yknot

Some random thoughts based on some of the comments here: Update uniforms for simplicity, economy, and functionality. Program fees are likely to go up. BSA can help by making uniform expenses go down. The year to year uniform changes required in cub scouts is a good example. Theoretically, a family needs to replace hat, scarf, belt clasp, slide, and socks every year. At the Troop level, the "field" uniform is more like a dress/parade uniform and yet we expect scouts to show up in it for everything short of marathon running. In other areas of their lives, most kids are used to weather friendly, durable, comfortable, performance wear. National also needs to get out of merchandising. Program repetitiveness and redundancy. By the time a scout traverses from Lion to Troop, they have performed a version of some requirements multiple times and it gets boring. Also remove material that scouts already cover in school. No need to do it twice. This is both in cub ranks and scout merit badges. Food/cooking needs to be re-imagined in the program. Food allergies, issues, sensitivities are making some of the requirements very difficult to meet as written. Many COs like schools or churches will not allow food items on the premises due to food issues. Creating acceptable meals can get very expensive. BSA needs to remove economic barriers to scouting. National needs to de-emphasize the box checking culture of the Eagle and advancement driven mentality. This business/marketing/membership mentality needs to be tempered by a more experiential focus. National needs to innovate some new fundraising options other than popcorn to help fund program goals. Some units/councils have excellent results with popcorn. Many, many do not. We need some other options to help raise cash. National is uniquely suited to come up with BSA branded fundraising items and partners related to preparedness, safety, etc. National should benchmark with other youth organizations to learn about other program delivery innovations in the face of changing social and demographic trends. Other folks are dealing with this better. In our area, an extremely high percentage of scouts achieve Eagle and often at very young ages. At that point, they leave the troop. Some come back as parents decades later to serve as ASMs, but as young adults we lose them. National could help program by coming up with some kind of Eagle scout service award or Eagle active status ranking that might encourage these kids to come back and do some kind of mentoring or unit support if they are high school students, over summer if they are in college, or as young working adults wherever they land. There's nothing that I know of right now? Why are we losing so many scouts at cross over or not long after? In my area, most of our Webelos/AOL scouts are very proficient and have done lots of camping. They don't fear being on their own so much as they hate the chaos of boy led if the transition isn't well mentored by older scouts and adults. Scouting attracts a lot of kids who are very self determined and motivated. They often have a hard time transitioning into a patrol -- essentially team -- environment. So do their parents, and we lose them. Not sure how national can help with that, but it's an issue to be looked at. For program to work, unit level leaders need to be able to have a respectful and receptive line of communications with national. Right now, they do not see or hear us. And, given the prototypical lack of communications from our new leader, they don't reach out to us either. That needs to change.

A serious restructuring could pancake some of the management layers and tasks. Why do we have four, maybe five, tiers of management, from the CO to the unit to the district to the council to the national organization, all operating with different missions and goals and what sounds like an inability to help each other in any but the most model regions? How did that ever happen? There are no other youth organizations out there that require so much heavy lifting by volunteers. When parents are making choices about what to involve their kids in, this is one of their considerations. Scouting is a very top down, bureaucratic organization, with many units in silos doing tasks that could maybe be more easily be shared or consolidated. This is an areas where districts could help. In one possible scenario, things like FOS, popcorn, JTE, merchandising, laborious recharter processes, could go away or be streamlined. We're talking district, but on the national level I also know of no other youth organization that tries to make as much money off of its members through merchandising, whether its uniforms, gear, or advancements, or by requiring adult volunteers to pay to volunteer, or through fundraising as does scouts. And yet we have no money. We can't have five tiers all with their hands out to the parent. There is no question that running activities for kids that have a degree of risk requires a lot of trained volunteers. However, there is a lot of BSA originated "stuff" that seems to needlessly add tasks and to no clear end. Technology and new social media networks have given organizations like ours great opportunities to streamline roles and produce more efficient and effective communications. BSA doesn't seem to take advantage of much of it -- this organization right now is about five years behind where school affiliated youth organizations, youth sports organizations, and random other youth organizations that I work with are and it is not helping us to attract kids and cut down on volunteer roles. None of these groups have tons of money either. I can only surmise they've had better leadership.

