Tron

I think the big one here is actively recruiting district level volunteers. The average volunteer obligation is 2-3 years; BSA has a policy statement that a volunteer obligation is 1 year (membership renewal to membership renewal). If the DE is not actively recruiting district members it just falls apart and then the DE ends up doing everything, and doesn't have time to recruit district members. Every subcommittee at the district level should have 7-9 members. I think off the top of my head the advancement committee is literally dictated in the GTA to have 12 members; my entire district committee is 8 (including the paid members). How does anyone run an affective district without opening the door and inviting in people to help? Is everyone in BSA a 90 year old bachelor fighting to open a pickle jar, too proud to ask for help? This is all tough right? I read this, I immediately pictured this as a few different units in my district. What I have seen is that they have a couple of bad leaders, they are clinch positions, they do it their own way without regard to the BSA way, without regard to safety and ypt, because of connections they never get hit with the naughty stick, and when they move on the unit is in such shambles, all of the other leaders have been taught to hate and distrust anyone outside the unit, and then the unit implodes due to all of the bad habits and insular paranoia.

Some MBC use blue cards, some use Scoutbook; either way the progress is recorded the same way, the MBC signs off on requirements as they are completed. Do the free MBC training at training.scouting.org to get a better picture of todays MBC process.

I get what you're saying here; that ties into constantly recruiting. DE's are constantly pushing recruitment of scouts for units but they never seem to push constantly recruiting district committee/commissioner corp.

BSA is pretty much already there, from the list of action items what is missing?

Have this filled out and turned into your council registrar. https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/training/pdf/34169_forms_wb.pdf

Had some MBC situations this year myself; it's all about if you don't like that I run the MB program as designed find someone else. People hate it when I say it, but it's like running a Walmart, people hate it and complain but we'll see them shopping here again tomorrow. Having IOLS is still required it's just buried a bit. The requirement is that you have to have at least 1 trained SM/ASM on every overnight outing. To be considered a trained SM/ASM you have to have IOLS. BTW hazardous weather is required to be trained now, it's been moved by national into DL/CM/ASM/SM training; can't wait to see people start to fall out of trained status when their hazardous weather expires in a year or two.

I've gotten into the weeds of what publicly is disclosed on council revenue sources and there is nothing going from national to councils. Councils are just as much a franchisee as units are.

I think there are 2 problems with the commissioner corps; First there is no enforcement so the efforts of the commissioner can become a huge waste of time (If a unit repeatedly gets low evaluations or refuses to meet why are council executives renewing those charters?). Secondly to be blunt there are too many scouting bro's scratching each others back. When a commissioner witnesses YPT and GTSS violations they need to thrown the bad leaders under the bus, not sweep the issue under the rug. I think this goes back to service. At the cub level the parents can't just disappear once their scout crosses to a troop. We need a culture of lingering at the pack to pass on knowledge, hold hands a little, help those new parents get their feet under them. Most cub packs are like starting a new business with all new employees year-over-year. I think a good scout executive can fix this in every council by treating JTE/Quality Unit/Whatever the new program as mandatory to recharter, and publicly posts the scores. If units get caught lying on their JTE, yank the charter. How many packs and troops would fix their problems in a heartbeat if they had to deal with parents that really knew what was going on in a unit? An alternative, every January districts should have to run a class for AOL and perspective new parents on how to identify properly functioning units. Think of an AOL parent who gets a 15min crash course on patrol method and how they would steer their kids to units?

Maybe, most the strongest units in my area have some sort of relationship with a church that provides large amounts of space for storage and program use. There is definitely something that strengthens units when they say "We meet every week on Wednesday night at 7PM unless it's a major holiday like Christmas".

I am starting to believe that the #1 problem is quality control. So many bad units run by bad leaders. How many kids join, have a horrible experience, quit, and never come back?

This latest round of information and argument seems to forget that there are a significant number of CO and councils that no longer exist. These cases are not like a chemical company buying a going out of business other chemical company and acquiring the toxic assets with the positive assets in the purchase. The argument of being able to sue councils and CO's can also be made that other entities are not liable for those specific cases, additionally that argument could also be made by councils and CO's that they are not liable and the victims should be forced to sue the direct perpetrators. If this bankruptcy and settlement gets revoked the vast majority of survivors will end up with nothing. The survivors that get something will get a paltry part compared to what their individual lawyers suck out of the case.

What stops a "friends of" CO from going the route of the money earning application? In my experience the only time I have been told no/had a money earning application denied was when I was going to solicit an organization that I had contacts at for a unit donation and I found out that at higher levels the organization was already directly contributing to FOS in my council so I was told to not piss the source off by asking for another donation. I have never had a bakesale, or candy bar, or dinner fundraising application denied by my council. Additionally there are no rules prohibiting acceptance of unsolicited donations.

ditto

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.