Cburkhardt

If this is systemic across the Council, some of the CORs and leaders of units might request consideration of a merger into another Council that is more functional. They might suggest merger discussions to the Council key-three. It is not a good strategy to "wait until help arrives" in these situations.

As everyone can see there are many different and valid ways to do this, and many believe strongly in their views. This is great because it confirms the importance of our chosen volunteer work. One circumstance I will note is that leaders of all-girl troops are particularly tasked to simultaneously start up a unit and provide concentrated attention to these older girls. I think utilizing the advantages of top-notch summer camp staff and programs Can be a smart way for new girl troops to go. But I recognize these other approaches as very good.

Thunderbird: Thanks for the specific “catches” on merit badges and rank requirements that have time requirements that need advance attention. This is the kind of thing we need these youth to be aware of. Qwaze: The multiple weeks of summer camp is good for merit badge completion — especially for the previously “unscouted” girl. Our 7 weekend campouts will give them plenty of chance to compile the 20 nights. Great overall thoughts. keep the ideas flowing folks. When we have covered it enough I will compile a one-page summary and post it broadly.

Thanks to the over 700 who have visited this posting in the last 24 hours. Understanding how to best provide advice on this is a concern shared by many. We are going to deliver on this. And, Happy Easter to everyone of you, regardless of your faith. There is a clear need to provide guidance on basic scheduling and requirements/leadership sequencing to meritorious older young men and woman who have been presented the opportunity to advance through Scouting’s ranks during this exceptional period. Thanks to those who had useful prioritization thoughts to offer. To those who seemingly think that these young people should figure out how to do this entirely on their own, let me tell you that we are going to provide Scoutmasterly advice so that those who want to have as much of the scouting experience they can — and maybe even earn Eagle — can do so in an organized manner and not be crushed by failing to catch one of our elaborate rules. I have been considering it and believe the critical timing issue is to immediately start earning the merit badges this and next summer. I believe at least three combined weeks at a first-rate council camp with a broad variety of offerings is the way to go. Our 2 girls who have gobs of experience in BSA as tag-alongside, Venturers and camp staff will each spend 2 weeks this summer at camp and probably one more next year. The “unscouted” girl will have a more gradual start, because we need to see her learn and master the basics. She will work merit badges as well and spend a week with us during our Troop visit to our council camp. Next year she will likely need to do 2 weeks at camp. For all 3 girls we will spend a lot of time to assure they are learning and exercising leadership and serve the requisite time in officerships. That some of these girls are going to college during this period presents a logistical challenge. As I noted earlier, we have one girl leaving our area. She will dual register with a troop in her college town to continue her work while away — especially her leadership roles. And, we are receiving a long-time venturer in our city who will attend college here. She and her parents are well along the way on all of this. Because our Troop meets on Saturday mornings it will work well for her school schedule. Her mother is also an experienced commissioner. Do not hesitate to have your professionals assist to find a destination college town troop for your young person. The third girl will live here and do her Scouting work with us as a junior and senior in high school. Again, if any of you and your scouts have reduced to writing a sample schedule for rank, merit badge and leadership service, please post it for others to see. I am aware that some good templates have been developed. I will share our details as we develop them.

Please post 2-year Eagle plans for boys and girls on a short track. We are seeking schedules and hints on things that need to be “worked from the start”, such as particular required merit badges to present timing pitfalls.

Dear Friends: These are splendid suggestions, and I certainly agree and recommend them to all readers. We anticipate that the Scoutmaster daughter/4-year camp staffer and the 3-year Venturer are good examples of tag-along girls who have probably fully-absorbed the Scouting spirit and have already acquired much of the required First Class skills (which they will have to of course demonstrate mastery of). Both already have their merit badge plans on paper. I am really pleased we will have them to inspire our 11-13 year olds. Their significant growth will probably be on the leadership side of things. Our challenge is the “unscouted” girl who turns 16 this summer and perhaps others that might materialize in the fall. As I have shared elsewhere on this Forum, girls are now seeking us out based on word of mouth, including older ones. What has been pleasing is that there have been no parents or girls showing simply to “gun for Eagle”. We will be working very closely with her and she will be at summer camp with us.

