yknot

All volunteers are in decline, but I think your viewpoint is part of why volunteers are declining so much in scouting. Volunteers are largely viewed and treated as unpaid employees and this is a condition pretty unique to scouting. As far as YPT, there has been a lot of confusion and many complaints down in the weeds about the process this year. I do think younger generations have less patience today for putting up with the kinds of organizational dysfunction and poor leadership that older generations did. They also expect technology to be their friend and for any portal or interface to be functional, user friendly, and seamless.

The problem isn't necessarily salary bloat, it is that the resource has been mis-applied. To survive, scouting is going to have to devote more resources towards unit operations even as unit numbers decrease. That's because the bar is always being raised due to incidents and liability issues. One of the huge issues facing scouting is the degree to which it has always relied upon volunteers. Volunteers and volunteerism, though, are in general decline. Unlike other youth organizations and many nonprofits, scouting has never developed strategies to cope with this reality, largely because it requires re-engineering structure far beyond consolidating councils. Apart from not having the bodies, scouting also lacks reliable expertise. You can't train unpaid volunteers enough to be considered expert in some of these areas. The aforementioned Range and Target sports is one example. In the years ahead, that is an area where scouting is likely going to be forced to either contain those activities to places where it can provide professional level supervision, provide direct paid unit support, or contract with third party providers.

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.

Councils with failed camps often have such a history. Poor stewardship, poor management, and no strategic, mission related oversight by anyone who should care (but doesn't), like National. Land assets in scouting are generally viewed through a lens that favors larceny over legacy.

There is nothing stopping councils from benchmarking with each other to get ideas and guidance on how to optimize assets. Most of them don't really want to, though, for various reasons. If National had ever been a more competent and well managed organization, it would have been more proactive in regards to camp assets stewardship for the benefit of scouting. It would have developed strategies, like centralized purchasing, to help camps optimize camp operation and functionality.

The poorly run council camps run for 8 weeks. The well run council camps in my state are optimized -- and monetized -- almost the whole year through. I realize that doesn't work or make sense for every single property out there, but it would for many.

One of my fears is that the only concrete idea Leadership has to 'save' scouting is to sell yet more outdoors based land assets to fund salaries. I would bet it's probably one of the few things on this list that might actually be effected.

That is what the Chipmunk rank expansion is for -- to boost the numbers up before the end of 2026. Allowing everyone to recharter in February also means that membership numbers from year end 2026 now through to whatever the new recharter grace period is (May?) will be inflated. That means that in 2027, unless Chipmunk completely fails or numbers really continue to trend down and tank, we will likely be seeing and hearing of claims of membership growth.

The actual presentation graphic says "February Renewal of Charters"

Or: "We are men of action. Lies do not become us."

Scouting is in decline. Other youth activities are not. Most have not only rebounded after Covid but have hit new highs. For example, 4-H is around 6 million up from 4 million prior to the pandemic. More US youth are involved not only in traditional sports but in new and emerging sports like Cricket. More US youth and families are involved in the outdoors than ever before -- they just are not accessing it through scouting. The problem with scouting's decline is scouting.

The only big one in recent memory was Scouts Canada but their decline wasn't due to girls.

As a unit CC I was once given a trouble ticket when I attempted to clarify a policy issue that had been unresolvable at the council level. I sent the policy, explained the issue, and then went on to receive numerous phone calls from BSA staff who updated me regularly regarding the status of my ticket. This went on for several months as the ticket worked its way up the org chart. Every time I got an update from a BSA staffer it was delivered with conviction that my ticket was being handled with utmost scout professionalism and responsiveness. Finally, I was called and informed that my answer was imminent by email. When I received it, with my trouble ticket number noted in the subject line, it was a three line recitation of the exact same vague policy I had sent in in the first place. They almost don't know how cheerfully incompetent they are.

Maybe, but Hawai'i is just one example of multiple fatal or serious incidents in recent years that have been settled out of court and public view. Higher profile ones make national press, but we all know of local ones that don't. I'm not exactly sure what point you are trying to make, but if it is that you think National will hang local volunteers and councils out to dry in public, then what I am saying is that that is unlikely... ... And this is why I think it's unlikely. This is exactly the kind of thing the scouting organization does not want examined publicly in a court room and to become part of the public record: That despite claims of comprehensive safety programs, a child was nearly beaten to death with multiple adults in the room, including both parents. Scouting repeatedly touts its much vaunted safety programs but this happened to a child playing in a building in sight of adults while participating in scouting. In the face of that, it's almost irrelevant what the cub master was doing or where he or she was.

That's the more likely scenario. Look what happened with the Hawai'i scout shooting incident. There is no way National wants to risk any kind of public court case where all these highly touted safety policies are shown to be mostly words that are not backed by functional processes.

My non attorney guess is that the defendent is the issue of one of the leaders. They all share the last same initial. Could be a coincidence, but it's not unusual to hear stories about leaders' kids who never seem to be at fault or or made to deal with any real consequences.

The (fairly) recent revision of the Cub program was meant to facilitate this kind of den/pack structure/meeting scheme. With the dearth of adult volunteers, it allows one leader to oversee multiple dens and/or ranks and all meet at the same time. The achievements were also better coordinated among the ranks so that it's easier to have multiple ranks work on similar achievements.

I think Erie Shores is the chartering organization for that pack. There were also prior incidents with the older child attacking the younger child.

This incident occurred in December when it is very possible to have 12 year old 5th graders at the AOL rank. By February, most of them will have crossed over.

The core issue is trying to do activities with kids ranging in age, size, and maturity from 5 year old kindergartners to 10 or 11 year old fourth and fifth graders. Scouting really forces all these ages together at pack meetings and other events and really doesn't work too hard at differentiating them as much as you would typically see in other environments like school, sports, etc. A too broad age range is also sometimes an issue at troop levels. Scouting asks volunteer adults to supervise situations that people who supervise children professionally typically try to avoid. Lions were not a helpful addition to this mix but National did it anyway for membership and marketing reasons. The lawsuit shouldn't be a surprise and I'm sure there have been plenty others.

I think that slide is here somewhere in one of the bankruptcy threads. I know I've seen it, and I'm pretty sure it was here.

The 650,000 was a membership snapshot number posted on Scouting Forums before they closed it to general discussions. It wasn't from NAM. The NAM reports use annual numbers which for multiple years during and post Covid were artificially inflated for a variety of reasons.

Thank you for posting numbers. The nadir during Covid was at one point around 650,000, but that low included a lot of paused not lost memberships.

Nope Citizenship was taught pretty well for decades primarily in the outdoors

I think this is one of the problems with scouts. Adults are more oriented towards what kids "should" know and "should" do vs. what they want to do, or they are stuck on nostalgia for the way things used to be for them -- how they experienced it, how they led it. As the outdoors program continues to wane in importance and variety, adults are boring youth out of the organization.