CNYScouter

@Eagle94-A1 My council went thru this with a merger a few years ago. It got real messy. The council being merged with ours had a very large endowment fund. one of the main reasons that caused the merger was that the council being merged only had 600 youth listed; after after a membership audit it was found that they were only 300 youth in the entire council. Long time volunteers changed the locks on the council offices/store and moved the endowment funds into a hidden account and refused to turn everything over. This ended up in a court battle and in the end everything had to be turned over. as a side note this council became it's own district in my council but was merged with another district last year.

Our council (Longhouse) stills calls it's yearly corporate fundraiser the Boypower Dinner

The first "official" Boypower Dinner was in 1971

Here's a link to the history of the dinner in our council

http://www.cnyscouts.org/boypower/history/

I know at least a few years ago a council SE could wave the 5 Scout minimum to recharter. If I remember right you had to have at least 3. This was done on a case by case basis and is up to each individual SE to allow it or not.

16 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

Did the event book include twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored Glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of Each one explainin' what each one was?

@Jameson76 Was the camporee theme Alice's Restaurant?

4 hours ago, qwazse said:

Your friends next move should be to hold the event for free. Announce that donations will be accepted for threads and sewing needles. I'm sure a few tens and twenties will also find their way into the donation box.

There was an article in Scouting Magazine about doing a fundraiser asking for donations only. https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2014/01/30/upon-further-review-troops-grocery-bagging-fundraiser-isnt-permitted/

5 hours ago, Momleader said:

If the local council is like my council the’ll demand a cut - like 50-60%. 

Feeling cynical - just heard our council shut down a units fundraiser (see fundraising section) 

A few years ago the Pack I help with had an event that was really successful. The Monday after the event one of the DE's called me and told me I had to turn over all the money we made to the council.

I can only recall a couple of times where the BOR was suspended and advancement was held up.

The first time was when I first joined Boy Scouts in 1970. There was a Scout who was out to be the youngest Scout to make Eagle at the time. At his Eagle BOR he was deemed to not be mature enough for Eagle and told to come back in 6 months. His parents were mad because of this delay it would not make him the youngest Eagle. I can only remember him being there a couple time in the following 6 months. When he went back to the BOR he was awarded Eagle. We never saw him again.

The second one I remember was when my youngest first crossed over to the Troop. It was for the Life rank. BOR’s were scheduled during Troop meetings and the Scout had to request a BOR from the advancement chair. The Scout twice scheduled a BOR and didn’t show. The 3rd time he decided to go to an activity with a Cub Pack and showed up over an hour late. By this time the Committee members had left.

The 4th time when he went in to the BOR he got agitated that instead of the usual 3 people at the BOR there was 5. He demanded to know why there was 5 instead of the usual 3. He continued with this type of attitude and began belittling the BOR members for not waiting for him to get there for his last BOR.  The BOR was dismissed and he was told to return when his attitude changed. He ended up quitting the Troop that night and joining another. He did end up making Eagle in his new Troop but after being the Advisor of a Crew he was in his attitude hadn’t changed much.

2 minutes ago, ItsBrian said:

 

Sabbatis is owned by a NJ council, Patriots’ Path. I’ve heard good things about it but never had chance to visit. They do often talk about shutting it down.

 

https://www.campsabattis.org/

There is also a Sabbatis Scout Reservation owned by the Longhouse Council in Syracuse, NY.

Sabbatis Adventure Camp is run by Patriots’ Path Council in NJ

They are on the same road but Longhouse Council's camp is 9 miles past

Sabbatis Scout Reservation has been patrol cooking as long as I can remember (went there in the 70's when I was a youth)

I am in the Longhouse Council in Syracuse, NY.

We have had a Commissioner College for as long as I can remember.

Over the last few years this has evolved to an area event covering NE region area 3 and the councils take turns as the chancellor and finding staff.

It has been held at a school hear is Syracuse for a number of years.

We must be doing things right as they have had attendees in the past as far away as Cleveland, OH

I only got as far as a bachelors degree but taught classes at this in the past.

I have plans to attend his year as they are offering the Powder Horn Course directors  conference which our council has been trying to hold for a few years

Camp Yawgoog in Rockville, Rhode Island has an excellent WEBELOS summer camp program.

Some things I liked about the program was the time given to the Scouts.