Girl Webelos Dens in a special pack affiliated with a girl troop. ? Here is an idea some of us at our all-girl troop are considering. Our earlier experience with our all-girls Webelos den (the members of which have crossed into our troop) was so positive that we are giving thought to having Webelos 1 and 2 dens affiliated with our all-girl Troop. We would not operate a full Pack — only the Webelos programming. We would have them meet at the same time and place with us, but they would have a different meeting room. We would have a Cubmaster/den Leader staff in parallel with our Scoutmaster Staff. Of course we would have a built-in supply of den chiefs. This would establish a membership pipeline for us. We are thinking of starting this fall. Any thoughts?

Three girls in our 27-member Troop will need to earn Eagle in 2 or 3 years. These young women came our way because they heard about our Troop and have different but compelling reasons to want to become Eagle Scouts within a compressed time frame. Let's start commenting about how this can be done in a quality way. First, the three circumstances: Girl A is the daughter of a Scoutmaster of another established all-boy Troop. She has been a "tag-along" for many years. She has been on camp staff for 4 years. She turns 18 in a month and wants to earn her Eagle in 2 years. She joined our all-girl Troop last month and will be going to college away from our area. She will get a lot of merit badges this and next summer on staff and will probably affiliate with another all-girl Troop where she goes to College to do her leadership. Girl B just contacted us. She is 17 and moving into our area to attend college. She has been a Venturer for 3 years and has attended summer camp for 3 years with her Crew. She wants to join our Troop, and can probably be one of our older girl leaders this fall. Girl C is about to turn 16, is from our area, and knows a lot of the younger girls who have joined. She has wisdom beyond her years. She has no previous Scouting background and will be "starting from scratch". All of these girls perfectly exemplify great opportunities for us to extend BSA advantages to deserving young people. All of them have said they want to do the full program the right way. All of them will be able to progress rapidly through the early ranks because those ranks are designed for young scouts. Please consider taking one or more of these examples and suggest helpful approaches that come to mind. We are not going to re-argue whether girls should be in Scouts BSA or whether the temporary 2-year Eagle extension is appropriate.

I will stay with my prediction that we will have very significant Scouts BSA girl enrollment increases these next few years. I do not see anything out there that will equal our outdoor program for girls, as the other girl-only organizations seem inalterably focused on social issues, activism, religion or semi-academic topics at the junior high and high school ages. Those organizations will not be able to compete with us on the outdoor opportunities. Just like Venturing, Scouts BSA will dominate that age group for girls on the outdoor opportunites. On the boy side, I am not ready to agree that we have lost what is good about scouting for all-boy troops because any of the recent changes. I do not want to individually pick on my fellow posters, but there is a tendency to select an individual policy change, recent isolated event or personal policy view on a BSA policy and generalize what is more of a specific situation into a global impact. I think Pink's view that the 2020 post-LDS-departure boy numbers will be our base to build from.

We are in the midst of a start-up of a major nationwide roll-out of a new youth organization. Fortunately we do not need to master a new program or operating techniques. What we do need to do is use our wits and negotiating skills with fellow volunteers on these basic implementation matters. Our discussion regarding equipment is a great illustration and is easier to deal with than some of the other issues because it deals with easily understood "hard objects". Because this is a start-up, and because there are infinitely different fact variations (boy troops with a lot of assets, boy troops with no resources, girl troops with nothing, girl troops comprised largely of members who have brothers in the boy troop and all are close friends, girl troops with a financial backer, etc.), there are and cannot be any standard rules of how to approach things. I believe the best approach is to convent a good meeting with the policymakers at the CO and the Troop leadership. I would not put this into the hands of a broad parent group. Folks like Ranman who have not yet fully sorted-out their personal views on the welcome to girls into our program are good people who might prefer hard rules, but know that we just have to do our best at being open people of good faith in this circumstance. If we are open and approach these decisions with a generous spirit, we will get through this start-up in fine shape. With some exception, Troop equipment is not really expensive. So, this is really a matter of understanding how to manage and respect our assets. We do need to be prepared to approach those who are not yet supporters with a generous spirit. They reasonably want to protect and well-manage Troop property. When they see girl Troops treat these items with respect and girl Troop Committees joining in to maintain funding and provide volunteer service, they will have reason to look favorably on girls in Scouts BSA.

