yknot

It is amazing the degree of support the Queen and her husband Prince Phillip gave to the world's youth through their various roles and patronages. In addition to scouting, she was a one time patron and lifelong supporter of Pony Club, another youth organization I have given a great deal of time to. She's also supported youth involvement in golf, tennis, football, and the Olympics not to mention multitudes of youth charitable and social organizations. Many children, not just in the UK or the Commonwealth but throughout the world, have lost a great friend and lifelong champion this week. I'm sad to mark her passing.

I wonder if it would be better for victims if BSA did enter Ch. 7. There certainly would be a scramble among the first in line. Many of those cases, though, were among the most egregious and if they went to court would likely result in judgements creating new high thresh holds for child sexual abuse victims. The ensuing media coverage would also put a focus on the issue in general whereas right now with Ch. 11 it seems to be getting swept under the rug and many of these victims will never be heard from. If the reality in Ch. 11 is that most victims are going to get a check for $37 anyway, I wonder if the validation, in terms of some high profile cases, media coverage, and large judgements under Ch. 7, would be better?

In some cases, I know certain suspect claims had information but it was recorded in the wrong fields or in attached narratives. If there is no other information included other than "someone somewhere abused me" then yes, you're right, you couldn't use that to establish any kind of corroborative matrix. But if there is a name, or a place, that would be something to work with. I know we've been told certain things about the claims but frankly unless they've been reviewed by an objective entity I don't know how much credence to give to anything that has been said.

What I have hoped is that some kind of corroborative forensics will be done to establish a matrix and depict clusters of cases in time and/or place or other common details. That could lend credence to claims in cases where aging memories are failing.

It will be interesting to see what the quotes are. I can't think of any parallels in youth organizations. Pretty much everyone doing anything with kids is under the coverage of an umbrella organization in some way unless they are a free lance piano teacher or a tutor. But those activities are not comparable to scouting and are generally adequately covered by a personal liability umbrella.

To me it seems like liability insurance is going to be the issue. If BSA goes belly up, no single unit or supporting organization would be able to afford it. If scouting is gong to continue at any kind of level more organized than a random street side pick up game, some solution would have to be found. I don't know what that is or what it would look like.

Let me clarify. It had nothing to do with new future liability from existing cases. What (I thought) I understood was that BSA owes money to the settlement -- that some portion of what it has pledged or owes is going to come from future revenues based on its achieving its business plan and that that money will be funneled into the trust going forward. I was wondering if someone knew for certain.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/us/boy-girl-scouts-membership-decrease-covid.html This is from about a year ago. Somewhere on this site is a chart from March of this year showing this year's number is about 650,000.

Do you have this link? https://methodistscouter.org/a-new-agreement/

My dim understanding is that BSA is also on the hook to make some kind of continuing future contributions to the settlement. If so, what happens if they are unable to do so? Does it matter? Somewhere buried in all the court documents was a restructuring plan that I thought was linked to a future contribution scheme. The business plan was based on certain membership numbers. BSA is currently far below the original membership number, although that doesn't seem to be widely known, and achieving the future projections outlined in its plan may be unsurmountable. If the membership numbers keep going down or remain flat when they have been projected to go up, does that have any bearing on things? Is that information that should be known by the judge?

As far as I know those are largely separate tracks: The tinkering that resulted in the 8/26 affiliation document is independent of the extension which gives units more time to sort this out. In a strategic sense it also allows BSA to show optimal membership numbers in its 2022 year end report for December. Some of the UMC units in limbo may ultimately drop but this way they won't be reflected until 2023.

There are about 55 million kids aged 5-17 in the US. The latest membership numbers for BSA from March showed 650,000 kids registered. The percentage is somewhere around 1.2% or perhaps a little higher if post Covid recruitment has seen any kind of a bump this spring and summer.

I doubt you'd find that in any one study or document. You'd have to do some research and piece it together from various sources like this one: https://health.gov/sites/default/files/2019-10/National_Youth_Sports_Strategy.pdf This states that about 55% of US high school age kids participate in a team sport and that percentage has stayed basically stable over time. One of the issues is also determining how many youth are out there because the number varies and different sources group them in different cohorts. Youth sports actually are fairly well known. There are several studies from both private and government sources that track participation although the rates will vary according to the source and there are some inclusions/exclusions that also muddy the picture. There has been some interesting data compiled during and post Covid showing what kids were up to. You could probably track some of that down. One of the interesting local and regional statistics I have noted is that during the pandemic, many nature centers and outdoor related sports facilities that offered things like golf, horseback riding, tennis, nature programming etc., reported exponential growth. That was truly a missed opportunity for cubs and scouting which instead experienced devastating membership losses. Frankly, I wouldn't waste too much time on what else kids are doing. I'm wondering more why an outdoors oriented organization like scouting isn't doing a better job of attracting kids interested in outdoor activity. They clearly want it and are doing it, but they are just not doing it with BSA.

