Eagle1993

9 minutes ago, DannyG said:

Scouting charges fees to its volunteers to register. I don't know any sports coaches that have to pay a registration fee. The training can be extensive for a scout leader. Sports volunteers might get a rules document to sign, then they just show up. But I also have some stories of terrible youth coaches.

That is true for many sports, but I pay fees to be a NICA mountain bike coach.  There is an annual background check fee to a 3rd party and annual registration fee.  To be a level 2 coach I have to take a specific training course, in person.  In addition I have to pay for mountain bike first aid and CPR every two years.  NICA tracks the level of coaches and has very strict rules on rider to coach ratios, including coaching levels.  It ensures the program is run well and consistently.

I do wish BSA used the same background check company as other organizations so and then that fee would be once for multiple orgs.

4 hours ago, Tron said:

This is why there needs to be a doctrinal pathway to complain to district/council advancement about bad leaders adding to the requirements; that SM is going rogue.

So, instead of making a simple first class requirement like we had for the majority of BSA history like " On one overnight, serve as patrol cook & prepare breakfast, lunch, & dinner that require cooking."

Instead we have the following:

2a. Help plan a menu for one of the above campouts that includes at least one breakfast, one lunch, and one dinner, and that requires cooking at leastt wo of the meals. Tell how the menu includes the foods from MyPlate or thec urrent USDA nutritional model and how it meets nutritional needs for thep lanned activity or campout. 

2b. Using the menu planned in First Class requirement 2a, make a list showing a budget and the food amounts needed to feed three or more youth. Secure the ingredients.

2c. Show which pans, utensils, and other gear will be needed to cook and serve these meals.

2d. Demonstrate the procedures to follow in the safe handling and storage off resh meats, dairy products, eggs, vegetables, and other perishable foodp roducts. Show how to properly dispose of camp garbage, cans, plastic containers, waste water, and other rubbish. 

2e. On one campout, serve as cook. Supervise your assistant(s) in using a stove o r building a cooking fire. Prepare the breakfast, lunch, and dinner planned and in First Class requirement 2a. Supervise the cleanup. 

So basically we added 2a,b,c and d to requirement 2e that worked. We added a bunch of paperwork for kids to fill out, chances for leaders to micromanage each step, etc.  

BSA did this with many requirements....

See attached for the history of rank requirements.  You can see the trend from simply... Cook for your patrol to getting meals approved against a budget following my plate. 

Just an example of how this becomes an issue... My nephew was denied his first class cooking completion because he went over his self estimated budget.  The SM told him that staying within budget is part of the requirement.... Could you imagine better ways to kill motivation of a 12 year old then talking about food budgeting?  I digress...

Even through the 1990s, the rank requirements were almost exclusively outdoor activities.... Then for some reason we decided to make much of this into lists and tracking.

I'd go back to the 1965-1970 requirements which are straight forward, and focus on earning rank through outdoor activities.

bsa_ranks.pdf

7 hours ago, DannyG said:

Certainly. It shouldn't be 90% indoors. Unless that is what your unit wants from the program.

Our troop spends 90 minutes a week in a troop meeting. There is another 90 minute PLC meeting for leadership. That is up to 7.5 hours of meetings a month. The monthly weekend camping trip is 48+ hours. Maybe spend a couple hours working on a merit badge, citizenship or whatever...  Still, over 80% of the troop time is outdoors. This is the current program. That's the way I envision it to be.

Another way to look at this.

4 indoor troop meetings a month

4 indoor PLC meetings a month

1 campout a month

1/9 activities are outdoors.....

9 minutes ago, Tron said:

Technically declining. 2020 to 2023 had a little bump but basically is level, and comparing modern counts to the BSA peak membership in 1970 ... well looks like 2, almost 3 times the single parent households. 

It would be interesting to see this as a percentage of children.  I'm not sure what that looks like, but I think it was on the order of 25%. 

Single family households are actually declining now.  I'm not sure why they would make a change now for that... But perhaps it was overdue.

41 minutes ago, BinTharDunThat said:

I'm continuously surprised that my Scouting experience is so different from others, or at least is appears that way.
When growing up 35 years ago and in our Troop today, we put a special emphasis on Den Chiefs to engage with a Den in a Pack.  Its a near-certain way to recruit a whole Den of new Scouts.
The Troop also puts a premium on engagement with Packs.  The Troop staffs the Cuboree.  The Troop staffs the Webelos Woods/Trail to Troop.  The Troop hosts an October open house directed to AOL Adventure completions.  The Troop hosts an October campout with Webelos.  The Troop tries to camp with the Pack and to cook meals for them.  The Troop helps to recruit Cub Scouts.  We go to the Blue and Gold and receive new Scouts.
We don't wait for them to find us.  They have too many choices.
Are we a rarity in this? 

In our Troop there was a big change pre and post Covid.

We have had a few den chiefs and traditionally Cub scouts participated in a hike, meeting and our winter Klondike.   We held a pretty elaborate crossover ceremony as well.  That died since Covid. 

