Cburkhardt

In the 60s and before the Executive Boards of councils always had a good number of wealthy individuals who typically were the owners or managers of the most significant commercial entities within the council's territory. Typically this comprised 30-40% of boards membership. These individuals raised large sums of money that was used to build and maintain many of the facilities we have today. They also were the captains of influence within the area and arranged for assistance from other relevant charity organizations, government entities and military organizations. The BSA Boards in those da

On Friday let’s talk about Council Executive Boards. I have been on three, including 3 years as president of one of the 20 largest councils and VP for several years of a very small council. My view is that we should have smaller Executive boards of truly national or state class distinguished personalities who focus on fundraising and relationships — and leave program and operations to a larger Operating board. The chair of the Operating board would report to the Executive board on the big issues only for policy guidance. The operating board would include the district chairs and most of the

Let's try to keep the focus on what you believe a council should do and what functions can properly be eliminated or reduced during the coming time of financial tightening.

Examples for elimination. Current program functions not directly serving unit or district operations might be eliminated as council responsibilities and either discontinued or spun-off to exterior volunteer organizations that could be licensed to raise their own funds and conduct program. This would include OA, Wood Badge, council-wide service projects, council product sales and events of every description other than district Camporees. Those exterior groups would not be subsidized with funds or staff assistance. Council fund raising operations might be eliminated, because council

Let’s bring a tight focus on today’s discussion. How people and organizations choose to spend money almost always expresses their actual values and priorities. National financial reorganization and the related financial tightening that will intensify at councils will cause such values and priorities to come forth directly. A theme coming through regularly is that many do not believe councils are sufficiently responsive or accountable to their volunteers. Those volunteers are represented by CORs — according to the governance model. Another theme is that the COR role is either absent or oth

I appreciate everyone’s cool-headed approach on these posts. That approach is going to be needed as we step through these next couple of years. This will be a time when we will need to provide guidance to some of these difficult personalities, like the DE Eagle 94-A1 mentions. This is going to work out, but things will indeed need to function differently.

Freeloaders, continued. To make this discussion even more interesting, I need to share that the council in question is generally known to have one of the best professional and volunteer operations around and a council scout reservation with multiple camps that is always included on those lists in Scouting magazine that is in the top ten. So, the unit leaders really don’t have the typical reasons discussed above to be non-participants and non-supporters. The reality is that this council will turn to an annual program fee, which it has announced it is studying. I think almost all of our

On the issue of freeloader units. My earlier comment was prompted by the large number of units that attend camp out of council, don’t participate in district or council activities, don’t assist the council or district financially (through FOS, product sales or otherwise) and don’t assist by participating in activities or training events. Annual council program fees might motivate leaders of these units to derive value for their payments and participate as citizens of their councils. Maybe FOS and other opportunities for units and parents to support councils financially were presented as opt

When we formed our girl Troop we met with four different potential COs and chose the one we thought was most interested and capable. Was a great move because the Episcopal Paris we chose was really interested in working with us. I am not suggesting anyone change their CO, but want you to know there are a lot of churches that want a credible youth program and will be delighted to support your unit.

I believe the chartered organization model works as-is and would be hard to improve. In our case the Troop Committee chairman is the current head of the church board. Our COR is the immediate past board chair. Our Troop Chaplain is the church minister. The CO gave us $3K without solicitation and hosted our annual fundraising coffee between their early and late services. We raised $7K. We don’t always agree with them, but we go along with their measured preferences. Our scouts do numerous service projects for the church. The local bishop knows all about us. If you have a poor or no

Scoutldr: I like Council annual program fees. Councils can use the bankruptcy filing as a cause to re-evaluate their financing models. I personally am Scoutmaster of a new Troop that decided to fully-load member dues with the full cost of operations and not do any product sales. We have an annual coffee event where we raise money to (1) subsidize the participation of Scouts from under-resourced families who cannot pay the full dues and activity fees, (2) make a contribution to our local Council to make-up for not participating in council-run product sales and (3) purchase equipment. This

Parkman: These are all very good ideas that would support an effort to re-establish strong district operations, which is where a lot of the volunteer “ownership” of Scouting can take place.

