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A different thread made me think of this and I think it fits here better than there. I think my pet peeve is the scouter who claims "My program is great, my troop has X number of scouts!" and this literally comes from a discussion I had with an SM recently. The SM's troop went from single digits to over 40 in 2 years; he's running the same program he has always run. He refuses to consider that some of the success is not his program but the fact that his town went from 6 troops to 2 troops and the other troop is ready to fold. The dude snaps and screams at scouts but he's become the only option in his town because he has a solid charter and a dedicated donated space to hold scout meetings 7 days a week 24 hours a day.

We have the infrastructure and paid staffing of 1970 when the program had 4 to 5 times the participation rate. I think we could increase participation but I don't think we're ever hitting the 1970 membership number. We could perhaps reduce some camps to primitive camping only and mothball them for brighter days; however, we just don't need the number of camps that we have. In my state we literally have double the number of resident camp slots each summer than there are scouts in the state; the councils are fighting each other for scouts, all of the camps are suffering. FOS is already dead in many councils, the constant money hustle has everyone burned out. We have to address the central office problem of scouting; too many chiefs, not enough indians, we need to consolidate councils to save the program. What exactly is a unit fair share fee? Is it different than a council fee somehow? Costs are nothing in scouting. Literally nothing compared to everything else. We lose scouts every year to club sports (especially baseball). Parents in my area are ponying up literally thousands of dollars a year, sometimes every few weeks for cycle after 8 week cycle of club sports; mandatory attendance policies for parents in the bleachers and driving. Some sports are worse than others, the sports leagues are in league with the varsity coaches; my daughter is being told that "it is heavily recommended to play at least 3 seasons of club soccer at $800 a pop if she wants to retain her varsity slot"; my buddy is ponying up $3200 every 8 weeks for club volleyball to retain his daughters slot on the varsity team. I'm lucky that my daughters league(s) are all local, my buddy is being forced to go to regional events which takes him sometimes 3 states away as a mandatory driver, and then he has to fork over extra for hotel rooms. Club sports are growing exponentially; what are we doing wrong that club sports at their insane cost are growing and growing while we are retracting and retracting? As I started stating above, I don't think costs are driving their choices. I will channel my inner Stan Lee and ask the question "What If?"; what if the issue is results based and not cost based? I would make the argument that if we (as a program) had a guarantee that if a scout was truly active and attended X number of meetings and Y number of weekend campouts, and at least 1 resident camp a year that the scout would X ranks and Y merit badges in every 12 month period our recruitment would double and our retention would move into the 80% range. I was just looking at my troops roster due to renewals coming due for most of the troop in a few days. We have 6 scouts dropping for sure, no chance in hell of retaining them. 4 of them have no chance of making it to Eagle, 2 have been lost to club sports at age 12 and did not make Scout rank since crossing in March. We have another 10 potentially dropping; 1 made eagle and is moving on, the other 9 are all inactive due to club sports and are way off any reasonable pace of making eagle. This is going to be a tough hit and a big ego bruise for the SM if we really lose 14 scouts in 15 days; it's going to cast a shadow across the whole troop.

About 2 councils worth of scouts. Look at all that administrative bloat. That's easily 1.6 million more for program if they merge down to 2 councils and fire 8 scout executives.

This is bad. I don't think the program is dying; however, when is national going to institute some quality control to end the membership exodus?

Yeah this is pretty much the same for every metro area. I am in a major metro and we're roughly 1/3rd the membership size that we were 5 years ago. If NYC is anything like what is going on in my area it's the money hustle for FOS that is now an 8-10 month part of the annual calendar, it's detracting from recruiting and retention. This months roundtable was a discussion about how we're not having a roundtable next month, instead we're having a "fundraising mixer". Next month will be the first roundtable I've skipped in 4 years; we're not even done with the main fall recruitment push and the paid scouters have already moved right back into FOS money hustle.

Members without a unit are people who were on rosters when a unit failed to recharter or had their charter taken. They are also people who are members-at-large of a district or council. What happens to your people will depend on what they want to do. I do know that in most councils that members without report is a free-for-all for the various member coordinators to call and solicit for transfer.

I am starting to think that Scouting has done this to itself. Scouting is without a doubt significantly cheaper than club sports (which some estimates state are growing at as high as 43% year-over-year for membership); however, summer camp is expensive, way more expensive than a troop setting up it's own 7 day long term camp. I can simply not blame a parent for wanting their scouts to come home from any resident camp scenario with maximum merit badges and awards. Over the last 3 years, summer camp has cost me $350-$500 a head depending on the year/specific resident camp. I know for a fact that I can feed the scouts like kings and set up a 7 day camping experience at a state park for $71 a head. At the same time the Camping MB and OA eligibility require long term camping, not resident camping. My kids and I might stop going to summer camp after 2026; they are getting tired of the experience, and I am getting tired of the price and lack of ROI. My youngest would rather go on a family based wilderness campout, my middle kid would prefer cooking higher quality meals for himself, my oldest is sick of all the younger scouts, and I can't believe how horrible the cost to return ratio is. Summer camp 2026 is going to cost my family $1600 and a week of missed work (if we even go in 2026, my oldest is currently pitching a competing national park trip to my other two 😛 ).

Yes correct. I think the answer is national needs to start telling the councils that are not meeting their charter agreement that they are not getter recharter.

Is it wrong that I am now picturing Beavis in a scout uniform after reading this?