Most days they ate lunch early at the camp site and not in the dinning hall. While everyone else was eating lunch they had archery and Shooting range (BB guns) to themselves

I also liked that they put them WEBELOS first. They were put up front marching into any campfires/nighttime shows....and sat in the front row at these

They had their own cheer. Staffers had to cheer with them when they did it at meal time.

The staff was good. There was always at least 5 staff in camp to supervise the scouts

A Troop/District/Council can not really deny an ECOH. They can choose not to participate but can not stop you from holding a ECOH for your son.

I fins it strange that both the SM and Troop Committee had no problem signing off the paperwork for Eagle and know have an issue with holding a COH

After being at the District level I can say that Council/National will stay out of this as it is a dispute at the unit level.

I think your son should contact your Troop Committee Chair and Charter Organizational Rep and the Head of your Charting Organization asking for the reason they are denying the COH.

Keep it short, respectful and to the point

I would also send a separate email to your Unit Commissioner, your District Commissioner and your Council Commissioner explaining the situation. This is the kind of situation they are there for.

You might want to copy your DE on this but I have found most DE's are clueless on how to handle this kind of stuff

At this point I would just plan to hold an ECOH on your own - I am sure there are plenty of Scouters out there that would help with the COH

40 minutes ago, shortridge said:

I have to admit I’ve never heard of a day camp program for Scouts older than Cubs. Do you mind sharing the name of the council and the camp for information’s sake?

Longhouse Council (Syracuse, NY) runs a Boy Scout Day Camp at Camp Woodland (Constantia, N.Y). It is $175 for the week Aug. 20-24

This is the second year it has been offered and was pretty popular last year with most of the sessions full

From my personal experience staying with their friends has too much emphasis put on it.
Both of my son's dens' all crossed over into the same troop (different Troops for each).

With my older son after 2 years in the troop he was the only one of his den left. He was also the only one left from the all the boys (9 or 10 total) that came into the Troop at the same time.
My younger son is turning just 16 and there is only one other boy left from his den that crossed over.

I found that if you want to know about a Troop (or any unit) ask to attend a committee meeting.
I found that you can really tell more about what a unit is like by attending a committe meeting

Pay attention to what the committee is discussing.
Is the committee planning the camping trips? Are they planning what Merit Badges to offer at Troop meetings?
These are Red flags that the troop is adult run.

The committe should be discussing how to support the events coming up.

Ask about Training - Does the Troop hold Leadership training for the Scouts? Are they sending Scouts to NYLT?
Are the Adult's trained in their positions? Do the adults attend Woodbadge?

For me some other red flags to pass on joining a Troop.
No active committee or No committee meetings
No allowed to attend a committee meeting ( I had a Troop tell me parents were not allowed to come to committee meetings)

2 hours ago, ianwilkins said:

You lot are blowing my mind again! Is that not a thing in the US? Hmmm, thinking about it, I guess it stems from our pub culture where pubs started having quizzes, then schools and scouts started doing them as fundraisers...right, here goes...

The Quiz Night.

You gather yourself into teams, it's usually just adults, though I've been to a few family quizzes too. You sit round a table. In a big room. A scout hut. A church hall. A school hall. Maybe 10 to 20 teams, depending on the room size. Each round their own table. There are pens, paper, maybe a few snacks, sometimes there's a bar.

How the evening works...

There's a series of rounds of questions. They may be themed*. There's a quizmaster. They read out the questions in each round. Each team tries to answer as many questions correctly as possible. Usually at the end of each round, the answers from each group are handed in, and a couple of adjudicators mark the papers as we go. Sometimes there are score updates during the evening. Whoever has the most points at the end of the evening is the winner. Maybe a very small trophy is awarded, but mostly it's just qudos.

Usually there will be food. So there'll be a break halfway through were we all chow down.

Money is made by charging a per head ticket price. Say $10-$15. And if there's a bar, that usually makes money.

Usually the question setter tries to make the questions not too dry, a bit of humour, nothing too specialist.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoy them.

* For example, rounds from quiz nights I have been to...they may get given more interesting names...or all the questions in the round may be further themed on a particular subject...

Film (e.g. Who directed Titanic? Or maybe all the questions are on Bratpack or Sci-fi or Rom-Com movies)

Sport (e.g. What city do the Tennessee Titans play their home games in?)

