dk516

3 hours ago, Val said:

I am wondering if this YPT renewal every year rule is in place in other councils or if it is unique to Orange County.

good evening @Val. Local Councils or even local units can add additional requirements. The Pack I used to be in for example had the same rule to have to redo YPT every year to make sure you'd always be current and up to date with any changes. Also, part of the CSA settlement is to implement an annual YPT refresher training which could also be that your Council decided to roll that out in the current form by itself already..

The process is neither new nor changed. It simply became transparent because of the electronic applications and the various status steps that are now visible. Realistically a unit was never supposed to let adults join scouting functions before they were not fully cleared. The difference was that units simply assumed that once they sent the adult application to the registrar that the process would take care of it and you're good to go.

The larger problem is that BSA, again, did not think this through in practicality. Since it takes Councils 3+ months to recharter units, and since the electronic application option is disabled once a unit expires until it is fully rechartered, it ultimately harms the recruiting process. Our Council' statement was that when the electronic sign up is disabled during recharter, we can submit paper applications for adults and youth. Except that our Council' track record of processing paper applications is 2-4mts IF they don't lose them altogether. So the only thing this going to bring now is that as a unit leader I will either have to turn away interested volunteers until Council maybe eventually get around to either process registrations or recharter or I am forced to violate policies and keep doing what we did for years but really improved has nothing.

58 minutes ago, AirForceMom said:

When I called my council they said the position is college reservist and he can do everything a regular scout can do (except badges) and has to do the online training.  No one mentioned that anything about not being able to socialize outside of scouts. He goes to school with these boys. 

@AirForceMom welcome to the forum. Your Council may have not given you the full answer to this. The BSA YPT FAQ notes the following:

https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/yp-faqs/

In Scouts BSA, he will be fully considered an adult and what he "can do" is attend Scouts BSA events as an adult. As noted above, participation in the programs that allow for older Youth to participate, he can fully participate, however, he is still considered and adult. And yes, if you want to take YPT by the book, he would no longer be allowed any socialization with any other scouts younger than 18 without having a second adult present. 

This one single thing is the biggest inhibitor I have seen in our Troop for Scouts to continue participate in the program once they reach 18. I have only ever seen Scouts coming back a couple years later during college once their full cohort has aged out because it just causes too much awkwardness having to follow YPT correctly and being considered an adult from one day to the next.

On 1/15/2024 at 12:43 PM, Maboot38 said:

Did you find a deficiency in scoutbook that caused you to use google, or do you just not use Scoutbook because you never have?

@Maboot38 we use SB for advancement and the related functions and whatever reporting is required from SB. We use Google because it was an easy platform for all Troop planning, hosting our website from it and for all the documents and leader collaboration which made it a natural to use their email tools as well.

On 1/9/2024 at 3:24 PM, swilliams said:

Hopefully this doesn't veer into the negative, but...  I don't know who our DE is.  I don't know who our Unit Commissioner is.  I don't know what they do.

This seems how our Council is functioning and I am starting to get frustrated. Our DE is great. He shows up to District events or is at the (miserably attended) monthly roundtable or other events. However, this is about as far as "professional" Council representation goes. Our Field Director I only hear from when we did not sell enough popcorn every year and our other Field Director when we do not meet our (their) membership recruiting goals. 

We got a new SE back in fall last year. The only thing I have ever heard/read of him was the introduction from our Council Committee Chair when they announced his hiring. Not a single word since. I understand that the SE cannot be present everywhere but would have expected to at least get some sort of welcome email and message to the Council membership about him and his ideas to get us back on track again. It's almost like Council professionals really have no interest in what is going on in their Council unless when it comes to increase fundraising and membership.

We use Google G-Suite for all of our Troop stuff. It allows you to create email groups for communication. Yes, email is a little old fashioned these days but the only form of communication you can effectively assure that adults are involved in all communication and therefore allow to be in compliance with YPT as much as possible. I accept the fact that there will always be other tools used between the Scouts (Discord, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc.) but the email groups allow for easy setup and control of what is being communicated. 

On 12/16/2023 at 8:17 PM, MattR said:

The common thread in all of this is a lack of parents that want to put time into helping out. I used to think that no matter how messed up national was, scouting would do fine because people want it. I'm not so sure anymore. It looks to me like parents don't believe in scouting.

