Food For Thought...

[Gone 435]

While I agree that marketing the BSA at the unit level is terrible, I would never put any of the blame of declining numbers on them. First of all, program marketing at the unit level today hasn't change much from the days when numbers were increasing. Second, units only provide the program that is given to them by National. They can't be blamed, negatively or positively, for changes that effect the program performance and public image.

If the BSA desires to change its image, it will have to come from the top.

Barry

Unit program marketing has changed significantly since we were kids. Units didn't use social media back them. The Interenet was command line based and the bastion of university geeks (Archie anyone?). Now ANY unit can have a website, mobile site, Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram, Blogs, unit videos, unit t-shirts, hoodies, etc. No, unit marketing has changed a great deal....at least for those units savvy enough to take advantage of it.

 

National gives us nothing other than broad guidelines of what can/cannot be done. We elect what we want to do as a unit. By program I mean the outdoor program. The only time BSA affects that is when the take away things once allowed. Other than that the unit controls the quatility.

[Eagledad 2777]

@@eagle77 our unit sounds similar to yours. We've prospered and grown over the last 12 years. We've seen other units fold and blow away while our recruiting continued strong. We've had no help from district or council, though somehow they take credit for our success.

While we have not seen the effect of these national declines, many other units have been impacted.

Recently, even we have seen a decline in the Webelos coming over. Since 2013 those numbers have dropped considerably. Looking forward the rising crop of Webelos are fewer and fewer. Packs are closing and in severe decline. In our area the pool of Webelos is shrinking so much we will need to find other sources for recruitment. Packs are simply declining too fast to feed the current number of troops.

Yes, troops usually see about a five year lag of membership change trends. I remember our membership committe predicting a negative trend in the troops as a result of Cub membership changes in 2000.

[JoeBob 606]

You guys make me realized how blessed I am.

 

We don't recruit.  Catholic CO, we're a ministry of the parish.  Catholic school, K-8, neatly moves boys up from the pack to the troop.  About half the boys in each class are cubs.  We get 6 to 8 every year in the troop.

 

About 1/3 of our troop are walk-ins from outside, in addition to the 6-8 regulars  We're too busy concentrating on having fun to recruit (Is recruiting fun?)

 

Boys hear of their friends having fun, and want to play.

Edited June 10, 2015 by JoeBob

[Gone 435]

About 1/3 of our troop are walk-ins from outside, in addition to the 6-8 regulars  We're too busy concentrating on having fun to recruit (Is recruiting fun?)

 

Our unit does proactive recruiting year around. We aren't like 90% of units that just show up to Pack meetings in the fall trying to "rush" Webelos like some pathetic fraternity. We deploy Den Chiefs in several different packs. We hold Webelos-based events to help with certain activity badges. We offer to help CMs perform pack meetings, teach games or skills....what CM doesn't want a break and allow a group of well-trained boys to run one or more of his meetings? We invite the packs to fun events we host.

 

By doing this all year around we don't feel the over urgency to aggressively recruit during the fall. We usually end up with 8-14 boys each year....sometimes as many as 20. We also do some analysis on demographics and trends in our school district using public information. We can track how many K-6th graders are in each area and can adjust our recruiting accordingly.

 

If district and council are too lazy to get this amount of detail, then we as a unit will.

[Hedgehog 334]

Go ask the average young teen what they would like to do next weekend and see how often fishing, hunting, hiking or camping comes up. At best you might get some biking in there somewhere.

 

And yet I spent last weekend with 21 Boy Scouts camping, doing a service project and hiking and cooking.  We've got 30 guys going to summer camp.  Our Troop is at its largest size ever and there are three other strong troops in the same school district.  Our guys are excited about the trips coming up over the summer and next year.  They are excited about tackling the hard merit badges like cycling and backpacking.  They are excited to come to our weekly meeting.  Build a Boy-Lead Troop that takes on adventures and they will come.

 

Today's "journalism" tend to be a bit slanted towards anti-scouting, but how much of that is countered directly on the same medium?  We complain in our own little groups about how scouting gets a bad rap in the press and while we spend big bucks on scout trailers, we spend nothing on program advertising.  Our local council will promote the fundraiser activities on local TV and radio, but nothing on the program of scouting.  Maybe local units need to consider this.

 

We don't have to.  Our boys are covered in the local paper every time they complete and Eagle project.  They were out in force helping set up our town's street festival.  They marched in the town Memorial Day parade.  They are in each of the town's churches for Scout Sunday.  They tell their parents how much fun they have on campouts and the parents see how scouting helps their boys grow into ment.  Those parents tell other parents.  

 

To paraphrase Tip O'Neil...All Scouting is Local.  Nobody cares about the BSA in Irving... they care about the Troop in their town.

[SR540Beaver 116]

I got back into scouting with my son around 2002. I was initiated with talk of the death of BSA. It still appears to be alive and kicking. He camped every month, went to summer camp, floated the Boundary Waters, backpacked Philmont and the Pecos Wilderness, staffed camps, staffed NYLT's, attended two Jambos, held just about every position up the SPL and JASM, was an OA ceremonialist, Chaper and Lodge Vice Chief and earned Eagle. That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. He had plenty of adventure. His experience was pretty typical of the boys in our troop. Is scouting changing? Sure, but it always has.