Ultimately the capability and advisability of the new girl linked Troops to use existing equipment stores and benefit from the bank accounts that have been built-up by historic and linked boy troops is a matter of sensitivity that can only be properly handled by the CO and unit leadership having appropriate conversations in good faith -- and up front.. If I were in one of those conversations and I was a leader of the all-girl linked Troop, I would want to offer complete and enthusiastic participation on the part of the parents of girls to join in the overall effort to raise, funds, etc. Of course, a number of these parents of girls are also going to be parents of boys, because that is one of the reasons for linking in the first place. If you have expressly anti-girl volunteers in the boy Troop, that is really a different matter that will have to be handled directly. If the CO has made a policy determination that the CO will offer a girl Troop, they actually have the upper hand in guiding the group to a reasonable way to operate. The above comment that it is good to deal with difficult volunteers would be applicable here.

Let’s have some fun. I predict that the November 2022 membership numbers will reflect that Scouts BSA will have net grown boys very slightly compared to year end 2018 — effectively replacing the 65% of Church of JC of LDS Members I think will depart. And, I believe we will have no less than 200,000 girl members. This is because we will no longer be carrying cultural war baggage and the family scouting approach will have been proven to draw membership. Okay folks, what do you think? Don’t just make wild predictions. Have rationale for your views.

What I mean is that the CORs should insist on effective change in the failing council or advocate merging with a nearby council that is well-run. We need to avoid irrational attachments to the status quo if there are better ways to run Scouting. Doing more of the same gets us to membership and financial bankruptcy in those situations. What has been proven to be very difficult is for CORs to expect that they themselves can substantially correct organizational deformities in a consistently failing council. We are volunteers and do not have the time and resources to do that. We do not want to have exhaust ourselves being negative for many years. Even if it means merging OA lodges, re-drawing district lines or even realigning properties, it is better that a slow, fading disintegration. What is important is that we have strong, vibrant units and knowing when to cut bait is critical. A very good way to evaluate the capability of a council right now is to look at how many girl Troops have been formed. This is, absolutely, the membership and program priority of the moment. Even if you are a Scouter that has not yet embraced the concept, you will agree with me that a council that has not successfully acted on this has a fundamental difficulty. These girl units can nearly sell themselves. I am Scoutmaster of one and these are already popular. Any council mumbling an explanation as to why they can’t pull this off is telling you: “We are not able to execute basic things”. If they are saying that by their actions, believe them.

I am really glad to hear that people are making those kinds of changes. That is so much better than insisting on continuing under-powered councils and seeing them go down in membership and financial bankruptcy.

The 40+ all girl Troops in our council are almost all linked troops. What we are seeing is that the girl troops are getting access to the equipment as long as there is sufficient supplies to get around. It also depends on whether the girl and boy Troops are camping on the same weekends. The experience is that sharing the program equipment has not been much of an issue in my observation. The girl Troop parents should be obligated to help raise funds for the additional equipment that is necessary. As I noted elsewhere on the Forum, our own Troop is one of the few that are not linked, but we are blessed to have some boy Troops willing to lend us equipment as we ramp up independently. I think we will have everything we need within about a year. Perhaps the more sensitive item would be the use of savings that have been built through the years by boy Troops, which technically belong to the CO. If I were the Scoutmaster or CC of an a linked girl Troop, I would never request to use those funds directly. I would begin building a new account and be happy to benefit from the ability to borrow/use equipment from the boy Troop, and be advantaged by the existing reputational goodwill of the boy Troop.

The capital acquisition budget is separate. We are modest there and are going the "minimalist" route. Less than $10K over 2 years for the basics and no trailer. We are an urban Troop with some under-resourced families and are accessing a lot of contributed individual equipment for their Scouts. We are really blessed by having established troops willing to lend us things as we ramp-up and a very generous group of scouters who gather, organize and re-deploy used uniforms and equipment. I hope those reading this who have access to lendable equipment proactively reach-out to these new all-girl Troops and offer help. Most of them are not going to be led by a 30-year Scouter like me and will have no idea how to get the help.