Yeah I am not sure if that number is accurate (not your fault, nationals lack of transparency). My understanding is that a lot of councils do not have SE right now. I know that in my CST there are 5 without an SE right now, two have not had an SE since 2024. I think you assumption on salary is correct (barring some outliers). I work in "captain business land" and if I were at national I would literally just announce and start forcing the plan to merge down to 1 council per state. I was looking at what they did in Michigan and it doesn't look perfect to me but it certainly is a great start to the overhead problem. My council is cutting headcount right now, we're supposedly negotiating "shared services" asset pooling, and cost sharing with surrounding councils. I wish they would just rip the band-aid off and just tell us which new CSP to buy 😛

The reality is that BOR really are a feedback session. The board should ask questions to the scout to gauge their experience; so instead of "Here's a rope, how do you tie a bowline?" the question should be "Tell us about the last time you tied a bowline and why you did it?"

Council Service Territory maps were updated last night. It's not clear which councils merged but it looks like at least 1 council in California is merged out and 1 council in Pennsylvania or New Jersey is merged out as well.

So with your free time, and your buddies free time, it sounds like the perfect seed to start a takeover of the troop.

Every time I have seen a structured removal of voting ability or removal of input ability it was caused by the ruling bodies desire to remove or reduce dissent to a pending action. I've seen this in other non-profits and in local governments. This type of action always preceded a controversial policy change. I wonder if this is the fallout of the Nassau and Norfolk councils voting to not merge and then being forced to after all of Long Island scouting went bankrupt? There are a lot of councils just digging in and refusing to be part of the team right now. Is this a mechanism to remove the dissent at the various localish levels?

That's not what any of the numbers state, it's not what I see, it's not what national reports as seeing, we're at 25% of peak headcount and it's a known fact that lack of meeting = lack of engagement = program decline. Open any of the guides, the cub scout guides, the troop leader guides, the committee guides; national tells us in every publication that meeting as much as possible, weekly, is the optimal method and that not meeting like this causes a negative affect on retention.

This is the sort of stuff that causes scouts to quit as soon as they find something more satisfying and less stressful to spend their time on. With leadership maneuvering to set this scout up for failure this hard it is without a doubt a guarantee that this scout drops before this time next year.

That might be your area, or you're defensive. I am telling you hard fact from my district. Units that don't meet year round, that don't meet as many weeks as possible, they are failing. I can also tell you that national believes the same thing because all of the leader guides and training tell us to meet year round and meet as many weeks in a month as possible to have a healthy unit. Everyone on this site likes to complain about meeting, everyone on this site likes to complain about Scouting America being at less than 25% of it's peak size in 1970. Leadership 101: You can't maintain engagement without meeting regularly and on a schedule.

The text book answer is: CORs, the District Key 3, Members-at-Large, People registered in function roles (advancement committee members, training committee members, etc ... ). I've never seen it done by-the-text-book though. My personal opinion is evolving into the opinion that DE's never even try to run it by the text book because they don't want a committee complicating their unilateral approaches to everything.

I guess that's reason enough for district/council leadership to have a distro list and send out actual agendas eh?

Ugh these stories hit me hard in the gut. That chairman was taking the easy way out. He should have manned up and went to the SM and asked him what he needs to make sure all of the scouts can tie the core knots.

Yeah, .00000000000000000000000000000001% of the military budget; good one, they'll just order 1 less box of $10,000 toilet seats. I'd just be surprised if they had any fortitude? Fun point about this administration, Trumps approval rating is like 10% above the projected percentage of likely voters who were going to vote for him. He's actually polling better now than before his re-election. Seriously though, what's the position of the scouting caucus? I don't see one, someone throw me a link to a real position. As far as I can see they're not taking a position on this. What's the point of putting time into having a scouting caucus if they're just going to roll over and take it?

Not much meat here except a personal comment. Is the scouting caucus going to actually level a position on this?

Great observation, how do you propose to resolve the situation? Can you share what the reason was for the 3 to show up?

I can tell you fact, fact of my district and council, the units that do not meet year round are the weakest units. The only thing keeping those units around is the unit retention metric driving the DE to hold them up regardless of dipping below 5 scouts repeatedly. I've been on the committees and I've seen the metrics, the units in my council that do not meet year round have the lowest retention, are the smallest, have the least rank advancement, are not camping, etc ... literally every single laundry list red flag. Patrol campouts are official campouts. Patrol level activities are under the auspices of the Scouting America. What you're describing is a high level of other engagement. You're not shutting down and going off to something else for the summer, you're shifting gears to a different type of programming for a season period.

So the support for JAMBO is not something the department of war can just withdraw; there is a process and it has to clear congress; the actual law is that the US military has to support JAMBO at least at the level of the previous JAMBOs support. As I understand it the only way out is if we are at war and well ... we just fought 2 wars while also supporting like 10 peacekeeping forces, while also fighting a good 2 dozen "low intensity" engagements; that whole time the military was able to support JAMBO. Not thinking JAMBO support goes away. Prohibiting scouts on military installations will go no-where. First of all just plain stupid and no way enforceable considering that the US military lets all kinds of youth groups onto installations. Secondly garrison commanders have an EXTREME amount of authority as to what they allow or do not allow to happen on their bases and there are just too many military facilities out there. Toss in any potential pivot of USO to support the scouts at the troops urging. Just not worried about this at all; it's like a made up micro managing issue. In my recruiting days Eagle Scouts came in as E4; it was only 1 extra piece of paperwork and no hair off our backs to get that done for the rare enlistee that was an Eagle Scout. If your Eagle Scout is being offered less than E4 you need to take them to a different recruiter that can be bothered to press print and then sign and date a piece of paper.