@MattR I don't know if parents believe in Scouting or not. I think they still want it for their Youth but I think there are many factors that affect Parent' willingness to volunteer. I just went through recharter with my units and lost several long standing adult volunteers. These volunteers would show up once or twice a year to provide their expertise to the troop on a specific subject. Our Council this recharter decided to double the adult programming fee. Together with the National increase, this almost doubled our adult cost which I think was just too much for some.

Other factor is the administrative burden. I lost several MBCs or folks interested in becoming MBCs who simply gave up after 3 or 4 months and their applications were still not processed in the Council office or Council forgot to send them the renewal notifications and then just turned around and made them do it all over again.

Scouting, especially in the higher ranks of the Scouts BSA program is a significant volunteer time commitment for Scouts and adult volunteers that not everyone is willing to make anymore these days and also not just the time but also the combination of time and cost. 

I hope that Mr Krone and his team will invest a significant amount not only in the program but also in optimizing the membership tools and other IT infrastructure and greatly reduce the administrative burden. I.e. why can I submit any Youth application electronically but if I want to do that for an adult, I still need to have a paper application, get it wet-signed by the COR only to upload it to the electronic membership application that is going to get signed by the COR AGAIN!? Stuff like that is what drives adults from Scouting and that could be so easily resolved because many other Youth organizations can do it as well.

On 12/16/2023 at 8:17 PM, MattR said:

I found out our council has only 2400 youth registered. Our district, ten years ago, was larger than this.

Our council is the same. It declined from 10'000 to barely 2'500 over the last 6 or so years. They merged several times with other small councils but kept the whole overhead and all properties but tried to operate with a declining youth membership ever since. As much as I appreciate that, it just makes no sense economically and it takes the professional focus away from programming and becomes 100% fundraising oriented to fundraise their own operation rather than focus on growing membership.

5 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

Most surprising, and possibly troubling item is that Cubs are now over 2/3 of the membership. 

@Jameson76 we actually had this discussion in our district. Your numbers are actually great! Experience in our council has shown that with all attrition on the Cubs level, you want at least 2 full Packs for every Troop in existence in order to cross over enough Cubs into Scouts BSA. Our district/council has seen a steady decline in Troops because they cannot get enough Cubs to cross over and retain to keep the units running. Our current split in my district is almost 50/50 and we feel it every year. This combined with slow recruiting has not been very successful.

Our Council does. It is organized on District level in similar manner as "regular" Cub Scout Packs. The difference is that it is run by a local non-profit that already does outreach / after-school / youth program work and it is slightly different in programming structure. It is run by the staff and volunteers of the outreach organization and supported by a UC like any other Pack. Membership for these Youth is sponsored between the non-profit running it and Council Scout Reach funds. This just recently started again in our District so it will be interesting to see how it will work out. It seems to me that they should have a more stable membership since it is an integral part of their offering, similar to some religious organizations using Scouting as their Youth program and with that being more integrated into their offering compared to Packs where everyone is recruited and then hopefully retained.

1 hour ago, Armymutt said:

The problem is, if my family leaves, our current pack will collapse in short order.  I'm the CC.  My wife is the treasurer.  The CM lacks initiative and communication skills. 

What is going to happen to the Pack when your Scout crosses over? *Are you going to stay in the Pack forever? What is to say that the current structure isn't going to fail regardless once you leave but maybe just in a year or two from now rather than sooner? And sometimes things have to fall to ashes so the Phoenix can rise again and maybe somebody else will actually come along and bring in a new motivated network to take over.

I've seen Packs come and go. With the right group of adult volunteers where everyone is pulling in the same direction it can be great. In the end, you are a volunteer and give your resources running the Pack which the least of reward you should get from is that you and your family have fun and your Scouts can thrive from it. I have been in a lot of volunteer organizations and sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on to still have a rewarding opportunity rather than try and hang onto something that is not going to make it. 

3 hours ago, Tron said:

This helps a pack in 2 ways. First of all a pack suffering from lack of leadership can more easily combine grade levels into a "mixed" den and keep the whole program running

Yes and no. I had a multi-level Den years ago because of lack of numbers. The first year was easy and everyone was working on similar steps for the requirements between the ranks. The second year was actually a lot more tricky to make sure for the "younger" rank part of the Den it did not simply become a repetition of what they already did with older rank during the previous year.