TV (e.g. Name the Brady Bunch children)

Colours (e.g. all the answers are to do with a colour, what city is Red Square in? Who wrote 50 Shades of Grey? What colour are Toulouse Rugby Club's home kit shirts? etc)

Or you can have picture rounds...

Flags of the world

Country outlines

Movie posters with the film name removed

Name the famous people

 

OK. We have them in the USA but we call them "Trivia" Night. They are pretty popular where I live (Upstate NY)

I never thought about doing this for a fundraiser but it sounds like a great idea.

1 hour ago, ianwilkins said:

If you can get a venue for free, a quiz night has almost zero cost. Okay, if you have food with it, might cost a bit, but then, if tickets are bought in advance, you know how many you're catering for. Takes a bit of time to organise but...

What is a quiz night?

In my District we have 4 Venturing Crews and 1 Sea Scout Ship

One of the crews was an Explorer Post (EMT training) that switched to a Venturing Crew a few years ago and pretty much does its own thing.

The Sea Scout Ship is pretty healthy and active

The two other crews will combining into one crew and are wondering if my son’s crew might what to also combine with them into one crew.

The 2 crews combining have only 3 or 4 youth each and neither have enough adults to recharter as a separate crew.

My son’s crew has 5 or 6 youth on paper but only 2 or 3 active. We have enough adults to recharter as a crew but realize we need more youth members.

The CC of one of the old crews has said that they would be the CC of the combined crew. They are a DE for another district in our council.

If we do combine we know we would have to switch meeting nights but no decision has been made where the combined crews will meet.

Our Crew Advisor is reaching out to the youth members of the crew to see what their thoughts are on combining.

What would be your concerns if you were to combine the 3 crews?

Or would you stay as a separate crew and put a big push into a recruitment drive?

My family has 3 generations of Eagles - My Dad, myself and twin brother and one of my sons.

I don't have any grandkids yet but my brother has a granddaughter so maybe she will the 4th generation.

Thanks for confirming my understanding that there is only one COR for each CO. Without going into details it seems that the Pack and crew had issues with the COR and asked for the COR to be replaced. The troop didnt want to switch CORs. Our councils compromise was to have each ubit have thier own COR. They asked that the key 3 from each unit take COR training and this us where they were told it was ok to have multiple CORs.

I am at a scout youth training training event. I was discussing COR's with an adult leader from another unit who said that their Pack, Troop and Crew had the same CO but each had a different COR. When I said that each CO should have only one COR the person responded that they had just gone through an issue with having to replace the COR and the BSA has changed the rules and allows a CO to have multiple COR's. A few years ago I ran COR training and it wasn't like this. Did this change? If so when?

15 hours ago, mashmaster said:

Sadly, my most problematic Scouters have been Eagles.  Others seem to be more willing to not fall back on, "When I was a scout..."

My experience has seen the opposite. The adults who weren’t involved in Scouts as a youth have most issues with following the BSA program (and the boy-lead concept). Most have the attitude that they know how Scouting works and don’t need training. I lost count with how many adults I have run into with this type of attitude.

In response to the OP “Why Can't Adults Trust the Scouts?” Here is some insight on what I have experienced. It took me almost 10 years before I found a troop that even came close to being boy-led and used the patrol method. This is the Troop my youngest son joined.

After looking at a lot of the troops in my area and then being a UC and then DC I got a lot of exposure to the different ways troops do things.

My older son’s first troop – no patrols, POR’s were in name only. This troop had 2 ASM’s who were in the troop as youth (both at the same time) and stayed with the troop once they became adults. They made it well known it was their troop and they ran it their way. One acted as if he was still the SPL any time he was around. These 2 ASM's, the SM and CC made all the Troop decisions, from where to camp, to who was held POR's and even the weekly troop meeting agenda.

One troop I visited said that the adults do everything because the Scouts voted to be adult led and since the scouts make all the decisions that is what they were doing.

Another troop never went camping. When I inquired why, I was told that the adults decided that the Scouts were too young to camp and they had never camped before. This troop had been restarted and was made up of all first year scouts and the adults felt they were not ready. Adults were making all the other decisions in this troop also

Even in the Troop that was boy-led and did pretty good job with the patrol method had its issues.

When the time came to get new tents (Troop tripled in size in less than 2 years) 2 or 3 older youth from the PLC were recruiting to do research on tents.