Never mind

Is that not the truth? My kids only went once each time. There was no one leading them that could tell them what kind of bird that was that just flew by, what tree, what rock formation. They had fun on the shooting range and some water stuff, but it was not an outdoors experience. They did more outdoors stuff at home.

I'm talking about aged out scouts here, post 18.

OK. Sarcastic or not, I like it. It would be great to be able to offer some kind of stipend to older scouts who stick around to help especially in under served communities. In sports, older kids get paid to be coach's assistants, equipment managers, field managers, etc. It keeps them around. You don't lose their expertise. They are a role model for the younger kids. It's not so crazy.

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic, but I think that's a thought worth considering. Maybe a stipend available to Star and up scouts for helping out. Other youth organizations have gotten very innovative about things like this why not scouts.

The operative words were experience and leadership. Yes, the selfie generation is out there trampling flowers, climbing over fences at waterfalls, falling into hot springs at national parks, and letting their children try to pet wild moose only to see them tossed in the air. We are losing the kind of people who develop common sense based on a lifestyle or a profession spent in the out of doors and can turn around and teach that to others and oversee them. Again, it might be more a reflection of my personal regional experiences, but over the span of about 15 years we went from having almost all our leaders knowing what they were doing based on lifestyle or profession to almost none of them knowing. I think it's a problem. There just isn't an app for some things. And while the number of people who report going outdoors is going up, the average number of days they go out is going down. Meaning, we have more citizens who visit national parks and features as a special event, but fewer who are living it as a regular part of their lives.

I know experiences vary by region but in our area the CO relationship is troubled. I'm not sure the traditional structure is viable long term in some if not many places, and I think it could be argued that failures in this franchise style relationship have allowed some of our worst abuse scandals to fester. I think it's something that has to be corrected going forward. I think this is where a district level resource might be needed, either to do more hand holding with COs, to work with a differently structured CO relationship or, in some cases, maybe even replace them. Which would require more than volunteers. Another area is in outdoor experience and leadership. Nationally, we can't ignore downward trends in hunting and fishing licenses, increasing loss of family farmers, the fact that children are increasingly being raised by parents who have spent little time out of doors and are very uncomfortable in it and are even more uncomfortable in volunteer roles connected to it. The experienced older scout volunteers who would train and safely guide younger volunteers in these life skill areas are getting harder to find. A few weekends of training can't do it. I don't know how we're going to run an outdoors based program in the future without a lot of volunteers who have this expertise. The only way may be to pay for it. I think a model for this exists in youth sports where a lack of volunteers has led to hiring coaches and other paid staff. Such resources, if they were ever able to be provided, would to me most logically be placed at the district level. I don't think a volunteer district staff can pull any of this off. I don't have an answer for where the money would come from. But I do think looking at some of these functional issues should inform national what it needs to be looking at as opposed to whatever navel lint contemplation they do. On the one hand, we can decide not to focus on growing membership and instead focus on delivering our legacy program to declining numbers of families who are able or interested in accessing it. On the other hand, we can look ahead to solving some of these problems and trying to discern what Millennial families and even Gen Z families in the next 2 to 10 years are going to want. This is all complicated by the fact that we are possibly looking at least two to five years of unpleasant publicity related to lawsuits and bankruptcy that is going to make us toxic to a lot of the entities we might want to reach out to for help. I am not trying to be doom and gloom, I am just trying to be realistic. I think our best strategy to counter this is to focus on the unit level and making the program as inviting as we can to both potential scouts and their parent volunteers and to do that more resources need to be available.