The packs had substantial losses, we had no Scouts interested in being den chiefs, the pack leaders and parents were no longer interested in hiking or camping with the Troop (at least vs the numbers we had 2019 and prior). 

1 of our feeder packs collapsed once the Catholic Church stopped their recharter and the adults no longer cared to continue.  The other pack dropped down to 8 kids and the leaders there were no longer interested in continuing so they disbanded this spring.

We are left with the one large pack, who does extremely well as a pack but their leaders and parents show no interest in Scouts.  We have met, had personal invites to hiking, camping, etc. and no one attended. 

I do think Den Chiefs would help and hopefully the Packs new Cubmaster is more engaging.  The change since 2019 has been dramatic.

I'm not sure about other Troops in my area.  But all of them are struggling with low membership at this time.

Scouting must be able to operate along with sports ... our Troop always has; however, there are limitations.  It is tough to form solid patrols if kids are absent every weekend all year.  The only benefit of the increasing cost of scouting is I see fewer scouts who have low participation rates.

One of our ASMs brought up a good point.  From what she has seen (two kids both high school grads), sports picks up a lot during middle school, but drops (for many kids) early in High School.  I've seen the same ... many kids & parents drop sports Freshman year as school gets more challenging and sitting on the bench watching games loses its appeal ... especially sports that take high time commitments. 

The ASM said we should be recruiting 8th - 10th graders as they may have dropped out of cubs, never did cubs or didn't bridge over to Scouts immediately.  The ASM is a member of our Council's executive board and has raised this suggestion, but the focus is on recruiting Cubs.

I just did a crossover with our primary feeder pack.  The pack has 90 scouts.  Roughly 20 Lions, 20 Tigers, 20 Wolves, 15 Bears, 10 Webelos and 5 AOL.  Of the 5 AOL only 1 wants to continue in Scouts.  That 1 only joined Cub Scouts this year....

I talked with the other 4 parents. 

- They are looking to reduce activities after 5th grade

- All are planning to increase their kids involvement in travel sports.... So no time left for scouts

3 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

These decisions really started with Dale (perhaps you could argue it goes back to their partnership with the LDS).

To clarify, all of these decisions and actions are the BSA's to own.  It was their decisions that led to the situation we are in; I think you need to go back further to see how these decisions all relate and many of the decisions were linked to BSA's concern of losing LDS members followed by reactions to losing LDS members.

 I went back and updated the name of the church as one of the best scouters on this forum, @The Latin Scot has mentioned the correct name to use in the past.

8 hours ago, PACAN said:

Just curious..did the BSA do any risk analysis on any of these decisions?    Or did they ask 3 people at the food truck and 2 said yes so they plowed ahead?     

I expect each time they did risk/benefit tradeoff discussions.  They may have been better talking with 3 guys at a food truck. 

These decisions really started with Dale (perhaps you could argue it goes back to their partnership with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).  I'm sure each time they weighed the risks of change and did their best.. but clearly the end result has been failure.

1999- Keeping Gay scouts out... To prevent angering the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, BSA fought to keep gay scouts out. In 1999/2000 there was limited blow back.  However, that grew over time and as the USA opinions on gays changed, BSA was clearly behind the times (similar to their delayed response to desegregation in the 1960s).

2013/2015 - Gay scouts/leaders admitted.... They stopped listening to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  and realized the nation passed them by.  They probably made the decision 5 years too late, but it is what it is.  The damage was done for corporate donors, United Way and progressive areas.  However, I expect this started the clock for the LDS to leave.

2018/2019 - Girls admitted... They knew the LDS were leaving and felt they needed a new group of youth to recruit.  They wanted to minimize the impact to existing scouts so they attempted to minimize changes (single gender, BSA name stays the same, etc.).  They attempted to split the baby....

2020 - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leave BSA

2020-2024 Covid/Bankruptcy caused further damage

2025 - Scouting America.... They decided to go all in on relaunching BSA.  I expect they believe the BSA brand has been tarnished and they need a relaunch.  BSA membership and financials are atrocious so I expect they are more willing to be aggressive.

What else is changing going forward?  I don't think a name change alone will do anything.  Perhaps it's time for them to talk to a few guys at the food truck.

3 hours ago, qwazse said:

there was a WOSM census that revealed that membership declined in nearly every European country immediately after their scouting organization incorporated girls.

BSA mentioned this, which is why they added girls but kept girls in their own den and Troop.  The idea was that it would prevent any loss of boys while also adding girls.  Clearly that strategy didn't work, which is likely one reason why they are adding fully coed options.  No point in keeping them separated if it didn't keep scouts/scouters from quitting and many packs/Troops operated like coed units anyway.

When we hear BSA plans to simplify the program (for Scouts), is the fear moving it back to 1972 and skill awards?

BSA lost a million and a half scouts from the start of Dale to lifting the ban on gay scouts.  They fought 15+ years and cemented their legacy of discrimination against the gay community.  Yes they are much more inclusive now, but 15+ years digs a deep hole of mistrust.  GSUSA who avoided that mess has 700,000 more girls than total youth in BSA.

