83Eagle

I still call shenanigans with being handed boys who signed up with the DE. The DE is not a designated rep of the unit unless the unit designates him or her. The unit does not have to take all comers. Am I wrong here? One of the important parts of recruiting IMO is to meet the parents and explain how your unit works, and that just doesn't mean what night of the week it meets. Again, am I wrong here?

Kids are immediately signed up for Cub Scouts and are told to pay their meager pro-rated fee. And that's it. The kid is now a registered member without ever visiting a Pack. Then the parents are given information on several Packs in the area. Imagine the surprise of the Cub Master when a new kid shows up at a Pack meeting and says he is a member of that Pack. How can that be? The youth application has a spot for the Unit Leader to sign. So unless the unit leader signs the app, how can the boy be part of the Unit?

My daughter's troop camps about once a quarter and this past summer she went on a two week camp that included 5 days backpacking into the Sylvania Wildness carrying their gear with them. So the opportunity is there, but is the emphasis? Hard to say. As has been said here before, all scouting is local. But I will echo the comments about the continually morphing curriculum. I don't understand what GSUSA stands for, as a national organization.

Makes me mad because I knew they were overpackaged and overpriced going in. But I am trying to make a point to not police what he spends his allowance on b/c it's his money. Something about experience being the best teacher? Didn't work for me apparently....

It's been a while since we've bought one of those Smithsonian-branded science kits and now I remember why. Now, the BSA has teamed up with the maker of these kits to put stickers on the kits showing what loop or pin they help complete. We were at the scout shop and son wanted two of the kits. Well, you have your own money, go ahead, I said. Normally money burns a hole in his pocket but he had been doing better saving his allowance lately. Anyhow, I know these kits epitomize puffery when it comes to the picture on the box, and he wanted the triops aquarium. I asked the clerk if we co

Sounds like we should start calling this Kamp Kash and give the boys a card or certificate. Sell $1000 in popcorn Billy? Here's your disc shooter, your walmart gift card from trails end, and a Kamp Kash certificate from the unit as a reward. The certificate has no cash value, can't be transferred, and expires when you leave the unit. Easy peasy and just like the GSUSA Cookie Dough program.

Nicely done...it always amazes me how seriously and proudly they take stuff like the whittling chip. Having the "license to carve" is a big deal for them.

An outdoor movie sounds like fun for Cubs. Yeah it's camping but it's Cub camping. Ok, it's Webelos camping but still...I say just roll with it.

I would think that in order to have a clear conscience yeh would notify your Chartered Organization of the potential problem, share da documents you have been provided here, and ask them to have their legal counsel give yeh a formal legal opinion on the matter, both in terms of tax law and in terms of da statutes on fundraising fraud in your state. I discussed it with our COR. She didn't see what the big deal was particularly since it's not a cash account, we don't pay the boy, etc. So yeah, I'm sleeping pretty well when it comes to ISAs.

Nobody wants to run afoul of either the law or ethics, I would hope. At the same time we want to take full advantage of opportunities for boys. This includes rewarding boys that go above and beyond. I am not using other examples, like the cash cards from trails end, to justify the practice of scout account incentives. I am using them as examples to show how this practice is, in my mind, fundamentally the same. I just discussed this with my wife who is heavily involved in girl scouts. When girls sell cookies they get incentives from whatever company bakes the cookies (there are two I

The practice you describe is S.O.P. as far as I know. I don't pay anything personally at the scout shop for the pack unless I forgot to ask the treasurer to up-fund the account enough before a purchase.

What that fellow did was unscoutlike, but so would be descending on his neighborhood purely as payback. Two wrongs don't make a right. That's just my opinion.

Dang it this is maddening and confusing!!!!!!! I don't know if it's the majority, but certainly a large number of units offer some kind of individual account incentive. There is a course at an upcoming university of scouting in our district on how to properly handle scout accounts. I don't have the syllabus but the implication is how to handle accounts properly from an administrative standpoint, not whether or not they are allowable. I'll sign up for that session for sure. We all want to do the right thing out there. Personally I have no problems with them for the reasons I've a

No, just let it go and move on. Accentuate the positive.