3 hours ago, Tron said:

Secondly the pack leadership can align when they do the related adventures month-to-month

Most Troops I know recruit in February March in order to have at least 2 full outings and the spring quarter to bring incoming AOLs up to speed for the summer camp "shock". Wanting to provide a serious program in 5th grade will have to compress the programming time for AOL adventures for them to cross over in March since pretty much all Packs I know in our area do not do rank advancement throughout the summer. It'll certainly need some finetuning and I guess we'll see what this is going to do to the Pack-to-Troop transition or how much of the AOL in reality will just end up being pencil whipped to be able to cross them over in February / March timeframe. 

7 hours ago, fred8033 said:

I just don't understand the need for small councils anymore.  Most training and registration is online.  The key now is economies of scale to reduce cost and offer more opportunities.  

@fred8033 I understand the economy of scale but I think this is not the only factor we should look at. The Council my units are residing in has been merged several times in the past 5 years. It has been in constant decline, even with the mergers and is now less than 3'000 active youth. However, it geographically spans across each half of 3 states! We no longer go to our Council Summer Camp because of programming and distance for our Troop. My oldest did NYLT last year and is looking to staff it next year. The in-Council NYLT which I would have preferred was 5hrs driving away which makes it an overnight drop-off and pickup whereas are neighboring Council courses where 45 minutes from our Troop location and so is there summer camp.

If we're all realistic, you would not need any Council for membership administration OR online training. Both could easily be handled by a national office with a little more investment into technology. What we are loosing with this economy of scale is the in-person volunteer networking that keeps this organization going. I have not been to a single Council event this year even though I am actively volunteering on multiple levels because I could just not get it together having to drive multiple hours to a Council event and back. That's where we lose with all these mergers.

On 10/11/2023 at 9:24 AM, Cburkhardt said:

Everyone participating on this site knows we provide a huge financial bargain for our member families.  This becomes very apparent when comparing Scouting fees to other activities for youth.   

When we started our all-girl troop in DC in 2019, we decided to calculate the all-in cost of our year long-program (with the exception of campouts and summer camp).  This included purchase of things to keep our equipment inventory up-to-date, program materials and special activities and our annual dues to council/national.  This includes everything from award patches to refreshments at the court of honor.   We calculated the annual out-of-pocket cost at $400 for each girl.

@Cburkhardtwhat do you actually pay with the $400 that you calculate? We finally got to stop comparing ourselves to band, sports and everything else and always advertising what a bargain Scouting is because this is only partially true and highly depends on how you look at.

Between National, Council and Troop dues, our Scouts spend $230 for Youth and $90 for adults respectively. Monthly campouts with our Troop probably average about $35 a month * 10 months which is another $350. So, that's $570 a year for the "right to participate" and some monthly outings and couple patches throughout the year. This is twice of what our High School charges for their varsity sports team to participate the season (I purposely do not account for gear since I do not do that for Scouts either in this scenario). 

Now that's just the "common" stuff the unit does. Add $550 for our Council Summer Camp (In-council discount, short travel distance, etc.) which brings us to $1'120 for an average 1st or 2nd year Scout for a year of Scouting. 

Now let's look at the "must do for the full Scouting experience stuff" for our older Scouts: $1'800 for 12 days at Philmont; $2'500-3'000 to travel to Sea Base or Northern Tier or $3'500 for the Council contingent to go the Jambo. Not even looking at the cost to go to World Jambo. $3'000 is more than what I personally account for a cool family holiday and is way on par with what a sports season cost.

Then we need adults on top of all of this which is time spent volunteering, time needed to take off jobs (holidays or unpaid) and cost spent because even though adult attendance is mandatory for YPT and minimum crew requirements, they still pay most if not all of the cost incurred.

Looking at my own family and many families in our units that are very active and keep the Troop rolling, there are many where Scouting becomes a $10'000 annual cost factor for a family with older Scouts. 

So the often sung statement that Scouting is a bargain, or as our Council used to advertise it "the cost of one cup of coffee from a major coffee chain a month" is really only partially true. And yes, everything else is also getting more expensive but I know many that are starting the weigh the cost / benefits and the scales are not tipping in favor of the program.

@Jenni some Councils may allow forming a provisional unit when you do not have the full number of 5 Youth but can show them that you will most likely reach the goal within a year. 