Most of this was free or cheap: - Local and regional airports small enough not to view you as a security risk - Trout Unlimited local chapter -- expert help with fly fishing and providing equipment - Local fish hatcheries - Historical barracks, encampments - State or local astrological observatories/societies - Hawk watches in the fall. Audubon through state and local chapters is a great source for birding in general. Volunteers have come and led sessions or hiked. Not free but in our area several ski resorts offer scout weekends where the packages are really cheap. Some have limited cheap cabin or dormitory type camping.

Except if the tights and a tutu were a protest over longstanding issues with uniforms that are not being addressed, then it's a highly appropriate way to draw attention to the problem. It's supposedly a scout led organization and yet no one listens to the scouts. if they are attempting to find ways to be heard, I can only support that.

I think with the UMC in particular, what most scouters are unaware of is that the UMC is in a crisis on its own. Its whole basket of mission work, of which scouting is a small piece, is at risk. The bandwith for continuing any kind of future liability with scouting given the perceived lack of trustworthiness on the part of BSA is small for that and a variety of reasons.

This was already posted here on July 1 on page 5 of this thread -- unless there is something new here?

There are no magic wands but of all the problems BSA has right now this one is fairly small and would be simple to fix. It's a summer intern level project. For starters, a lot of the artwork is merely to make an old fashioned printed product look pretty and is not instructional or useful. You would delete those images when converting to a downloadable free online version. The only things you'd want to keep would be photos illustrating a skill, informational charts, etc. Additionally, the current booklets are sold for a profit. If they were made available free for educational purposes, many fees go away.

It's not that complicated. Obtaining permissions from institutions and individuals is generally no more complicated than writing a letter or nowadays having an email record. If it's stock photography with a usage fee it can generally be replaced with something similar that is free or recreated.

It's going to be interesting because the Methodist church is in the middle of a schism and some of those who are looking to break away are not paying some or all of their apportionments plus looking to take assets with them. It may be difficult or at least complicated to come up with payments for an undetermined period of time. Although in the face of $2 billion, $30 million is not a lot.

Possibly. It's regional so it might not apply everywhere else though and the dumping started last year. But this conference does involve a lot of churches. I think the UMC problem is bigger than scouts. They are having a lot of issues of their own and I think there is limited bandwidth to handle additional issues with scouts.

That's LDS. I think the $30 mil from UMC is still in it. The promise to help fundraise an additional $100 million was I believe dropped from the side deal regarding rechartering between the BSA and the UMC scout committee.

I don't know if it belongs here or not, but the regional UMC conference for my area sent budget guidelines out yesterday that broke down how much each local church has to contribute to the boy scout bankruptcy settlement over the next three years. A number of churches already aren't paying their current apportionment for a variety of reasons from financial to philosophical and political so this is interesting. Local UMC churches that did not have a history of chartering a unit thought they were going to be unscathed but all churches will be required to pay. It doesn't appear to be a lot of money but for those churches who are currently having difficulty paying the electric bill, or who have a deep philosophical argument, it's possibly a bit of a lit match. The reason I put this here is because I wonder what happens generally if a third party finds it is unable to honor its commitment to the settlement?

This isn't terribly sophisticated in look but it is classic strategy. The questions basically reinforce positive attributes or connections to scouting, even when posed as a negative question. The question simply repeats the four positive points to stay on message and influence behavior. Even when it's asking it in a negative way the question just reframes and restates the positive. This survey is triggering positive connections and reactions to scouting with the design and the way the questions are asked. If they really wanted your input on what works or doesn't works for a fundraising campaign, they would be asking different questions. This has been designed by a survey/development (fundraising) consultant. It is getting you to think, hey yes, I'm a scouter. Yes, scouting accomplishes all these wonderful things. How can I possibly say one is less important than the other? Gee, it's important to me that it survives. Yes, I've supported scouting in the past. Gee, I should support it again/now. If I support it now, I'll be part of a better future for scouting... Scouting is not doing anything nefarious that others aren't doing, but it's not factual to think it is anything other than a fundraising tactic.

It's not negative it's factual. This is also how political campaigns fundraise. If you are motivated enough to answer a survey question the likelihood increases that you will also be motivated to donate.