Eagle94-A1

3 hours ago, Tron said:

I know other activities are pulling families away from scouts; however, I think bad units are also pushing families away. 

Don't forget costs. National fees are up. Councils are implementing their fees on top of that. Then uniforms and books. Then activities.

4 hours ago, MikeS72 said:

There is also a new option available if they are not interested in either of those choices.  Depending on the individual and their maturity level an 18-year-old may now be a Commissioner.

Would not recommend. As an active RT member and on the district and council training staff as an 18-20 YO ASM, and as a 21- 24 YO OA chapter adviser, many adults viewed my age in a negative light. I had been ignored, told I don't know what I am doing or talking about, and even cursed out at. All because of my age. What helped was 3 adults who saw the value in my opinions. I could say something and be completely ignored. They said the exact same thing, and it was brilliant.

ASM is the way to go. They adults know them, the youth know and respect them. And they probably have more influence over the Scouts than the other adults.

1 hour ago, PACAN said:

Thanks...you made my point for me.   Those axed volunteers go back and spread the word and we lose more volunteers.   

UNDERSTATEMENT! (emphasis). We also lose FOS support. The district chair who was yelled and cursed out at, well not only did he quit, he stopped contributing to FOS. Talked to  other business leaders about this, and they dropped their FOS contributions. Today, the area that was my old district raises 10% of what I did 30 something years ago.

17 hours ago, PACAN said:

One of the big issues to me with the "professionals" is that the ones making decisions especially at the national level are not associated with a unit and have no accountability to the consequences of new or changing policies to units.  The volunteers at the national level who "vote...all in favor say aye"  are guilty as well.

The "blame the units" is commonplace.

And those national volunteers who do have unit connections, and voice their objections get outvoted and eventually removed. I knew one national member working on the 2015 Cub Scout program. Although he crossed over to Scouts, he still had a lot of Cub Scout connections with his old pack. He asked for ideas, shared thoughts, etc. the 2015 Cub Program was a game changer. It was more active, required a lot more planning to coordinate things with the different dens, BUT it worked if you prepared.  2015 program got watered down in December 2016, and he was removed from the committee. In fact no one from the committee knew anything about the changes until after they were announced.

51 minutes ago, Tron said:

The quality of our leadership is garbage; I can't do the training for the other leaders and (in my unit at least) they refused help prior to the cutoff and are now blaming national for screwing up.

The quality of out professional leadership is garbage, they keep changing requirements and processes without any consideration for the volunteers, creating further problems and hassles for volunteers to deal with.

Fixed it for you.

5 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

No, it is an attitude issue. Sadly I have seen too many pros over the years who could give a flip about the program and volunteers, they just want FOS dollars and membership increases.

Fixed it for you

You got me.

4 hours ago, Tron said:

That sounds like a communcation issue. 

No, it is an attitude issue. Sadly I have seen too many pros over the years who could give a flip about the program and volunteers, they just want FOS dollars and membership increases.

Some of the reasons I have seen quality volunteers leave: being yelled and cursed out at by pros; having pros cancel your event ( which has been going on for decades) to push the new council event; asking council for help, and being ignored; running an event and being told you have to have a second event at the same site and time; running an event , creating your supply order well in advance, and finding out the week of that no supplies were ordered, then having the pros ticked off at you for going over budget purchasing those supplies; and I am sure I forgot a few.

6 hours ago, Tron said:

That is all stored in the same data layer as everyone else. Nationals system wasnt unreliable, it didnt fail, someone in your council borked your records.

I really do not care who is responsible. But if the data disappears and it needs to be manually recollected and inputted, that is a problem. And ithat is on National, not council, for creating a system that has no backup. It took over a year for me to collect records, transcribe the training codes for the council registrar,  turn into council, and have them input the lost data into the system the first time. Thankfully I kept a copy of the records I turned into the council, so I was able to submit everything before the other districts, and it was done in 3 months. But it took my council almost 2 years to get the records straight.

23 hours ago, Tron said:

Lol, training. Training is SO easy and SO many volunteers can't seem to get it done. National needs to make trained status mandatory just like youth protection.