Our $40,000 yearly budget includes everything for 40 Scouts. So, the all-in expense to the Troop of a Scout is about $1K/year. Includes all program and recognition, weekend campouts, summer camp, but not the annual special trip. This is less than the cost of a single "travel team" away game where a child and parent fly somewhere. Scouts BSA is truly a bargain in comparison to just about any other youth activity. We can all be very proud of this. Our special annual trip is modest. This year a 4-day camping trip including a day visit to the World Jamboree (will probably charge somethin like $200). Next year a trip to Michigan to another Scout Reservation (Owasippe) to experience their incredible horse program.

There is a very balanced, intelligent article in Bloomberg today. It is, perhaps, the best factual and neutral piece of reporting on Scouts BSA I have seen in months. Just google Scouts and Bloomberg. Highly recommend it.

I will comment as a former council and area president who spent 30 years on the front lines of these issues. Those membership declines are catastrophic and not sustainable. The units in this council should favor moving into a functioning council. Unless there is a one-time disaster that explains this, I'll guarantee that this is a council that either has been issued a "conditional charter" or will soon be issued one. These councils are given a year or two to turn things around or they are merged into better-performing councils. More recently another technique has been to remove the charter of the council, disband the board and transfer assets and performing personnel to other councils as seems logical to the Region. CORs can either allow this kind of performance to continue or take action to stop the bleeding. As this is Central Region I'll assume this is not related to loss of units formerly affiliated with the Church of Christ of LDS. In the Western Region there will be a lot of this situation prior to right-sizing the councils in a businesslike way after December 2019.

We used our Webelos II Den to jump-start our all-girl troop. We started with about 6 Webelos girls and had 10 by the end of the year. All crossed-over into our new all-girl troop in February, which now numbers 26. Those 10 Webelos were the ones who provided the basis for our new Troop open house/welcome parties. Through them we gained another 10 girls and have picked up another 6 over the last 2 months based on word of mouth. It is easier to get girls to join the Webelos group, so I urge you do recruit them now. It will make your planned new troop a lot easier to start. One thing I learned is that girls are more likely to bring their friends into a Troop than my experience with boys. Open house -type activity where a prospect girl member sees her friend in a uniform and having fun with peers really works. I would allocate a good amount of recruiting effort to peer-to-peer activity..

Our own Troop received about $2,000 cash from two Episcopal Churches to help pay costs of under-resourced Scouts. The volunteers who started the troop absorbed about $5,000 of start-up costs. Starting brand-new Troops is expensive and time-absorbing. Our first year budget is $40,000. There are good reasons why so many new Troops fail in their first five years, but the principal reasons are lack of experienced Scouter involvement and failure to plan. New Troops need to raise more and charge higher dues, which puts them at a recruiting disadvantage with historic troop with well-build financial stability and low dues. Our group is well-staffed and has a good plan. I hope experienced Scouters reading this will step forward and actually assist new Troops now forming. There is no substitute for direct involvement.

Our all-girl Troop now numbers 26. Up from 19 that we had on Feb. 1 without any recruitment activity. Sometimes girls and families just show up based on word of mouth. We have 3 PL and 3 APL positions so far. We now have a cohort of 5 girls 14, 15 and one 16. None have scouting experience , but there is good leadership potential there. We are going to begin rotating SPL duties between them now and during summer camp (we have 17 going so far). We will have an SPL election the first week of September with the members we currently have, and just before our big recruiting open house at mid-month. I find that the girls are intensely interested in the leadership slots we will have in the fall, as we will expand to other Troop positions at that time (QM, Scribe, etc.).

I think GSUSA is probably trying to get a handle on the number of its youth who are dual registering with the BSA. We’re the results of this survey promised to be compiled in the aggregate only or do you believe this is an effort to develop a marketing list to do “comparative” outreach to the dual-registered families?

I think we are going to first do a minimal version of the rolling tool box (especially in cold weather) and the backpack approach when temperate. I cringe getting back into the heavy camping business.

When a new Troop starts from scratch and the Scouts are all inexperienced 11-13 year olds, I think it is best to delay election of an SPL and for the Scoutmaster Staff to temporarily provide a bit more of the “leadership”. The goal would be to transition to a SPL leadership model as soon as possible, but not so soon as to implode the experience of youth during the earliest months. There is a lot of this fact circumstance currently in the formation off all-Girl troops.