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Membership Continues Decline


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The gay issue is a red herring of membership woes. There are no gay cubscouts, they haven't hit puberty yet. Until a Boy Scout hits puberty he can't be gay. Once the boy realizes he does not like gir

A big problem is how our society has become very risk-adverse and litigious. It's not just boy scouts. Remember the chemistry sets we had as kids? Try to buy one now (sets today basically are chemical

Here is a personal example. When my oldest (now 23 years old) wanted to be a Cub Scout I signed him up. The next year, I was my second son's Tiger partner. The next year my wife signed me up to be a W

I'm with Kudu. BSA had a great program and extensive membership. Then they repackaged the program and the membership took a dive.

 

The Ritz might have had a great steak dinner served with all the flair of a posh restaurant, but when they changed their menu to burgers and fries, they lost their clientele. To this day they have no idea why.

 

Stosh

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You guys are so funny. The Girl Scouts and Campfire Kids took a huge hit that they have yet to recover from when they allowed gays. The Canadian Scouts are somewhere around 35 percent of what they were when they allowed gays. But the BSA's cause for the membership drop after the admission of gays is "program"? LOL

 

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IMO, this is a warning sign to BSA should they decide to admit gay leaders. That's where the rubber hits the road when you ask parents to let their sons to go off into the woods with men that are sexually attracted to males.

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As I've written before, the membership decline in Scouts Canada began several years before the changes to its membership policy (1998). You can see the statistics for yourself here:

 

http://www.scoutscan.com/issues/membershipstats.html

 

I have no doubt that the changes to the membership policy helped to accelerate the decline that was already taking place, but becoming "inclusive" (which for Scouts Canada meant forcing the new policy on all their units, thus excluding those opposed to it) is not the sole reason for the decline.

 

Also interesting: Scouts Canada has fewer members per employee than the BSA.

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I think competing activities and demographics has more to do with it than The changes to the program in the 60s or allowing gays. Youth sport participation numbers are falling too.

 

If not sports (as youth sport participation numbers are falling), what are the competing activities? Personally, I think it's that Scouting isnt competing successfully with video games and Facebook/Instagram/etc. The other is that while the number of kids playing a sport may be going down, the level of their playing the sport has gone up--it's not uncommon around here for boys to play baseball in both the fall and spring. I wonder how their participation in baseball is measured?

 

We need to get rid of silly rules in G2SS, and embrace the outdoors as much as possible. I don't think the new crop of digital subject area merit badges are going to help.

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Do we have the break-down by program yet?

 

Charters are coming in late, so I wouldn't be surprised if the stats get an adjustment by the May meeting.

 

Smell the roses, people. I'm sure mine isn't the only unit whose membership would be 10% larger if the price of admission increased at no more than the pace of inflation.

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Do we have the break-down by program yet?

 

Charters are coming in late, so I wouldn't be surprised if the stats get an adjustment by the May meeting.

 

Smell the roses, people. I'm sure mine isn't the only unit whose membership would be 10% larger if the price of admission increased at no more than the pace of inflation.

Our unit is much larger than it was, but it has nothing to do with National. It has to do with the breakdown of other local troops, while ours is going strong.
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Per, I had friends in the Canadian scouts at the time, it was a direct relationship. And there have been many articles since about it as well. 65% loss! The Canadian Scouts of today is nothing like it was in 1995. It's more of a YMCA type of program now. It lost it's soul. I can't say the BSA has or is going to fall that much. I'm pleasently surprised it's only 6%. But I have experience with collecting national membership data and it takes at least 18 months to get an accurate count on a single scout because it takes at least a year to take him off the council roster, and he may had signed up for that year several months before. Plus, there is not a National deadline for membership signup, each council has their own timeline and process for registration. If you have every followed BSA data, you know that it takes about five years to identify a trend with membership data. Barry

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Do we have the break-down by program yet?

 

Charters are coming in late, so I wouldn't be surprised if the stats get an adjustment by the May meeting.

 

Smell the roses, people. I'm sure mine isn't the only unit whose membership would be 10% larger if the price of admission increased at no more than the pace of inflation.

We're feeling that, only in reverse. Crossovers are going to other new troops. I'm not counting those boys. Troop members have parents who absorb costs if they can, and we have managed to blunt the rise in cost through the troop treasury.

 

I'm mainly focused on the crew, who are more pay-as-you go and membership dues 95% to pay for registration.

 

I'm also concerned that 8th-10th grade boys who would have joined any of the troops in the neighborhood years back are not doing so.

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I think competing activities and demographics has more to do with it than The changes to the program in the 60s or allowing gays. Youth sport participation numbers are falling too.

 

If not sports (as youth sport participation numbers are falling), what are the competing activities? Personally, I think it's that Scouting isnt competing successfully with video games and Facebook/Instagram/etc. The other is that while the number of kids playing a sport may be going down, the level of their playing the sport has gone up--it's not uncommon around here for boys to play baseball in both the fall and spring. I wonder how their participation in baseball is measured?

 

We need to get rid of silly rules in G2SS, and embrace the outdoors as much as possible. I don't think the new crop of digital subject area merit badges are going to help.

If kids are becoming one sport or one activity kids because of time commitments or financial ones, then all youth activities would have losses wouldn't they? When I was a teenager, I played Soccer, was a Scout and was in Band. In High School, I had marching band practices and I was consistently holding leadership positions in Scouts so I dropped Soccer.

 

My unit isn't having membership issues but we do struggle to get more than 50% attendance on outings. And that is definetly program related.

 

I don't think the technology merit badges are going to help. I don't think merit badges period are going to help. Camping, adventure and their buddies is what keeps Scouts in Scouting. Merit badges are just annoying paperwork needed to get rank advancement.

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IMO, this is a warning sign to BSA should they decide to admit gay leaders. That's where the rubber hits the road when you ask parents to let their sons to go off into the woods with men that are sexually attracted to males.
hmm...guess I better pull out of scouting, since I currently let my sons go off into the woods with women that are sexually attracted to males
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Maybe when our professional millionaires run out of ideas to turn the Boy Scout program into an "inclusive" indoor program, we might consider the June 15, 1916 Scoutcraft program mandated by an Act of Congress in return for our monopoly on Scouting.

 

http://inquiry.net/leadership/sitting_side_by_side_with_adults.htm

Maybe some day the Boy Scout program will be an inclusive, outdoor, character-building program, i.e., take any boy who wants to be a scout, teach them scoutcraft and leadership (not management), and then trust them to lead other scouts on outings without adults.
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