council size

[GKlose 24]

I'd heard from my DE that we're in a council of about 10k youth members, and 4k adult volunteers (5 districts -- this is Yankee Clipper council, north of Boston). I wasn't thinking it is a particularly large council, but once I started thinking about the math, I came to the conclusion it might be. For example, it we have somewhere around 350 councils and 1M youth members, that puts the average council size at about 3K youth members (give or take, with plenty of rounding error).

 

So, what about your council (whomever you may be)?

[infoscouter 11]

Northern Star Council, in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin, has 113,000 (70,000 traditional) youth and 24,000 adult volunteers.

[Bob White 20]

Not sure where you get your numbers from Gklose but the number of youth in the BSA is more than twice that of what you based your stats on, and I think the current count on councils at the moment is closer to 330.

 

How big is your council? Well compare it to the Sam Houston Council in Houston, TX with 36 Districts serving over 98,000 youth.

 

Or the Great Salt Lake Council with 29 Districts serving 80,000 youth.

 

Or the Chicago Area Council with 9 Districts serving over 60,000 youth.

 

You will find that size of the council is usually dependent on population. Your council will probably never be as large as the Sam Houston Council. More important thantotal membership is the percentage of penetration. What percentage of eligible youth are registered in scouting in your council?

 

Comparing penetration gives you a more level playing field to compare your local program success with that of a larger population center.

[meschen 24]

A nearby Bay Area Council claims to be the smallest Council in the nation: Piedmont has about 1,000 youth members, five troops and four packs. They serve the city of Piedmont (pop ~11,000), which is surounded by the city of Oakland.

[Gold Winger 9]

About 50,000 youth and 24,000 adults for me.

 

I'm amazed that a council could exist with only 1,000 Scouts. FOS must be amazing to be able to afford an SE.

 

LA strikes me as interesting having two councils to serve the area. LA Area Council and Western LA County Council

 

I guess as long as they are making their numbers and not going into the red, BSA doesn't care.

 

I went to Piedmont Council's Web Site. 1,000 Scouts. They say that it costs $450 per per per Scout and a $100 per yer per Venturer to support the council. Compare that to my council which claims expenses of $35 per Scout per yer. I'm glad that I don't have to listen to their FOS pitch.

(This message has been edited by Gold Winger)

[Bob White 20]

GW

I think you misread your councils annual report or your FOS presenter may have misspoke. Your council has expenses of over 9 million dollars, making the cost of scouting about $180 per scout which just is a little below the national average.

 

The $35 per scout is the average your council tries to obtain to reach their FOS goal which is just over $1.5 million annually.(This message has been edited by Bob White)

[Gold Winger 9]

I'm glad that you caught me in such an egregious err Bob, if you did. Thank you for straightening that out, if you did. Now I'll do what Sherlock Holmes did when Watson explained the structure of the solar system to him.

 

(This message has been edited by Gold Winger)

[bkale 11]

Well.. my Council is the National Capital Area Council...

 

the figures from the 2006 Annual Report (2007 report comes out in a couple weeks) give our total as of Dec 31, 2006 as:

 

48,981 Cubs, Scouts, Venturers, and Varsity Scouts

1,691 Packs, Troops, Crews and Teams

23,2123 registered volunteers

 

geographically comprised of ten counties in Northern Virginia, six counties in Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

 

I do know that we had a record increase last year and what I was hearing at certain meetings was that this council moved up to 2 or 3rd in total membership in 2007.

 

I so love scouting and am trying my best to get that number to fly!!

[Bob White 20]

2nd or 3rd in what? Your cluster? Your area? Your Region? Certainly not in the nation as we have already sited more than three councils that are much larger than the NCAC.

 

Perhaps (and most likely) the top second or third of the councils in your same size classification. The BSA places councils in one of 6 classifications based on the number of youth served. The classes are 200 the largest, 300,400,500,600,700, and 800 the smallest.

 

At your size you are probably a class 300 council with Heart of America being a class 200. An example of 800 class council would be the Piedmont Council.

 

At 10,000 youth the Yankee Clipper Council is probably a class 600 or 700.(This message has been edited by Bob White)

[bkale 11]

According to the council website we are a Class 200.

[Bob White 20]

In that case someone gave you wrong information. I have already sited three councils larger than the NCAC so they could not possibly be second or third in size in the nation. At 48,000 it would be one of the smaller Class 200 councils.

 

In addition to the three class 200 councils already mentioned, the Orange County Council in CA. serves over 100,000 youth, the Atlanta Area Council serves over 100,000 youth, and the Greater St. Louis Area Council about 90,000 Youth.

 

So while the NCAC is probably 2nd or 3rd in some way when it comes to size, it is not in the top three in the nation or in its class group. Perhaps in your Region?(This message has been edited by Bob White)(This message has been edited by Bob White)

[RememberSchiff 3655]

Hmmm size,

I have been curious about the number of employees in councils, especially as I read that councils now have spokespersons, marketing specialists, media liaisons,... I remember when far fewer "employees" served a greater number of scouts. My old council office staff (two) back then was part-time and handled all the badges (Scout stores did not exist yet, families shopped at local dept stores for uniforms and other scout stuff.)

[Eamonn 61]

I have never spent any time tracking the size or the ranking of Councils.

Here in SW-PA.We do have a good many small Councils.

These small Councils had a very hard time making ends meet when times were good. I'm not sure how they will do now that things are not so good.

A very good pal of mine returned from staffing a WB in another Council. He was singing the praises of that Councils SE, who it seems was busy helping prepare the Council camp for summer by mowing the grass. When I talked with him about the camp, he told me that the camp is only open for three weeks and over the entire summer they only serve about 350 Scouts. Many of the camp staff are volunteers who don't get any pay for working at the camp. The pool and boating areas are only open when the staff are available, many of these guys work full time doing their real day jobs.

The camp does boast that they have one of the lowest camp fees in the state.

I know a few of these volunteer camp staff members. They are super nice guys, but they are not getting any younger and for some reason they are unable to recruit younger people to come along and help.

I'm not sure what will happen when these guys are no longer around or able to do what they have been doing?

I couldn't help but think that maybe the SE would serve the Council better by spending more time trying to work on membership than mowing the grass?

Eamonn.

[GKlose 24]

Okay, my fault...I couldn't find the numbers before, but I did some more digging today and found this: http://www.scouting.org/Media/AnnualReports/2007/12memsummary.aspx

 

End of 2007, total youth membership, around 2.9M, total adult volunteers, 1.1M, in ~121,000 units.

 

I'd seen various numbers for councils, but since I didn't see the same number twice, I used an estimate of "somewhere around 350".

 

Even so, that puts an average council size, more or less, at about 8650.

 

Interesting to hear about these "monster councils", because for each one of them, there would have to be several smaller (below the average size) councils to make the average work out.

 

Anyway, thanks for the input. I can't even begin to guess how an SE can keep tabs on a council even as large as 10K youth, 4K adult.

 

Which brings up another point: which youth organizations have memberships as large as 3.9M (youth and adult), or more? Little League, maybe?

 

Guy

 

 

[GKlose 24]

One answer: Boys and Girls Clubs of America, 4.8M youth.

 

Girl Scouts, on Wikipedia, is estimated at 2.7M youth, 928K adults.