At the next committee meeting one of the ASM’s presented his idea on what new tents the troop should bet. This ASM and the CC, which was his wife, decided that there was too much money involved for the Scouts to make this decision.

The SM didn’t speak up and sat quite during this conversation. I was expecting him to stick up to let the Scouts to make the decision but I don’t think he thought this was that big of a deal (or it might have that he didn’t care) who made the decision.

I actually 3D printed a car. One of our local libraries has 6 or 7 3D printers to use (you pay by weight of what you make). I ran it in the Packs "open class". I preferred using the wood block. The car looked cool but trying to keep the wheels on and straight were way easier with wood than the plastic the 3D printer uses.

The Venturing Crew I work with needs to fundraise as it's account is low in funds.

At last weeks meeting they were discussing fundraising ideas but most required startup funds that the crew just doesn't have.

The youth really like to sell Gertrude Hawk chocolate bars but they don't have enough funds to cover what is needed to do this.

The only low cost idea they came up with is a Can and Bottle Drive. They have enough funds to get flyers to go door to door to pass out but are looking to do something else.

Anyone have any other little or no start up cost fundraising ideas I can suggest to the youth?
 

Welcome to the forum DGS!

 

Why is it $80 per person?  In our council I believe it is $33 per adult ($24 to National and $9 to council.)  Of course the National fee is going up to $33 (which I suppose is a coincidence) so, assuming council doesn't increase ITS fee, it will be $42 per adult.  (I believe Scouts are $55 each including council fees.)  If your fees are $80 per adult, that means the council is tacking on $56 in fees.  That seems like a lot.

 

Of course even $33 or $42 times 30 is significant, but $80 times 30 is... well, it's unacceptable, not that it's up to me to accept it.

 

Each year we go through the list of adults on the charter and cross off names of people who are completely inactive, and then we have a discussion of people who just show up for a meeting here and there and don't really do anything, or college students who are registered as ASM's but aren't really around.  In the past, adults who were on the charter but inactive were given the opportunity to pay their own fees if they wanted to stay on the charter, but I am not sure that is done anymore.  As for JosephMD's comment about having all adults pay their own fees, I know some units do that and some adults in our troop (at least in the past) have voluntarily paid their own fees, but I guess our attitude is that volunteers should not have to pay any more for the privilege of volunteering than we already do.

Last year my Council added a "resource" fee to all registrations, both youth and adult, of $26 per person.

With the national Increase to $33 for registration in December and another $10 insurance fee it will bring the registration fee to almost $70 per. 

Add Boys Life to a youth registration and it's over $80 to register.

A few years back when I was the District Commish I had a pack that was ready to fold.

it was down to 4 second year Webelos and was ready to fold.

The SM of the Troop that was chartered by the same CO (and ex Cubmaster of the Pack) came to me about what to do.

He knew that the future of the Troop was tied directly to the pack as many of the Cubs in this pack crossed over into the troop.

Mu suggestion was for the Troop to take over the pack until it got restarted.

Do a shared committee and see if one of the Troop adults would be willing to take over as Cubmaster

They found an ASM willing to be CM and one of the Troop Committee members to take over as CC. There are a couple of more adults from the Troop who signed on as Pack Committee members who help as needed.

It took a few years but the Pack is back up to 30 to 40 Cubs. The CM is still there (he really like working with the Cubs) and the rest

As for building the troop this is what the SM for the troop did.

He concentrated on keeping the scouts he had and was happy to grow the unit 1 scout at a time.

I see too many Troops who want to grow all at once and get frustrated when they aren't getting a lot of boys joining all at once.

The year my son crossed into the Troop (and I became an ASM) 13 boys crossed into the Troop in the spring

since then the Troop still gets a single scout joining now and then but most recruitment/crossovers bring in 4 to 6 scouts at a time

Around here I never seen dining-hall style meals for participants at a Boy Scout camp-o-ree.

Cooking is done by each Troop (we hope they would be doing the Patrol Method for this but have seen many Troop method cookng units)

I have seen this at Cub Scout and most Venturing events.

Food for the Camp-o-ree staff is always done as a group with someone at the district level taking the lead and putting together a cooking staff.

Staff also can eat with a Troop if they wish

I like the way Back Pack's  district does things. The family style where staff can grab something and go is a great idea.