I'm just happy our female leaders are willing to wear the tan shirts which aren't really feminine, IMO, even the women's cut model. All of them wear them untucked. The men wear them tucked. I gained an additional appreciation for differences when we placed a class B tshirt order. One mom said she would get a shirt but didn't like the unisex style. She offered to head up a women's cut order and guess what...a lot more of our moms have pack tshirts today...

Truer words have never been spoken...

I understand that Beavah, but nobody ever addresses my point. How can a scout get a $200 gift card from the offical BSA program that he can use at WalMart or Amazon to buy whatever he wants in a solely personal purchase and that is ok, but when the unit offers an additional monetary incentive to increase sales, that is not ok? My question is as simple as that.

I just pulled out the trails end incentive flyer again. If a scout sells $2,500 of popcorn, he gets $200 in wal mart cards--nearly 10% payback. PLUS 6% of his total sales each year is invested in his own scholarship account. So...someone tell me how this is any different? I am not being argumentative here, I just really can't wrap my head around how the official BSA program can pay boys a significant amount that can be used for purposes completely outside scouting, but a unit doing that runs into problems. Do boys get issued 1099s for multi-hundred dollar gift cards and scholarships?

Yeah, I understand the guidance, boomer, but it doesn't make any sense. Then again we are dealing with a government bureacracy so it doesn't need to make sense. By their logic, our council should start issuing 1099s to all the boys who earned gift cards from WalMart for selling popcorn. After all, that's a lot more like cash than an individual scout account. The boy can spend the gift card on anything he wants versus being limited to program expenses. From an ethical standpoint I see no difference between saying: "If you sell X amount of popcorn, you get $X in gift cards as an

I've been at any number of adult scouting events where the person in the front of the room yells "Signs Up!" as a matter of course. Just makes no sense to me! As suggested here, I just stand in front of the room and wait and wait. It works. Did just get back from a combined Webelos-Boy Scout camporee. We were assigned a troop to camp with. I was amazed at how much better behaved the Webelos were, campwide, in general than the Boy Scouts. Sinckering and heckling at the campfire program, whatever--different stuff I wouldn't have expected. Unfortunately we also got stuck with an "adults

This whole 1099 stuff associated with fundraising "commission" makes no sense. In the official BSA program, If you sell $650 in popcorn, you get a $30 gift card, along with a disk shooter toy that has at least some monetary value. That gift card is for walmart or amazon.com, so it's pretty much the same as cash. Doesn't relate at ALL to scouting program expenses. Is the council going to start issuing 1099s to these boys for commissions paid? So tell me how this is any different from a unit rewarding boys in accordance with the different amounts of sales they bring in, when this rewa

Heck, what's wrong with the program they have now? I can't find any fault with it. Here are a few examples: -Raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour. I think this would be a great way to end millions of jobs that aren't worth paying someone $20 an hour to do. As an added bonus, since any company still deciding to keep those jobs would have to raise its prices to compensate, this would be a great way to start some hyperinflation. Heck, why not raise it to $100 an hour and make everyone rich! Shazam! -Free college education. What an awesome idea! Now, since there is a difference between

Perhaps the Bad Idea shirt company is hanging out here because of threads that include the phrase "bad idea" ... just a thought. Hmmm...maybe my posts generate more of those responses than others?

Yes, Calico, that is the question in this case, it's just that rather than focus on one specific episode I wanted a broader answer to the question. The full backdrop is that we rotate among the webelos to plan and lead a flag ceremony, part of the webelos requirement. As part of that, the boy leader is charged with finding and organizing a color guard. Well, the particular webelos doing the choosing happened to pick a boy who was not in uniform to be in the color guard. I guess we never conveyed an instruction otherwise! So, the flag ceremony starts and I can see a parent bending the

Well, I would suggest that you are drawing lots of conclusions about me from a post that simply posed an open ended question of "what do you do?" I don't see anything beligerent in it at all, though of course I'm looking at through my viewpoint. You'll note I never said what we (not "I"--it is not "my" pack) do. In fact, we don't do anything about lack of a uniform. We don't berate the boys, we don't harrass the boys, we don't send them home, we don't do anything other than occasionally ask about it. That was sort of the whole point of asking the question, to take a poll of what was out t