I'm thinking district roles really need to change. We keep looking at restructuring from a top down perspective. I think we need to start from a CO/unit level up perspective. Everyone is talking about recruiting good volunteers, more volunteers, any volunteers. Well, volunteers are disappearing or at least morphing in the Millennial generation. This may be blasphemy to some but I think more district roles may need to be paid resource positions. I think more district roles will necessarily need to be in direct support of unit volunteers, making their lives easier and providing resources that are becoming scarce at the CO/unit level. Other youth organizations have had to make this transition. Once we figure out what districts need to do to keep the local programs running and expanding, then we can decide what Councils should be doing. That's how I look at it. A lot of these traditional top down roles people are talking about may not be relevant in two years. For example, what is the point of worrying about Council level fundraising and Fortune 100 board influence if our youth numbers continue to decline?

It's not rough, it's accurate and it's part of the problem. In our unit, parents no longer pay by check but online, they use social media, text rather than email, want apps for everything, and won't pay for some of the more obvious BSA merchandising. There's no patience for the kind of happy chaos that has been scouts. Families are tightly scheduled and need to know what they are doing 6 months or at least 3 months out. We've got to have leaders that understand these challenges or we won't see membership growth.

I'm sorry, what? Where was your posting on the district level? I've got plenty to say.

MattR if I could upvote your assessment ten times I would. It's exactly the problem. BSA has become a business and stopped being a service organization and that is where the problem lies. Most of the discussion has focused on trying to fine tune the existing, business oriented model. I think it's long past time to break some china and put out the paper plates.

A mark of good leadership is the ability to communicate and inspire even at times of crisis. I am sure Mosby is very busy. I am sure legal advisors would muzzle many of the things he might like to say, but this near total silence over nearly two months is concerning. At the very least, he could talk about something very innocuous, such as some of the scouts he must have met since he took on the role and how they inspire him as he's taking up the reins... anything that would give the organization a sense of getting to know him, give him visibility, and at least create the illusion there is someone competent at the helm.

Whatever we do, we have to make sure it makes the program more accessible and value added for Millennial and Gen Z scouts and their families, because they are our future. We can grump here all we want about what sacred cows we don't want to give up, but the reality is that if we are to maintain membership, we have to become more user friendly and of interest to the emerging target market. Some things I've read that seem good: - Place a premium on retaining and better managing local council camp grounds. The closer camping and outdoor opportunities are, the closer we stay to our mission and the better chance we have of retaining kids with a fun outdoor program. - De-emphasize the merchandising. Close council stores rather than camps. This can easily be morphed online, or as someone said, try to return to the counter in a local retail establishment. Scouting won't fail if scouts can't festoon themselves with a million badges, but it will fail if we can't easily get them out of doors. I'm dismayed by seeming cavalier comments about closing down yet more local camps. - De-emphasize popcorn fundraising, awards, internally focused banquets, etc. - Focus on supporting local units and streamlining tasks for unit volunteers. I would pay $30 a year if a Council could cut my admin/paperwork duties in half. We also know that Millennial and Gen Z folks don't volunteer as much -- or volunteer differently -- as their parents. We won't survive with our current, volunteer heavy model. We have to streamline. - Scouting needs to be more portable and fluid the way other youth organizations are. It's silly to talk about a troop in Michigan joining a council in Nevada. However, it's not crazy to maybe try and develop a digital Scouting passport that allows scouts to move more easily among Troops and Councils in search of specific experiences.

I think the CO relationship is something that needs to be significantly revamped if not dispensed with in any true restructuring. It is marginally functional for many based on the comments on this forum. I'm aware there are regional differences but in my area, many of the COs are smaller churches and community organizations with aging and declining memberships. They are barely able to keep their own organizations going so it is unrealistic to think they would have much effort to devote to living up to an agreement most of them were never party to in the first place. A lot of these COs have legacy units that have been there for decades. In my experiences, district and council wants little to nothing to do with COs other than to make sure there is a signature and maybe try and meet with them once a year. These COs want nothing to do with complicated issues like financial review, background checks, etc. They see their roles as giving us space, a smile and a signature. And this is the inherent conflict of interest, because by rights the council should be closing down these units but they won't because it would affect membership. Not that I want my unit closed down, but this sense of outrage towards COs is misplaced. We need a different model.