By the letters of YPT (and yes they have been enforced more strictly recently) a single Youth could not participate because of the buddy requirement. Also, bear in mind that as a linked Troop, each unit still has to provide 2-deep leadership at each event, meeting, outing, etc. If she's the only one what is your realistic outlook on finding more girls? Do you have enough prospects that it would even make sense to form a unit long-term?

Maybe as a temporary solution you could meet with another girl unit to satisfy the buddy requirement while you are recruiting enough girls to make your new unit work?

53 minutes ago, qwazse said:

they receive government funding, and their program provides sports education (similar to BSA’s defunct varsity scouts).

@qwazse having done it myself, Swiss Scouts works closely with the federal government and their accredited national training programs. They provide national training programs for ages 14-Up which is usually when you would start your leadership career with Scouts. The trainings are heavily subsidized to make them affordable and also offer employment compensation for attendees having to take unpaid leave from their profession while attending these week long trainings. 

Additionally, the Swiss Civil Protection Service can provide gear and infrastructure and personnel support at no cost to Youth Organizations. I.e. the 2022 Jambo in Switzerland received heavy infrastructure and logistics support free of charge that way.

On 8/19/2023 at 4:04 AM, MikeS72 said:

I have not seen an official reason for adding the $25 fee for someone who does not hold another BSA registration, but I can only imagine it has to do with the cost of the background check.  

The $25 is to cover background check and resulted from the agreed changes to the YPT requirements as part of the BSA settlement. https://scoutingsettlementtrust.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/Dp0000016pkB/a/Dp000000sbbh/AhKrs3XmfO3xRHRKdUwxZnLdNGGK0AW0oNN3o8d8GYU

One key requirement is that any youth facing adult needs to be background checked. Volunteering for other organizations besides BSA that require a volunteer to submit background check requests, I am getting charged anywhere from $20-$35 per background check request so I personally feel the $25 are not out of line in this regard. It is unfortunate but most MBCs I know from our Council list already serve on a unit or other registered position anyways. It might result in some issues with MBUs and related cost but I think that remains to be seen after a year or so.

1 hour ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

If this is true, then there's the membership problem right there. We're not delivering our "core product".

I don't think we are in many ways but I also don't think we are willing to look outside of our borders and consider what could be done better and improve our program. 

Some of the countries mentioned as having a thriving and reviving Scouting program must be doing something different to succeed. Looking at some of these programs, they clearly are a lot more volunteer based. Much smaller overhead that needs to be financed. Sweden was mentioned before in this thread. Their annual dues stated on their website are a 180SEK which translates to $16.50! 

Switzerland is another one. The Council I am in spans the larger of 3 states by now and is down to 4'500! Youth. We were told that this fall needs to net a 25% increase in members and otherwise we have a problem. Switzerland fits about the size of my Council and has 30'000+ Youth enrolled. Their NATIONAL Scouting Office has 10 professional staff for administration and marketing. Program development and training is solely volunteer based working groups from the small unit to national level. These are the same volunteers that are active in the units and are directly at the programming forefront and bring their input all the way up to the national program office and are being heard.

Many of these countries in Europe run a highly successful Rover program. In fact, the Rover program is where most of the volunteers come and serve from small units all the way to the National board. How many of our Youth could we retain with a 19-25yr meaningful program that is not burdened down with YPT and Adult Leadership requirements and everything else? Reality in my District is that we loose almost every single Scout once they turn 18 (if they even stay past their Eagle COH) because now from one day to the next we have to put so many rules in front of them that they are simply no longer interested being confined to all these boundaries and rather hang out with their friends outside of Scouts. These Youth don't come back to volunteer until much later when they have their own kids. 

3 years ago our Council introduced the council programming fees with the argument that FOS no longer works and a flat fee will assure every dollar goes directly into council programming. Guess what happened? There has not been a single event added or improvement made to a camp or training offered at reduced prices or anything. The exact opposite happened. Everything increased in cost even more and the continuous message form our professionals is that if we want anything to happen in our Council then the volunteers need to step up and do it. If Council doesn't have volunteers no event will happen but I have a pretty good guess where these Council Program fees are going every year. 

IMHO, the program and then intent of the program will hopefully survive. I do not see the current organization survive simply because it has become such a burden and overhead on the program that it will need to be abandoned first before something can change. I do truly hope I am totally wrong with this but I somehow do not think so.

6 minutes ago, mrjohns2 said:

The odd part was the "March 2024 Unit Renewal Changes". What does that mean? What changes beyond the rolling payments? 

