Tron

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?

What is the real goal here? WOSM is basically just a parent/partner organization for the big entities in each country. What does this do to help position them as the key international base for the movement? What changed that helps WOSM get into the last handful of countries without scouting or that have scouting programs that are not part of WOSM?

How does a council drop commissioner service? The commissioner corps is a fundamental part of the mission of the districts and councils to serve the units.

You should redact those names. Black magic markers are everyone but the presses friend. Have you tried changing the roles in Scoutbook as well? I mean like, doing it in Scoutbook and my.Scouting at the same(ish) time? The data layer is supposed to be the same and perhaps Scoutbook is overriding your changes?

Both of your comments tie together. Scout Reach is supposed to be about financial disadvantage regardless of location or race. One of the units I volunteer with finally was able to brow-beat the council into giving us Scout Reach funding (council ponied matching funds for disadvantage scouts in the unit); we just would not shut up and kept beating up council staff on the fact that our community is primarily white with 41% living at or below the poverty line (56% of youth in the community are reported to be in disadvantaged households) and that it shouldn't matter that we're not in the "inner city" of the council. Scout Reach is pure broken in my opinion.

A lot of good points; but the PDFs are not even available to print on demand and are not maintained. GTA is a mess, with about 2 dozen sub pages with hacked together updates. I would totally go with, hey come here and grab the PDF and take it to kinkos if you want.

You don't really do anything in My.Scouting that I know of. Their membership are with national and will expire when they expire; just be sure to not renew them when you do internet rechartering at the end of the year. For now you would just go into Scoutbook and put an end date on their positions and functional roles.

There might be some age impact here, 21% dropping out is huge though. Based on the mentality of this lawsuit and true goals I suspect few died and more just gave up as their goal was to destroy BSA and they failed to achieve.

We're both probably missing stuff here as not everything is available/clearly defined yet. Supposedly the SB+ stuff is being cleaned up right now and some of this confusion should go away. I really wish they had just published hardcopy leader guides for the wolves-aol. Hoping back and forth between the handbooks and the website is going to get old fast.

Let me kick the hornets nest here. During the NAM the marketing presentation broke down the demographics by race and locality of BSA and made some crazy claims. Specifically nationals marketing was concerned about over-representation of Asians and Whites, and suburban and rural. I had to just accept the numbers on what national considers suburban/rural/core city membership (right?); however, they gave percentages of membership race composition and I took those right away and compared them to the 2020 US census national composition and BSAs racial makeup is +/- 1% by racial composition. There is no racial disparity in BSA; contrary to perceived exclusion, or whatever people are thinking, statistically the disparity is not there. Yet again there was the claim that Asians and Whites are over-represented; it's just a DEI dog-whistle. National also talked about male vs female but with far lest zeel except that female membership is a constant year-over-year increase. Female membership is currently right around 8% of the total membership. That's the BIG disparity; which is why we're changing our name from Boy Scouts of America to Scouting America. Our energies should be on recruiting as many people as possible; however, our target should be more than just growth, but exceptional growth for young women. They're 51% of the population so statistically speaking we're underserving young women until they reach 51% of the membership. This effort though is going to get watered down and distracted from because nationals marketing and HR/DEI are more focused on why we're over serving Asian and White males.

When you asked those people to step up did you provide any written position descriptions? In my experience literally taking the position descriptions out of the leader guides and providing them works wonders. Written position descriptions sets fair barriers for people. Did you explain that volunteering for the position is not forever and is a 1 year obligation that they can renew or walk away from? I am involved with several units and I will compare and contrast the best functioning to the worst functioning. The best functioning literally just runs the program; no "we do it this way because" no "we've always done it this way" no "well the unit leader likes it this way" its we're doing it by the book. This is your position description, we want you to do your position specific training so you have a baseline idea of what the unit leaders do, we're asking you to do this for 1 calendar year, and if you want to stay on after that for another year, great; if things are not working out and you want to try something else great. This unit has every position filled except FOS chair. Contrast that to the unit that is the worst functioning: it's a mixture of some book stuff, some a unit leader 20 years ago made up stuff, the new unit leader wants to put his stamp on it made up stuff, position descriptions are made up and barely recognizable to the literature, people outright refuse to do training, and there are people guilted into staying involved after their kids leave the program and EVERYONE sees that and is scared of stepping up. This unit has about half the functional roles filled and of those roles there are multiple that are filled by people who start every parent meeting with "my kid is no longer in the program I am leaving at X date!" which turns into X+N when that date hits and no one has stood up. The unit is going to implode, just totally collapse if one of these parents gets a new job, or get sick, just has one of those really good only a monster would blame them for quitting reasons.

So how do you reconcile your findings against nationals findings?

Ok, makes sense but shouldnt be that way in cubs. In theory each Lion and Tiger den is starting a new Den Leader and soon there after picking up an assistant. When the lead starts to get burned out the assistant and that lead should be able to swap positions. From a committee standpoint at cubs the committee should be rotating to avoid the burnout. Let us not kid ourselves, most of the committee positions are just show up and answer a very narrow range of questions; if you have an experienced CC most of the committee is just breathing oxygen and hopefully learning something in the event that the CC gets hit by a bus.

