SCOUTER-BigEd

Jim is a good friend and I am glad to see him visiting our forums. Back when Laguna Station first opened we did a photo spread in SCOUTER Magazine, back in the glory days when this website was connected to a published magazine.

Ed Henderson

Webmaster - SCOUTER.com

All scout units should have a checking account, and many also have a savigns account. Usually there is at least one account at your local council service center and some councils keep two accounts (one for Scout Shop & Events and a seperate one for registration).

A Unit Treasurer should be aware of all of these accounts. It is important to keep both your banks & the council office informed on who are the authorized people to use those accounts.

A good guide for all units is the Unit Budget Plan, this is a flyer that usually comes to the unit once a year with your recharter packet.

On the matter of the Employer Identification Number. After the enactment of the Patriot Act, all banks MUST have a EIN number for the account. Where a bank official may ask you to go to the Scout Office, your local council's EIN number is NOT the one you need.

All scout units are chartered by their Chartering Organization and, in fact owned by them. Whether you are chartered by a church, labor union, or the local Lions Club they need to provide you with their EIN number for the purposes of opening a checking account. Some Chartering Organizations (the Mormon Church comes to mind) have specific policies that do not allow for their units to operate an independent checking account, so be sure to check with your Chartered Organization Representative for your unit on what to do about this.

Some units are chartered by groups like "Friends of Pack So & So" and those types of chartering organizations are not likely to posess their own EIN number. It is possible for a Pack or Troop to go directly to the IRS and get an EIN number. This is a quick and painless process. In fact, if you can get through the IRS on-line session, you are issued a EIN number immediately.

Visit: http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=97860,00.html

For most units, that will be the end of it, but in later years if your Pack becomes one giant popcorn fundraising machine, and you get over $10,000 flowing through your checking account in a year, there may be some additional reporting that the Pack Treasurer must do if you go the route of getting your own EIN number for a unit.

Let me hasten to add that this process is only about getting an EIN number. This has nothing to do with becoming a Non-Profit organization. The steps to become an IRS 501 © 3 entity are far more difficult and very very few scout units have ever gone that route.

YIS,

Ed Henderson

Webmaster - SCOUTER.com

Board Member - U.S. Scouting Service Project @ usscouts.org

Major updates and modifications to the entire SCOUTER.com website are underway and the first major project is DONE!

SCOUTER.com's BSA Camp Database is now updated, all links correct, and we invite you to visit.....

http://www.scouter.com/compass/Where_To_Go/BSA_Camps/

At 7:49 this morning I finally finished a major overhaul of both the SCOUTER.com BSA Camp pages. It has taken me about 200 hours over the past six weeks but we have updated the links and information for every Boy Scout Camp property in the nation.

As you know councils acquire & sell camps, and about 80% of them either changed a URL for their camp properties or finally got around to adding websites for all of their camps over the last five years since I last went through this site.

What we have now is an up to date & accurate database of all of the camps in America.

During this update we also corrected the data for all 307 Boy Scout Councils in our NetRoster Area. Area Codes change, councils build new Service Centers, and nearly every few months at least one council will forget to renew their domain name and get cybersquatted with their URL domain getting hijacked. Council are always needing to change their website URL.

This wraps up the major work on this part of the site as far as Scout Camp data is concerned.

We know there are many updates that need to be done to other parts of SCOUTER.com and we are working to weed out dead links, add new content, and make the site even more relivent & meaningful.

YIS,

Ed Henderson

ScouterEd@SCOUTER.com

One part of the U.S. Scouting Service Project is SCOUTCAMP.org. I am the webmaster there as well as here at SCOUTER.com (the two sites are not associated with each other)

Even as the USSSP updates the look of the site I wanted to let everyone know that I have been busy updating the BSA Camps data on BOTH SCOUTER.com & ScoutCamp.org.

If you want to check out a BSA camp, see it's website, or even leave an evaluation of a camp. Go to both of these sites and leave your feedback today!

Ed Henderson

Board Member - U.S. Scouting Service Project

BigEd@usscouts.org

http://usscouts.org/henderson.asp

Webmaster - SCOUTER.com

ScouterEd@SCOUTER.com

I worked in the Capitol Area Council for 3 1/2 years as a D.E. and loved it (except for the awful South Texas Humid Heat). They have come so far in their camping program over the past 10 years.

I understand the new SE is a published author of Edible Wild Plant books.

Frankly, I have a real hard time imagining why anyone would want to leave the awesome summer temperatures of Maine for a Texas summer. Although the summer of 2007 has been anything but typical. Parts of the Capitol Area Council has been hit with floods (Marble Falls & the Hill Country expecially).

There are many wonderful people down there in that council both among the professional staff and the volunteers.

"Big Ed" Henderson

CAC D.E. for Pioneer & Green Dickson Districts 2002 - 2005

Now the Webmaster here at SCOUTER.com