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What parts do you feel do not work well any longer? I totally see this. Here's a good story to illustrate. One of the doctors my kids were seeing was very supportive of scouting. I asked her why she didn't have her kids in scouting. She replied that her husband was an eagle, a veteran, and an accomplished outdoorsman and they simply couldn't handle how poorly every unit in their area functioned so decided to just focus on family camping. I have noticed that the more competent people who have management experience or operational coordination experience struggle the most with scouting. Also key 3 often are selected based on random attributes and not how Scouting America recommends (skills and ability based selection); it becomes impossible to intellectually or emotionally handle dealing with incompetent people who can't handle coordinating enough car space for a weekend campout let alone the far more complex issues that arise within scouting.

The councils pass the core fee in its entirety; councils only retain the council fee. DE's are not trained very well. To both of you I want to comment that the DE training is horrible. National waits until a DE is level 2 trained to train them on how to recruit a volunteer district staff. This is a volunteer run organization; the #1 thing every DE should do is know how to identify and recruit volunteers to run their district. I think the training for cub scout volunteers needs to emphasis multiple troop visits to a much larger degree. Not just multiple visits to 1 troop, but multiple troops. As Eagle94 says the program loses a lot of crossovers; in my experience it's in two stages. Stage 1 we plain have scouts just not want to go to a troop because they didn't find a troop they liked (My pack is still sorting this out but it looks like we just lost 5 of 7 AOLs on Dec 31st, they didn't bother to renew because the pack did 2 troop visits this year (versus 7 last year) and the AOLs and families were not interested in either troop.). Stage 2 we lose crossovers at troops who never rank up past AOL before end of year/renewal (my troop just lost somewhere between 6 to 8 crossovers, we're still sorting out if some families didn't renew on time; however, those 6 to 8 have the same thing in common, they were all AOL on Dec 31st). To be clear lack of advancement or recognition is a big deal for these crossovers and I think we lost one of them because the CC was his MBC for a MB and ghosted the kid on a MB he completed. I tried to step in because I also MBC that MB and I got ghosted by the CC. (See the other thread where I complain about fiefdoms and not delivering.)

This isn't true at all. My buddy had to attend every game and practice his daughter played in league volleyball (which cost him $3200 every "Series"/"quarter"/"league period" aka she played 3 a year outside varsity volleyball for all 4 years of high school). There may be some leagues that you can dump and run; however, that is becoming the old standard much like it was the old standard in scouting. As the lawsuit sharks circle dump-and-run is going away even in league sports. I remember him calling me going "I am driving a day and a half to St. Louis right now because if I am not butt in bleachers they will bench my daughter which will threaten her varsity slot when she returns to school.". Dumping and running might have been true in the interarm, but it is going away. It's not declining due to value perception. It's declining due to lack of delivery. On paper the programs provided by Scouting America are among the top youth programs in the world; yes, the world. The problem is that execution of this program is highly variable (even from one side of the town to another), there is no quality control, and councils are too weak to do anything about it because they are too busy trying to survive instead of running the program. Scouting America just lost somewhere between 300k and 500k of it's youth membership in the past 90 days; that membership churn is not a value perception, we sold those families on the value, they where here, they saw the value, they left because we didn't deliver.

You should take some time to understand that in the market basket of extracurricular activities scouting is competing with everything from a pack of kids in a basement playing dungeons and dragons to $400 a week private league sports. If people are getting a good return on their time and money, they will spend the money. League sports are growing 43% year-over-year while scouting is shrinking and currently at 20% of it's peak membership.

This is what I understand. The membership churn is killing the membership numbers. We did recruit 260k "new" scouts in 2025; however, based on the numbers shared with me we lost somewhere between 300k and 500k existing scouts. If we don't deliver on our promises of an excellent outdoor leadership program scouts and their families will keep voting themselves off the island and leave scouting. National needs to enforce quality control and modernization; how can expect a unit to properly execute the program when 4 out of 5 adult leaders are so incompetent they can't do free online training? Paid scouters are scrambling to save their jobs, they don't care to save the program; national must force council consolidations to get the focus back on program and off of fundraising.

Perhaps, but those days might be coming to a close with the new compartmentalization of risk post bankruptcy.

LOL travel leagues $1000 a year! That's not even close to what a travel league costs for 8 weeks in my region (YES REGION!). Those prices are outrageous. Our troop is one of the largest in our district and we're charging $25 for a weekend outing. No troop dues. If the PLC picks a big fancy expensive trip it's AD HOC to the regular monthly weekend outing to prevent pricing families out of any needed monthly campouts.

I think this is the issue. Due to so many factors we have this atmosphere of permissiveness. Sometimes it's not even permissiveness; it's just burnout. How many of us have reported something because we had valid concern or outright knew someone was willfully violating SYT/YPT or the GTSS and were ignored by people at the district or council level.

I think your first sentence hits the nail on the head. I would add that before there was any relationship with the US military we at the ground level were already doing the duty. To your second sentence: I know that my council is in life support mode and is mission inaffective; however, based on what I read online and the interactions I have with other scouters throughout the country I wonder how many (as a percentage of the total units) are not even trying to run the program as designed? I would even go so far as to say originalists that are trying to run things out of the original scoutmasters handbook fall into the program as designed bucket; and, in that situation, are the number of units trying to run the program as designed less than 50%? I horribly fear that to be the case.

What would be more surprising is if we never had another YPT/SYT failure.

I'm going with an attempt at quality control. I wonder how many people bombed the survey and had their SYT revoked?

But the mergers are going to come slow, they're all fighting them, they only do it (looking at you Long Island & Northern MN.) when they simply have no other options and national forces them to do it with no cards on the table.

How does leaving the council work? Is there some sort of petition process?

Last night I saw a dashboard and it had way different numbers. My understanding after asking some questions is that the numbers reported by councils and national in their annual reports Year-over-Year are not "current registered youth" and have not been "current registered youth". So we might have 877k right now but that number is not directly correlated to the membership numbers reported by national at the NAM. The number to compare against nationals year end number that they reported at the NAM is a "count of uniquely served youth in the previous calendar year" which currently stands at 1.2 million according to the dashboard I was shown last night. I am not sure if every council is doing the same thing or not; I suspect based on numbers I have seen that confused me in the past that my council is doing this as well.

I get this, the numbers I have seen is 70% come from cubs but argument is solid. What I am seeing is a pay-for-play type experience with the club sports. SInce the coaches are all in league with each other there are these play club and we guarantee so much play time here and then that translates to making the varsity team, etc ... What is our join scouting and we guarantee so much <insert what parents want here> ? Would making participation mandatory improve the program? OMG, that's a recipe to kill scouting, not from cost, but from indignation. Let us just be real for a moment; a lot of us come out of the business world, we don't raise the price point of products unless there are no other choices. So many of us parents have been through restructuring and downsizing in the private sector, refusal to get operational costs down and instead passing the cost directly on to the consumer kills companies.

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 😛