I have been told mandatory training for position is a liability, especially since National keep changing what it courses need to be taken to be considered "trained." I was recently considered "untrained" because I had the old SM Fundamentals Course. For whatever reason, my SM Specific classes that I added myself to the rooster, for the reasons below, were not showing up. But the ITOLS class was. 

But the #1 problem is BSA's IT systems are unreliable. Not only have I encountered numerous errors on the scout side over the years, I have seen numerous errors on the adult side. Twice in a 5 year period, everyone in my district had their training records vanish. EVERY.SINGLE. PERSON. From the new Cub leader, to the veteran PTC Faculty member, their training records vanished. Even recently several MBs that I have been a MBC for decades were removed from my profile.

And let's admit it, online sessions are horrible. It is very easy to stop paying attention. Plus there is no question and answer.

1 hour ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

This is what happens when you have educators, not Scouters, creating program.

And training.

55 minutes ago, yknot said:

That is a critical issue that affects retention. There is too much spiraling and repetition in program elements, and the revamp to make it easier for adult volunteers to run multi rank meetings only made it worse. The program also repeats some of the K-5 school curriculum. 

This is what happens when you have educators, not Scouters, creating program.

9 hours ago, BetterWithCheddar said:

My biggest concern as a den leader of soon-to-be 4th graders is that we have some kids heading into their 5th year of the program and it no longer excites them. Cub Scouts just seems to drag on ~ that's what I mean by "too much."

One of the reasons why they dropped Webelos from 5th grade to 4th & 5th grade circa 1989. Webelos was meant to be a transition, doing things more ont he order of Boy Scouts, and prepping them. When Webelos DLs no longer got separate training with an emphasis on transitioning from Cubs to Scouts, a lot was lost. Folks were not doing the 18-24 month Webelos properly, and it became a continuation of Cubs. And now that is the norm  

13 hours ago, Tron said:

Your council has the secret sauce, you should share with everyone and save the camps.

Even moneymaker camps will get sold. We had a local Scout camp on the border of 2 additional councils. So folks from 3 councils used it. Heck one of those councils even held district events there because of proximity. Additionally it was about 15 minutes off the interstate, so units travelling would use it too. The small primitive camp made enough money to support itself, and subsidize some of the costs of the main camp. Someone decided to move as much infrastructure as possible to the main camp, sell it, and use the money to improve the main camp. Yeah, the main camp is still poorly run and only has 4 weeks of camp.

Disrespectful Pros has been the norm in my Scouting career. That has involved many years in 6 councils, and i cannot tell you the number of pros. Good ones leave because they also get abused and disrespected.

55 minutes ago, Tron said:

I think the CST model is failing because the CST volunteers are overwhelmed at how poorly qualified the council and district volunteers are.

In my neck of the woods, the folks who know what to do at the district and council levels have been run off pros. Reason is they see the mistakes the council is making, and when they bring it to the pro's attention, the get ignored, yelled at, or cursed out. They either get removed by the pro, or quit out of frustration.

1 hour ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

I have never been impressed with the communication prowess of the organization, nor the flow of information from National to units.

Not just units. Anyone remember when national made policy changes regarding Tiger Cubs and BB Guns, and didn't tell anyone teaching shooting sports directors at NCS? So folks were not aware of it until 6 months after it went into effect, after Cub Scout Day Camp and Resident Camp season. You would think any changes in Shooting Sports  Range and Target Activities , the NCS Staff would be the first to find out and disseminate the info.

1 hour ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

With the old interweb thingy at our fingers now,  you'd think the simple solution is a "Daily Read File" or some such.  National posts all policy and procedure changes there, and anyone can access and read.  

The hard part would be keeping duff, fluff, puff, and stuff out of it... you know, propaganda, feel good, and image pieces like you see here https://www.scoutingnewsroom.org/

 The way National changes things, a staff couldn't keep up on a daily basis.