I think overmuch is made of religion in scouting. It certainly wasn't as big a deal in the original scouting books and was more along the lines of do your duty to God as you reflect on nature, do a good deed daily, etc. I am of the opinion that atheists who aspire to be of good moral character, evidenced by joining organizations like scouting, without any real belief in the final judgments of a higher being, are probably actually purer of heart than the rest of us lol.

When I was a kid, thanks to how I grew up, I felt pretty confident in my ability to handle a lot of stuff. I was also around a lot of adults who engaged in what today would be termed risky behavior. However, their overall competence level was such that I never felt much at risk. Today, I look at a lot of the adults around and very few seem to have common sense of the variety that was developed based on either street smarts, outdoor living, rural living, whatever. The exception is people who come here from other places, or maybe live in some of the few places where life is still a little bit more consequential. BSA is trying to train life skills into people of all stripes over a few weekends. Much as we might like, I don't think we can set the clock back, and that's why we have inconvenient things like GTSS. You in particular might be completely competent to oversee throwback Thursdays but many are not.

Cubs are totally capable of having input into menu planning and cooking and in fact increasingly so as they near AOL. Having some experience under adult supervision of knowing how to safely handle and properly cook food can prevent some of those miserable weekends when they get dumped into a patrol. It also makes it more fun for them and they are more likely to eat what is there. Food issues are becoming more problematic and BSA has issued little useful guidance. It doesn't help that so much of the program revolves around food or requires group cooking. One way of handling it as noted is to require the parent to attend and for the scout to bring their own food. However, this also kind of isolates the scout and prevents the rest of the pack/troop from really comprehending the issues. There are also a lot of adults who are more interested in practically doing a game day tailgate party in the woods vs. doing things light and lean. I get that it's their jam, but it shouldn't get too much in the way of making sure the kids get a meal they can make and eat and not have to spend a lot of time on. Unless, of course, that's what the scouts want to do.

You could also let the cubs plan their own menu to avoid starvation. If the adults want something more interesting, they can always cook their own pot.

That song, sung at the wrong time, can negatively affect recruitment.

Interesting. I was involved in a lawsuit in another organization where the organization's policies were not clear. I think you have some modicum of protection, regardless of national policies or lack of clarity, if you clearly make it a well publicized policy of your own local chapter(unit) to require any adult involved with youth to complete YPT before participating in any local unit event or they will be asked to leave.

I don't think the ongoing problems result from non YPT random adults. I think it's due to artifacts of our dysfunctional organizational structure. There is another discussion taking place right now about scouts not knowing how to speak up against adults. It's not just kids, it's a lot of adults too. Our top down, hierarchical structure inherently protects or at least allows room to operate to those who want to do the wrong thing.

The communications dysfunction is a symptom of the overall organizational dysfunction. Most organizations today take communications seriously and can very proactively and quickly disseminate information throughout the ranks. I'm sure part of the problem with us is due to the volunteer nature of so many roles but in reality this is something that leadership in a functional organization would account for and figure out a way to manage. I don't know that Mosby is going to have the most innovative solutions to problems like these but at least he seems to have some background in change management. My fear is that he is going to be focused pretty exclusively on high level issues that really won't result in much improvement for people working at the unit level, or at least not for some time, and that things could get even bumpier for awhile. It is concerning that despite his being weeks on the job, we have yet to have any kind of universal direct message from him other than his announcement. It feels like units aren't even on the radar.

It was a good read. Thanks for the recommendation. I'm now reading Baden Powell: Founder of the Boy Scouts, by Jeal. I'm only about a third in, and while I'm not totally surprised because I've read some excerpts, the book is disconcerting. The Butler book made me think about what kind of connection the author was trying to make between scouts, damaged military men, and broken people.