Tron

I mean just go full coed. How hard is this. The GTSS and YPT can handle the tenting and buddy system issues quite easily.

National has to fix the girl troop/blended troop/coed troop issue before any female cub scout uptick can have a beneficial affect on troops. In my area we've lost so many female scouts due to no or poor troop options over the past 2 years. National needs to pull the trigger on full coed before next April or we're just going to lose a ton of female scouts yet again in crossover season.

The brand rollout is a soft rollout starting in June 2024, the hard rollout with national media campaigns starts on B&G 2025. Nationals marketing department told us to start using SA instead of BSA but said the rebranding is really focused on starting in 2025.

BSA needs to revamp the whole Eagle process. Scouts should be able to work on BSA camps, AND, scouts should be encouraged to revisit old projects before starting something fresh.

The alumni association could do a fundraiser to get a liability policy just for the unit.

Definitely if there is no requirement to maintain existing units. Unit churn could become a real thing.

In my council the BOD is massive as well; but that is by design as it's a "giving to get" situation. Our BOD is all mid level corporate leaders and local government leaders who want a BOD line item for their resume so they can move up to a bigger position or bigger corporation; in return the council presumably gets a direct line to potential FOS dollars. What I find the most lacking in my councils BOD is that there is a total lack of BOD members from other non-profits. I have a lot of non-profit experience and when I speak with senior leaders in my council about non-profit concepts of growth and sustainment they go 100% into deer-in-the-headlights they just don't get it because they are all business people and they don't really have non-profit experience.

I see what you are concerned with but it's not an issue if the unit executive wants to be an ASM. It's not even an issue that the UE acts like the COR, he's the CORs supervisor; it's micromanagement but ultimately as the UE he has all of the authority of the COR already.

Great points. I'm starting to think the underlying answer is that SA is far too interested in creating "leaders" instead of good people with outdoors skills. I hope not. IMHO anyone of us could throw a rock and find a more qualified person than Bear Grylls.

Phantom members might become a thing with this new 3x3 rule coming out; not for new units but for old units that start to hemorrhage members to new competition. I know in my town there are several leaders from the various different units talking about getting together and starting a new unit when this 3x3 rule rolls out. The side conversation is which of the existing units is going to fold as our town just does not have enough kids to support another troop, but we know the new troop will out perform at least 1 of the existing troops; especially when it grows to 6 or more scouts.

It really depends on the scouts, over the past handful of years I have seen scouts that were not ready at 11 crossover and then drop; yet, I have seen 2 high functioning 10 year olds crossover and outperform older scouts at the troop. Last January I saw a 10 year old tent alone during troop winter camp while several 13-15 year olds needed to tent with their parents due to lack of winter camping knowledge and fear. It really depends on the scout and the program currently has a bit more flexibility to push those higher functioning 10 and 11 year olds up asap which is nice. It would be good if there was a better way to manage 11 and 12 year olds that are not ready for the troop. It makes sense to shorten cubs from a viewpoint of what is best for a single child scout or when evaluating a scout in isolation; however, we have to remember that the younger ranks were added due to tag along siblings. Those tag along siblings are going to be there no matter what, and so they experience burnout regardless of registration situation. What we have seen over time is that it is better to capture those youth into the program at k5 - 2nd grade and let them maturate as scouts instead of having them develop a distaste to the program from being locked out due to their age.

I've volunteered and led many non-profit/fraternal groups over the years; working mostly locally but in a few cases at the state and semi-regional level. Motivation is really simple. Motivation is never the problem, people are already volunteering, they are exhibiting motivation already. The biggest problem that BSA has is that BSA generally does not understand that volunteers are motivated in other ways than financial. When a volunteer gets shat on they retract from volunteering and if the situation does not resolve they move to one of the dozens of other groups asking them for their time. Volunteers are motivated through their ethos; if the organization is not in alignment with their ethos they move on. BSA in some cases holds onto some volunteers who are not in ethos alignment because of the volunteers children; however, we have all seen how once those kids age out or eagle out the volunteer disappears like batman escaping the police (which leaves the local BSA entities hanging). Specific to commissioners I will say that my council has a very low performing commissioner corps; my district probably has one of the worst commissioner corps in the nation. What has killed commissioning in my council is that the council has repeatedly told the commissioners that their mission is something different than what the training says the commissioner mission is. We can't keep commissioners, we get a couple people to sign on as commissioners, they do the training, they learn about some knots and other uniform flair, they earn their flair, and by that time they are already burnt out and pissed that they are being told to do things no outlined in the training or commissioner college materials so they quit and move on to patting their knots and saying that they tried.

This is a nothing burger. Most residential wells and water systems do not require testing. I did water quality testing for 5 years and what I learned was if you don't look you don't see.

Everything you're talking about here speaks to the lack of quality control/inconsistency of quality control in BSA. BSA could learn A LOT from Scouts UK about leadership quality control; BSA's next big challenge is making sure trained leadership is present instead of all the tweedle dee's and tweedle dums.

I think you hit the nail on the head solidly. What value does OA provide to scouts in todays day and age?