PACAN

Back from summer camp. I did a very unscientific poll of UMC units while there. Sample size small. None of them had heard about this, not surprising. All said that if they had to have their councils be their sponsors, they might as well shut down and find troops for their scouts to transfer to as this would be just one more thing their council couldn't handle. That was sad but they only had 10 scouts.

#3 sounds great until they decide your reasonable definition is different than theirs. #4 So the sponsor used to have insurance on the property they owned. Now the council owns the property as the sponsor and the unit has to pay the council. What a deal! The unit will also have to pay the council for the annual audit of their accounts. What another deal! Maybe subtract these fees from FOS. Proofs in the pudding. Who has the agreement they could PM me? Catholics....not managed like the UMC. Dioceses are separate feifdoms. Pastors have a lot of say on their own Parish's youth ministries. A number of them dropped units when the gay decision was made and started trail life. Given the almost 50% reduction in membership, I'm guessing a number of other sponsors have dropped their units as well. Anyone seen a list of membership/units by sponsor. Last one I saw was pre LDS.

@1980Scouter The Catholic Church through the National Catholic Committee on Scouting continues to support the chartering of scout units (both Boys and Girls) in individual dioceses and parishes. Of course they are free to choose not to or not to continue to charter. @MikeS72 There is the assets question. Will the individual UMC still allow storage of gear they don't control on their property? Will that stuff be insured by the church? If the trailer hits a car in the parking lot, do you sue the council? Will be BSA as the sponsor rent a u-store it place for each unit they inherit. Some units not only have trailers but some have their own motorboating and cabins. On the cash side, LCs are at least 30 days in paying bills. How does that work for unit expenses? Collect the fees for campout food, deposit it with the council and send them the bill from the grocery store? O the humanity!

All that follows is JMHO. UMC units will need to make a hard decision. I'd like to see the FAQs. They will not likely get any help from their church. I have no say in the matter but it's unfortunate that the church didn't seem to have the scouts best interest in giving the BSA control over their parishioners sons/daughters scouting experience. Some smaller units will try and get their scouts into other units. Some larger ones with longevity will decide if they can find another sponsor. If any move to BSA control, I hope they move over with minimal resources since LC will "take over their assets." Like was stated before, units that folded took their treasury, divided by the number in the troop and gave the money to each of them. They also gave away much of their equipment to other units. I wish them all well.

@skeptic @skeptic Please fill us in on what is covered at the webinar. Thanks @Eagle94-A1 I know of another unit that did the same thing. Divested all their $$ and gave all their gear to another unit. @Inquisitivescouter @InquisitiveScouter I think what he meant was no matter who the sponsor is, the council gives the same lousy service

This will be interesting to see how this is executed. BSA National pushing more workload on the LCs without any resources. Will they hire more staff and spread the cost to all units via "we need more FOS"? LC will now "own" units and will they have to have LC approval to spend a nickel? I wonder if this was "you take the UMC units or we will LDS you" ? One UMC church stopped sponsoring their troop and pack and they got an new sponsor with the American Legion. Lots of issues.. Just my thoughts.

@ynot Can you find the march membership numbers you referred to? thanks.

From TM: When BSA initially released the new badge is was just a regular badge and was going to become Eagle Required beginning in June but they have changed it a little bit to allow it to be used on Star/Life before June so we had to make an update to the badge placement routine to allow for this. If the system isn't placing the new badge under Star, you may not have the latest version of the program. You should download the V5.05 version from our website and install this to bring the program up to the latest version. To move the badge, I viewed his Merit Badges, clicked Edit for the Cit in Society badge and then clicked OK on the badge edit screen. This then placed the badge under the Star rank.

Anyone seen a statistic on what percentage of AOL scouts crossover each year and how many are still in scouting a year later.

Whoopie do! A 10 year old can join on 1 March instead of in three months when they finish 5th grade. Is this change a retention issue?

Maybe the title of this post should be U.K. Scouts not just Scouts. JMHO

Other than I have a contact at the NCCS who may be interested and able to assist

If you don't want to post your diocese please PM me separately

650000! WOW! Was there any breakdown of this number on the slide? At one time there were comments that there were more scouts than cubs.

No it's right there on page 8732 of the most recent court document! Happy Easter!

Sash is going to $100. For Scouts who have to have all the MBs it will cost over $450 to buy them all Solution: Ebay sellers have fully completed sashes for $25. Doesn't matter which badges since the sash and uniform are not required items. 😁

Thanks PaleRider

Hi all..thanks for suffering through these hearings for the benefit of all of us. Because my head would likely explode searching for this, could the person who posted about the reorg going down to 80 councils please post it again or PM me. Thanks.

@mrjohns2 yes that would be great. I'm guessing there are a lot more closures and mergers out there than listed here. Thanks

Is there an astute member of the forum who is keeping track of camp closures/sales and mergers?

All the Scouts BSA Nova awards have a "earn one MB from the list" requirement in them.

@FireStone Haven't heard that rumor. Was it the Program was going away in that no more NOVA or Super NOVA awards? It could be the STEM Scouts program is what they are talking about. IMO, The STEM scout program was another attempt to grow membership by appealing to the non-outdoors types. These youth did not do a traditional program...basically live in the labs doing experiments. Not sure they were even allowed to earn the NOVA awards. I saw that their registration fee was around $200/yr. Of course the flip side to this is that there will be another Eagle required MB called STEM Citizen! 😂

@FormerCubmaster What I remember from my dealings with the LDS units was that all boys were LDS HQ paid for all registrations hence the large number of LDS youth in the BSA. The local Bishop would say that all are registered but not all actually participate. This was different in that all LDS youth were required to participate in their weekly church night. These units did not have any non-LDS youth but they were not precluded from joining the BSA program.

Jameson76: Nope Eagle Scout candidates will continue to use the current rank requirements until June 30, 2022, and will not be required to complete the new Citizenship in Society Merit Badge as long as they complete all of the current Eagle Rank requirements before July 1, 2022. They do not have to submit their final Eagle Scout application nor complete their Eagle Scout Board of Review prior to July 1, 2022, but must complete all current Eagle Scout requirements before then.