Tron

I don't know, I took some time this afternoon to research the BOD and it's pretty solid. All members seem to have done well in life and are pumping a lot of money, influence, time, and other resources into the scouting movement. I'll break the BOD down into 5 sub groups. Of the 42 members currently on the BOD, 22 are Eagle Scouts, 1 other that was a scout as a youth but didn't make Eagle; all have been highly recognized in and outside of scouting with awards or decorations. 4 non-scouts that are decorated military veterans; not sure if I would be able to find any other non-scouts that could understand scouting better than people like this. 2 highly recognized professionals in the camping and camping management industry (not counting the ones that are Eagle above). 3 bankruptcy, restructuring, and merger legal experts. 8 highly recognized, decades long volunteers, who have received awards inside and outside of scouting. 2 super rich dudes just doing it for scouting and America. A lot of these people live fairly private lives so there could have been more that were scouts, more that are parents of scouts, this is just a summary of easy to find information on the national website. Over half are Eagle Scouts, seems like a good amount.

I get the whole shift away from anything first nation related/culturally appropriated; it's an unnecessary headache. I don't think it's the biggest issue at hand though, useless lodges and garbage advisors should be the #1 priority to fix. National was supposed to fix the advisor issue this year but decided to just make it easier for adults to join the OA. There really needs to be some sort of max tenure for advisors to get the old rotten blood out of the lodge leadership structure (yes, let us face it, the youth are not leading the lodges).

You're correct. Commissioners are supposed to go into units and basically figure out what is going wrong and helping the unit identify solutions. Again you're correct, no stick; the lack of action in part by professional staff means there is zero motivation for a unit to correct even the easiest to correct issues.

Unknown at this time. Most camps in my neck of the woods will continue to run traditional resident camp until the last week of July or first week of August. I can say that the camp my troop went to this year was at capacity the week we were there. Reports were that they are running an extra week this year and that so far the camp has been at and is scheduled at capacity.

I think Scouting America has a good product, a high quality product. I agree with you that there is a consistency problem. Let us compare Scouting America to Walmart for the sake of argument. When a unit, district, or council are doing horrible, recruitment is down, retention is down, fundraising is down, engagement is down, etc ... what does Scouting America do? From where I am in the organization I don't see Scouting America doing a single thing. Contrast that to Walmart. When a Walmart store is doing bad, high theft, above average complaints, low sales, etc ... Walmart sends in a corporate trainer to evaluate the situation, temporarily take over certain aspects of the store, and correct the problems; if the problems cannot be corrected the trainer recommends closing the location. Could Scouting America learn something from Walmart?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/us/politics/pentagon-scouting-america-lawsuit.html It's just a rinse and repeat of the same people looking for any way to throw mud on scouting from any angle. Look at this guy suing to get the MOU from the pentagon. Literally nothing changed on the Scouting America side so this dude is on a fishing expedition to see what he can sue about next. This is what scouting is up against, a constant barrage of people who hate the movement and will do anything to dredge the name of through the mud at any chance. This MOU non-sense was basically over-and-done and we were all moving on, now Hegseth is going to get a burr up his you know what and the movement is going to come under fire again.

We're basically wrapping up the very tail end of crossover season here in my district; we know right now that arrow of light scouts who have not crossed are basically never going to join a troop. This time period has led my district to look at who the "winners" and "losers" of crossover season are; the results are staggering. Over half of our districts troops received ZERO crossovers this year. When we (district committee) looked into this we noticed a trend. The units that received ZERO crossovers had all of the same attributes in common. Units with untrained leaders, small leadership groups, and little to no advancement of current scouts were the big losers that received no crossovers. We also identified "super losers" in the crossover situation; these were units (we had multiple) that have not received a crossover in 2 or more of the past 4 years. We are very concerned with those units as they are in a situation where they have a structural gap of little to no young scouts for the older scouts to lead, and in a few years (if they troops survive) they will have no older scouts to lead the potential younger scouts. I know other activities are pulling families away from scouts; however, I think bad units are also pushing families away.

I am not sure if this is a general prompt for discussion, if you are triggered by something, or if I missed a question. I agree with your final statement that we must be active and vigilant to protect. I would say we need to be vigilant and active to protect everyone, not just children; there are a lot of monsters out there. If you follow this link the statistics are dark. https://laurenskids.org/awareness/about-faqs/facts-and-stats/ 33% of female youth are sexually assaulted. 20% of male youth are sexually assaulted. Everyone hates on scouting; however, in the settlement the statistic was 4% of scouting youth were assaulted. Scouting paid a heavy price for a serious crime; however, scouting actually has a history of being safer than the general American population.

The answer might be Cataylst. It was announced as going forward at the NAM and is designed to maintain engagement for 18 to 35 yr olds.

Correct. Most communities don't even know that they have scouts. In trying to follow your logic the best thing would be to eliminate the class b shirt and have the scouts wandering about dressed as scouts.

That's the greatest dumb answer ever, form more councils.

Quite true but I think the source of the problem is that most units dont have leaders capable of giving up control so the other leaders revert to just getting what the minimum done and leaving. I was asked recently to help on a patrol outing at my troop. The key concern is that the leader was given a green light to do whatever he wants to help his sons patrol develop; however, he cant use troop gear so he came to me for help since my personal gear closet is full. The key 3 dont want the backlash of saying no so them and the adult quartermaster have created an equipment scheme that stiffles any activities outside of their personal plan [planned] around their scouts.

This chart is often shown and as far as I can tell quite accurate; however, there are lies, the truth, and statistics. The values not shown on this chart are critically important to understanding chart: Percent of population under 18yrs AND membership headcount as a percentage of total elgible youth. Scouting America has held steady at 2% of total elgible youth until about 3 years ago. Specifically retention has increasingly gone down. The organization knows how to recruit but units dont know how to retain.

Meh totally pass on this suggestion. We can't even get the troop to agree on putting the city of the CO on the unit numerals due to cross city rivalry and the fact that we're pulling from 3 cities that are highly competitive against each other in HS sports.

Not that I saw, a lot of the slide deck data was not shared this year.