Tron

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.

My viewpoint is based on literally talking with people and making sure they understood what was coming and they blew it off. I'm a unit trainer and I literally had a leader tell me this was their excuse to exit the leadership and blame national when I reminded him 72hrs out and asked if he needed any help. The quality of our leadership is garbage; I can't do the training for the other leaders and (in my unit at least) they refused help prior to the cutoff and are now blaming national for screwing up.

This aligns with the 500k trendline scenario that was presented at the NAM.

That sounds like a communcation issue.

I think quality volunteers is in decline. We're seeing this right now. After 60 days of reminders we now have hundreds of volunteers in every council running around with expired youth protection training because they are of such low quality that they couldnt do free training with up to 60 days of reminder notice.

I just don't think it will work. From the egos j cousino mentions to the CO issues. The reality of the situation is not anything someone did or didnt do in scouting. The main issue with units folding due to lack of recruitment; 2% of the area youth is the recruitment goal, it's the same goal as 1970. When an area has only enough youth tp support 1 or maybe 2 troops the adult leaders need to recognize the limitation and set expectations realistically.