Ok, makes sense but shouldnt be that way in cubs. In theory each Lion and Tiger den is starting a new Den Leader and soon there after picking up an assistant. When the lead starts to get burned out the assistant and that lead should be able to swap positions. From a committee standpoint at cubs the committee should be rotating to avoid the burnout. Let us not kid ourselves, most of the committee positions are just show up and answer a very narrow range of questions; if you have an experienced CC most of the committee is just breathing oxygen and hopefully learning something in the event that the CC gets hit by a bus.

Some of this is literally set an expectation. Sometimes replacements don't step up because you're not clarifying the unfairness of no one else stepping up. I was wearing multiple hats at a local unit and no longer have kids in it. The COR and I had several succession discussions over the past 7 months or so and I was clear and fair to the unit; I let the COR know that were certain things I was no longer doing; however, I would stay on to help train replacements. It's the CORs primary duty to find adult leaders; it's great to help. I am moving on because I set clear expectations and no one can complain because I am offering to help train my replacement. In the interim the COR is going to have to put on those extra hats which will put pressure on him to get the job done in recruiting a replacement. At the district level it is often the district executive and the council executive that are at fault. The specific fault is the chair of the nominating committee is garbage. Recruiting for the district or council committees cannot be limited to "Does anyone want to nominate anyone? derp!" It has to be a call every unit, visit every unit situation. Every unit needs to be contacted every single year and asked to nominate at least 1 of their scouters to join the district/council committee(s). BTW if you have not figured out my districts whole nominating committee is a dumpster fire.

So my question about the burnout is; burnout directed towards what? Is it overall fatigue? Is it sick of toxic leaders? Is it the 365 cycle of fundraising?

Actually they did. During the NAM presentations the repetitive response to this question was basically "No one see's scouting in the community anymore so they think scouting no longer exists." the response to the why they left seemed to be "bad experience/didn't like the unit, and people don't know they can be a member of any unit not just the one next door/at their school/what they were told".

You have to be careful with this as the new platform is a choose your own adventure type situation. Many of the things we're discussing are still in the rank but there alternate options. The quality of the program is going to fall on the den leaders to make sure they are choosing to do the engaging fun stuff instead of just what is easy for them. The handbook reads like everything is required; however, when you go look at the website there is a bit of wiggle room. The new ranking scales per "story card" which outline indoor vs outdoor, energy level, resources, and time are going to be interesting to see how many lazy den leaders naturally gravitate to the 1 and 2 (low end) prep time/resource requirement story cards (adventure options).

I apologize on behalf of the MBC corps as it sounds like a lot of your issue is that your unit does not understand the MBC role and governance. Just push through, it's worth it. Your council is absolutely correct, being an MBC is a council membership requirement. You have the right to choose to be council wide, district wide, or just specific unit(s); however, it's a council at large membership. Because of that council at large membership you do have to fill out a new (no cost if already registered) membership denoting 2nd/dual membership enrollment and someone from your council will have to review and approve (my council has a made up position literally called the MB Czar that handles this). Restricted MBs may sometimes vary by council but normally they are shooting sports related, diving, climbing, etc... and of course everyone's favorite restricted MB Citizenship in Society. If you are qualified you will not have a problem getting signed off. If you are qualified you might have to endure a stupid meeting or phone call (I basically brow beat the MB Czar over my qualifications to counsel Wilderness Survival). When you go through it just tell yourself "Hey this is a good thing, council doesn't want unqualified know-it-alls teaching some poor scout the wrong thing."

I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that we all need to swim against the current and when we see or hear about dumb people doing dumb things with firearms we need to make sure the council executive is made immediately aware of things. I totally get that criminally speaking the situation was a misdemeanor; the real question is what has Aloha Council done to fix the total lack of firearm safety within their council? Were all of those low functioning judgement volunteers kicked out of the program? Was the camp ranger and staff fired for letting that happen on their watch?

Not required; but part of the rank still, yes. You have whittling for knife safety and you have knots added to the fishing adventure. I am not sure what the complaint is here? If you're running a 12 month program as prescribed you can easily add these adventures and provide the learning experience for the scouts.

I think the presentation is good. I'm focusing on the improved YPT training, I think it was a real BIG statement when Glen Pounder pointed out that a council has had zero YPT reports (including near misses); moving to annual training is a big improvement, partnering with homeland security is a thing, right, there's resources there that Scouting America can use to keep kids safe.

I'm salivating waiting for this. It's going to exactly like climb on safely! A legal chokehold that elevates national from liability and voiding the indemnification clause for leaders who do not have the training and experience an incident. This is directly from climb on safely. "The adult supervisor works cooperatively with the climbing instructor and is responsible for all matters outside of the climbing/rappelling activity. " Climb on safely is not a training course in climbing. Contrary to popular belief it's a sideways acknowledgment from the leader who takes it that if BSA policies are not followed, they get hung out to dry. For the leaders that don't take it, things are just as bad. Ignorance is not a legal defense to liability in court.

The sporting thing; there's an aspect of this compare and contrast that is not being discussed. https://childusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Five-Key-Findings-from-the-EAS-7.9.2021-Updated.pdf#:~:text=18.3% (nearly 1 in 5) of elite athletes,minor by a sport official or peer athlete. Because of the decentralized nature of sports, schools, clubs, etc ... there's no great big target with a big pocket of money (when comparing to BSA). So for 30 years there are local discussion when a pedo coach or physically abusive coach or exclusionary club gets caught doing the wrong thing; however, there has never been a national discussion about this. Contrast that with national media constantly on BSA about the lawsuits, accusations, and most recently the settlement and bankruptcy. Perception is reality; some parents falsely think their kids are safer in sports.