That said, it is tough to determine if BSA numbers would be better now if they accepted gay youth at the same time GSUSA did. Loosing relationships with public schools was damaging, but I expect trends would have worked against BSA regardless.

Recent changes.... Did adding girls help stave off a deeper drop than would have occurred if the didn't add girls?  I lean to the guess that short term, the impact on total membership has been a net negative.  That said, the question will be in 10-15 years will BSA be better off accepting all youth?  Time will tell.

Note that this is just discussion members numbers, not how these changes could negatively impact the chance for boys to have their own space.

Stage 1 .... We are well past this now, but were there in the 80s and 90s....

Another characteristic of stage one decline is the loss of the adventurous, open-minded, searching orientation for continuous learning. Answers are believed to be found in the years of experience, which might be useful, yet often can be blinding in new situations. Typically, generational and positional gaps present themselves with one-up-man-ship dynamics by those with positional power or organizational tenure. The past filters the present so that a true future cannot be created without showing “due” and “respect” for those that lived the past. Clearly, an issue of pride.

Compare BSA to UK.  UK in 2023 grew by 5.6% and has 100,000 youth on waiting list to join.  UK scouting has various advantages but we have a lot to learn from them....

2022 Report

Cubs - 580,194

Scouts - 415,564

Venturing and Sea Scouts - 15,400

Explorers - 30,870

TOTAL - 1,042,028

2023 Report

Cubs - 574,365 (-1.0%)

Scouts - 392,275 (-5.6%)

Venturing and Sea Scouts - 14,961 (-2.9%)

Explorers - 33,445 (8.3%)

TOTAL - 1,015,046 (-2.6%)

22 minutes ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

Another random thought...

When we offer the option of fully coed Troops, will there be an ongoing need for Venturing?

Venturing has been in decline, our entire District is down to 1 crew.  There w as a rumor that a new program Rovers? that could replace venturing.  I think Rovers would be pushing the upper age limit of Venturing. 

Edit... Rovers look like option post Venturing..

https://tidewaterbsa.com/rovers/

12 minutes ago, Armymutt said:

That's not a bad idea.  I wish our troop was as invested in the pack as yours.  Our troop has the same CO but no interaction.  Most of the kids came from a pack that folded due to the CO dropping them.  Of course, our pack will probably fold at the end of the year due to lack of parental interest and my son crossing over to a different troop.  

We haven't been doing great working with our packs.  In the past, the Pack leaders were much more responsive to our invites but recently most kids are dropping before getting to Boy Scouts.  So, this is a bit of a Hail Mary.  If we fail to recruit by fall 2025 our Troop will likely fold.

Also, we have gone from 4 feeder packs 4 years ago to 1 this coming fall.  3 of the 4 packs have folded.

1 hour ago, Armymutt said:

I think that moving AOL to its own 5th grade program is a bad idea.

As a Troop, we have seen massive losses before crossover, so we are looking to pilot running the 5th grade AOL program.  Our plan is to hold AOL meetings concurrently with Troop Meetings had have our Troop Guide and a ASM run the den meeting.   Basically take over for the den leaders.  Not sure if it will work, but we figured it can't be worse than what has been happening the last 3 years.

17 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Now I read on Mike Walton's FB post about how they are "simplifying the Scouting program" which some are interpreting to mean "dumbing down."

Most of the best Troops and Packs in my area have older scouters involved.  One major issue is that there appears to be less willingness to volunteer the massive amount of hours scouting requires from the upcoming generation of parents.  One Troo I talked with mentioned that in the past there was some competition over who would be Scoutmaster and now parents want a program but don't want to volunteer.  This may be a N of 3-4 and may not be widespread, but I get the sense that BSA sees a problem.  

Simplifying programs could be beneficial but could also lead to some really bad outcomes.  I hope for the best but I respect Mike and if he is concerned I am as well.

Just now, nolesrule said:

That legalese is  called a DBA ("Doing Business As"). Seeing as you aren't aware of that, you'd probably be surprised how often the public name of a business is not actually the same as the official registered name of the business entity.

Also, I do expect BSA may look to update their charter. The boy club officially updated their charter to the boys and girls club when they added girls.

18 minutes ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

"They also agreed to cooperate on the commercial terms of scouting trademarks in the future, according to the court filing."

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/boy-scouts-america-girl-scouts-settle-trademark-dispute-over-co-ed-scouting-2022-07-23/

 

 

 

 

I think there is near zero chance GSUSA sues.  I believe they claimed they spent 3-5 million in litigation last time and received nothing from BSA.  I expect BSA lawyers, who won the last TM lawsuit, made sure Scouting America was litigation proof.

1 hour ago, PACAN said:

Don't we accept all youth (except those who don't prescribe to the Religious declaration) now?   Will that change?

If they plan to make a change, now is the time.  I'm tired of the drip, drip, drip of change causing constant controversy.  Get it over with at once or never change it for 10+ years.  I'm concerned that they will save this change for 2-3 years from now just when people have finally accepted the name change.