Quick Reactions: Thawk: Your SE eliminated FOS? Wow, looks like he should be on his way somewhere else. How can that be regarded as putting the council on a sustainable pathway? Done correctly, FOS is pure profit. Matt R: Looks like you might address some of those items through a merger if the council is weak. Your thoughts are consistent with a need to redeploy more professionals back to the field. We need fewer SEs of higher quality and a bunch more DEs of highest quality. Soon will be the time to press that agenda even if a merger is not involved in your locality. Everyth

Councils will be impacted. While they are not yet thought to be part of the expected national Ch. 11 filing, they are named litigants in the pending tort cases and the other litigants are out to strip council assets. Depending on the degree of exposure of certain councils, they might find themselves participating in a Ch. 11-like activity. Also, there will be a significant impact on local councils even if they are not directly a party to a Ch. 11. When we get to discussing potential national changes we will probably be considering wholesale discontinuation of a portion of what goes on nati

Quick clarification on this posting: My overall thrust is that the filing of the Financial Reorganization in itself will establish an era of significant change within the BSA. It will be plain easier to institute major enhancements and yes, entire eliminations of functions as a result of the financial deformities that will come with it. Unless properly managed, the downside could be continued influence of the least effective personnel who have the political capital to maintain their circumstances or the defense of outdated properties or practices simply because a "survivor" professional or

How can the coming Financial Reorganization Bankruptcy improve things at the council level? This is the first of a series of postings focused on how we can make positive changes during the course of a financial reorganization bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy code. We will not focus on the details of bankruptcy, inside scoops or re-argue why or how the BSA got to this point. I encourage anyone who wants to focus on those issues to start a different posting. Rather, in this posting we will assume a filing will occur in the reasonable future and discuss positive changes that migh

My posting will be prospective thinking based in the well-understood effects of financial reorganizations. It will not be a source of insider information.

Quazse: That is an accurate way to put it. JoeBob: The reorganization will probably allow a good amount of creativity and change. Perhaps a worm farming merit badge is in our future.

My sense is that we will have a numeric basis upon which to build abut one year from this March. The LDS departures will have fully-manifested by then and we will have a better sense of how the currently-small girl Troops are growing and being retained. We'll also have a good idea of further growth in Cubs from girls. Our focus should be on forming, growing and retaining the girl units and retaining boy units for the next year or so. There is continued interest because of the newness of it all -- and several councils have not really done a good job on this yet. I think we have pretty-

When a Scouts BSA Troop forms in our area, it has not detracted from the local GSUSA units. In fact, in our city both programs are growing. There was an initial push-back from some of the GSUSA volunteers who thought we might be trying to strip-away their members, but this has just not occurred and their initial opposition to us has abated (at least among their volunteers). What has occurred is that girls who join our three Scouts BSA Troops for Girls are looking for something distinctly different from the GSUSA program. I'd let the girls speak for themselves, but believe a key difference

Our troop has become the preferred destination point for sisters of boy Troop members from across our city. We will be at 40 by the time of summer camp and will continue to expand until we hit around 70. I was in a big troop as a Scout and believe that things just work better when you have a bigger operation. You can do more sophisticated things for youth and can provide more specialized program. We have 9 on our SM staff and will continue to scale-up. I have never, ever heard of a 2-Scout troop and until this massive kick-start effort, only once experienced a 5-Scout unit when I was on c

Let’s focus on our reality. We have girls in this country who crave adventure and challenge. Let’s work on extending our program to them in a way that is a credit to our personal sense of service and our larger hopes for the nation’s future. Nobody can propose a better place for these young women to discover their futures. Nobody.

Jameson: The numbers came from the monthly distribution of membership reports to national volunteers. Those particular numbers were month end November compared to previous year month end November. Until month end December, we have the unique opportunity to see the effect of girl membership before the significant LDS drop of January.

PACAN: I agree with your comment on micro-sized girl Troops. My experience is that all micro Troops underserve their Scouts and have a high chance of dropping. In our district we have my larger stand-alone unit and two micro Troops that are linked to historic boy Troops. My sense is that these tiny units will experience slow growth and will ultimately survive. However, I now believe that the 3 - 4 stand alone units in our council are far better for the Scouts, because these have committees focused on building a single successful unit. Even for a guy like me who has 30 years

She will love it when she gets there. The 30 girls and 19 adult men and women in our all-girl, non-linked Troop are loving Scouts BSA just as it is.