3 hours ago, mrjohns2 said:

Agreed. I had hope that the CST would really help. I would love it if a unit had a question, they go to the district training chair who can't answer it, they go to the district training chair who can't answer it, who goes to the council training chair who can't answer it, who then goes to the CST training chair. They, then, know all of the different resources at national and get an answer. Then roll it back to all the people that rolled the question up. I haven't seen it happen. 😞 I have suggested a few times to go to the CST resource, but everyone looks at me like that would be crazy. 

Sadly it is easier to keep up with social media postings on topics than do the above. Heck I have found out things before the pros find out. And I have been asked by my council to take down my reposts of national announcements because they ant to put their spin on it.

1 hour ago, Tron said:

So the general vibe out of the 2026 NAM is that national, council, and districts support the units and changes are coming between now and this time next year for the organization to align to that philisophy.

"There is always home, a fool's hope."  We will see, but I am not holding my breath.

What I want to know is why would a council, knowing the refresher course would be coming shortly, require everyone to complete SYT by April 1?

9 hours ago, Tron said:

National could fix this, I would propose a 3 step solution.

S1) Update MBC training, apply a test, training expires every 2 years.

S2) Tell councils that they cannot restrict the number of MB an MBC can teach, instead tell councils they can only restrict what is considered qualified to be an MBC.

S3) Force every district and council committee to have sitting and meeting MB committees.

As others have said, national won't change things because it hurts their bottom line. Heck they encourage. I remember one council in FL was given all kinds of praise in a NAM video on the number of MBs they awarded during COVID.

6 hours ago, Tron said:

I totally get this, I'm even a parent who expects MB at summer camp, though the pressure is on my kids to actually perform. God help them if they come back from camp with a partial; partials trigger the old "What were you doing instead of completing this?!" and subsequent chastising about how much they are applying themselves and how much they would apply themselves if it was their own money.

Sadly this is the attitude of too many parents. Summer camp is supposed to be more than MBs. The attitude is why a camp will give Basketry away, when Scouts did 1/2 the requirements. That is why summer camps give away Canoeing to folks who spend 15 minutes on the water every day, and when the Scouts go on a canoe trek with the troop, cannot do basic maneuvers. And I can go on.

3 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

1 Timothy 6:10

Maybe that is why national and council are in the situation they are in?

19 minutes ago, Jameson76 said:

A lot of these issues are caused by councils not planning MB events far enough out in advance  using MB classes / events as profit centers

THAT. IS. IT!  (caps for emphasis).

One district had an MBU on the same weekend for decades. Well organized, experts for MBCs, etc. However council was not making any money off of it. They created their own, the same exact weekend, but at a much higher price. Original group followed NCAC, and raised costs a bit so the council could make $1/person profit. You think council would be happy?

Council cancelled the event one month before it was to occur, and after the registration deadline to their MBU. 

1 hour ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

4.  Did the counselor ask you to bring any work you had completed ahead of time? "No"

5.  So how did the counselor see your work for requirement X ??  "He never saw it." (Later, at home, I check the website for this event, and there are no pre-requisites listed.)

I was never asked back to one MBC because I sent a pre-requisites list, which didn't get sent, and didn't give away MBs.

1 hour ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

So, given that, in the past, I have never once gotten feedback on any of the concerns I submitted, once again I submitted Reporting Merit Badge Counseling Concerns. https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/512-800_WB.pdf

Do you think I'll get any constructive feedback on this one?

 If it is a MBC with council affiliations, no. If it is a museum doing their own thing, doubtful.

Sidenote, I ran an Indian Lore MB day as an OA fundraiser/promotions/equipment maker event. Yes, we charged at the time a steep amount, $35 in the early 2000s, but that included craft supplies, and lunch. Folks knew they would not be able to complete the MB in advance, unless they did the prerequisites. And guess what THE SCOUTS HAD FUN (emphasis), new OA chapter got publicity, and we got enough money to get some ceremonial regalia. My point is, if you make it fun, and let Scouts know in advance, they will still come.

Sadly You are right. Even my sons complained about folks getting awarded MBs. One Scout was so fed up with this, he almost gave up on Eagle, saying it is meaningless. 

5 hours ago, H2Ocaveman said:

Keep scrolling, it is not in the best place for clear guidance.  

You ain't joking. It is in a horrible place.