I don't think it will really mean anything from what I gathered. It's a difference in terminology I think it is what it comes down to. Unit recharter for the units is December if that is your month of the year when your Council does recharters. However, even though Council makes you being due on December 1, their Council recharter, and last deadline for them to process individual units, is actually March of the following calendar year. Therefore, it will really only affect Councils starting March 2024 but because of the unit deadlines it will affect us in December 2023 already.

16 hours ago, mrjohns2 said:

This odd comment was in there "Charter renewal will remain the same through the December 2023 recharter cycle and then, in March 2024 the unit renewal changes will be implemented."

From the discussions I had with our Council folks, I gathered the following (based on various professionals interpreting Nationals message but "not really knowing yet..."):

- Anyone currently registered in any unit position will recharter the same way as always done. You pay your National dues, your Council programming fees and your unit recharter fees at the time of recharter. Any of these participants will have their future renewal date the same as the 2023 recharter date.

- Anyone registering with BSA as a new member POST 8/1/2023 will have their future renewal date be the date of registration.

- National dues, and in our Council' case, annual programming fees going forward will now be collected directly through the national BSA process on a rolling 12mts basis and no longer at the time of rechartering the unit. Means that if you are an existing member pre 8/1/2023 your rolling 12mts renewal date will be most likely 12/1/202x going forward if your previous recharter month was December. If you first registered say September 1, 2023 your next renewal date will be September 1, 2024.

Going forward, all payments will be collected directly from each registered member individually be some notification process coming from BSA and I was told will be similar to the currently sent out YPT expiration reminders. Your unit leadership will be copied on each notification to "actively engage in the individual membership renewal...". The only thing that the unit will pay directly will be the annual unit recharter fee.

Asking our Council professionals about how units will be notified when someone doesn't renew, grace periods for renewals, stuff like that, I don't think anyone has a clue on how this all works. Guess we're going to be in for the ride for the next 18months and as usual see how it plays out and how much effort on unit side it will be having to track every program participant individually now and having having to tell Johnny Scout on Saturday morning that, no he cannot attend the weekend outing because his parents forgot to renew his membership last month...

@Zman 1911-2012. I have not looked at the App yet for newer ones but I have been using articles once in a while to post a flashback in the Troop newsletter.

https://scoutlife.org/wayback/

8 hours ago, mrjohns2 said:

GSUSA. 

@mrjohns2 Depends how you look at. Swapping my BSA for my GSUSA hat, our local council charges annual dues and background check cost for me being a GSUSA leader. It costs me $12.50 for my annual dues and $25 to the 3rd party background check company. When I volunteer for any council activity, I get to do that for $0 since I volunteer my time and training and if my kids are at the same event, their cost drops to between 50% and nothing. A far cry from the usually at least 50% of the event cost and nothing for my kids attending at any BSA event of my local council.

3 minutes ago, mrjohns2 said:

They are getting 2x the fees from all new Cubs in one year. So, instead of $50 in Sept, they are getting $105.

@mrjohns2they are really not though because these Cubs will now be on a 12mts rolling calendar and no longer pay National BSA again in December with recharter. This change will decouple the unit recharter from the National membership fees. However, this also means that someone in the adult leadership of a unit will now have to constantly keep checking and nudging parents to renew their National membership every 12mts to stay enrolled (checked and insured) and then sell to them why in later in the year they have to pay again for Council and Unit fees. In a large unit this will become a fulltime adult committee position to keep track of all the individual membership dates.

The only other thing coming to mind besides Scout accounts is the difference in calendar months between your dues paying date and your recharter date. Packs in our area (and so was my former Pack) charge annual dues in August because of the school year calendar. Our Troop charges annual dues in December because of the recharter being December where the money is needed. AOLs crossing over in February/March theoretically paid their dues all the way through July of that year for the Pack but the Troop will end up with expenses for these Scouts between February to the end of the year. Some Troops maybe just "eat" that cost, other charge pro-rated until December and for some units the Pack maybe moves the remaining "year-end" fund per Scout to the other unit.

Our Council has been collecting $60 for some years now. Their reasoning was that they would no longer push FOS since it did not bring in enough $$$s but would ask the programming fee from all active council members. I am sure we'll see more of this and increasing $$$s with the decreasing number of participants. It'll be interesting to see by how much National will increase their fees at the annual meeting and what other councils will do.