accountable to the VP of program. This can be confusing to outsiders looking in. (I had an exchange student from Italy this year, and a lot about our boys perplexed her.) But with high school and college and military youths' diverse schedules and interests, it's really hard to solidify patrols for more than a weekend. That's not to say that if the youth want to arrange themselves into patrols, you should discourage it. As long as it's their idea, not yours, let them give it a try.

i don't think a POR is required to wear the patch. Although if someone's got a trained patch without a POR, I might ask him/her why.

Everything I learned about the strip came from Bryan's Blog: https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2015/11/05/nylt-patch-offers-new-way-scouts-venturers-show-theyre-trained/ Never saw the square patch. I'll keep my eyes out for boys wearing it from now on. Any temporary patch can go on the back of the sash, so it makes sense to me that boys with lots of other scouting experience would decide to sew it there.