[Gone 435]

@SR540Beavery it may be kicking, but with far fewer scouts and adults than in 2002. At the old rate the membership would be 1/4 of what it was in 2002 in 15 years. At the rate over the last two years it will only take 8 years.

[packsaddle 753]

Eight years until it's one quarter of what it was in 2002. There's a prediction that has a clear metric and we will see how well it holds. Just last night I was reading a prediction made in 2004 that oil supplies would be well in decline by now and that as a result widespread famine would be racking many countries outside the USA and IN the USA, food would be scarce and prices would be skyrocketing. 

Of course there's also the doomsday prediction that an asteroid is going to provide us with an 'end of times' hit this coming September, somewhere around the time of the equinox. Maybe the prediction about BSA isn't going to be relevant after September...

Edited June 11, 2015 by packsaddle

[Gone 435]

Eight years until it's one quarter of what it was in 2002. There's a prediction that has a clear metric and we will see how well it holds. Just last night I was reading a prediction made in 2004 that oil supplies would be well in decline by now and that as a result widespread famine would be racking many countries outside the USA and IN the USA, food would be scarce and prices would be skyrocketing.

Of course there's also the doomsday prediction that an asteroid is going to provide us with an 'end of times' hit this coming September, somewhere around the time of the equinox. Maybe the prediction about BSA isn't going to be relevant after September...

That's not a prediction it's a trend.

 

Take a look at the year on year membership numbers posted in the other thread. Extend the 2002-2010 year on year losses as an average and extend them out, then compare to 2002. Then take the 2012-2014 losses and do the same.

 

Let's not confuse data analysis with hyperbole. The 1998-2014 membership numbers are facts, not fiction. Making an assumption that they continue, averaged out, is an accepted approach. If you poo poo that method I suspect you also mock global warming forecasts, financial forecasting, weather forecasting and other folks who use the same method.

Edited June 11, 2015 by Bad Wolf

[DuctTape 1230]

Bad Wolf, your signature line is apropos. So why choose a linear model based solely on the last few years?

[Stosh 3452]

That's not a prediction it's a trend.

 

Take a look at the year on year membership numbers posted in the other thread. Extend the 2002-2010 year on year losses as an average and extend them out, then compare to 2002. Then take the 2012-2014 losses and do the same.

 

Let's not confuse data analysis with hyperbole. The 1998-2014 membership numbers are facts, not fiction. Making an assumption that they continue, averaged out, is an accepted approach. If you poo poo that method I suspect you also mock global warming forecasts, financial forecasting, weather forecasting and other folks who use the same method.

 

Lies, damn lies, and statistics....

 

@, one cannot deny trends occur.  Since the 1970's the numbers have been declining and as with global warming, financial trends, etc. they aren't always as true in the long run as they are when one takes a shorter sample set.  There were a ton of people who thought things were terrible in 2008 when the market took a dip, but for now the DOW is setting records on the upward swing.

 

I can look at statistics all day long and yet see the trends, but what concerns me more than anything else is the arguments one makes for WHY those statistics trend one way or another.

 

I love the global warming issue.  It kinda amuses me without the Chicken Little affect.  When Eric the Red fled Norway, he found that Greenland was habitable, and now a thousand years later, things are a bit cold there.  While it may not be as cold as Antarctica, one's not going to colonize it like Eric did,   Now during WW II North Atlantic temperatures plunged and sailors were finding it rather difficult to make the journey and survive (other than the U-Boats).  So, does that mean that because the temperatures tended to decrease for a thousand years, that for the next thousand they won't naturally trend warmer?   Weather is cyclical, maybe climate is as well, but on a time table of thousands of years rather than daily or yearly as with the weather. 

 

The world has survived at least 4 Ice Ages and the reasons for those remain relatively unknown and debatable.  All I know was the Neanderthals weren't running around blaming everyone for too big of campfires were causing global warming.

 

So are the numbers in scouting declining because of what?  That's the question.  Is it interest on the part of the public?  Is it not electronic and hip enough for today's Sesame Street, fast paced, short attention span youth?  Is it because people in general don't camp unless it's a 5th wheeler RV in a KOA?  Too much competition from other youth organizations?  The fundamentals of scouting is no longer relevant?  Kids get enough "adventure"/entertainment out of their electronic games?  A case could be made for just about any of these issues. 

 

So, who's taking the pulse and blood pressure of this organization called BSA?  Who's looking for some "medicine" to help it get back on track.  Is it a business problem (BSA is trying to get rich), programmatic - STEM being taught by the EDGE method?  Not co-ed? Skills aren't needed anymore?  etc.

 

The comment was made that my OP was too much DOOM and GLOOM.... and I was hoping when I posted it that I would be getting some pulse and blood pressure reading and some creative, out-of-the-box suggestions on what might be done to stall and even reverse the trends that seem to be yelling doom and gloom.  Why does BSA have to be measured in millions of members.  Why can't it be like the US Marines, a few elite rather than the general run of the mill youth program?  I guess I'm not ready to toss in the towel on this yet because I'm all for being small and elite and having a program where they come because nobody else out there is offering it.  A lot of schools used to have senior class trips to Washington DC, etc.  How many high school kids get to go to Philmont, Sea Base and BWCA?  How many get to white-water canoe and primitive camp?  It's not for everyone, don't try and make it that way.

[perdidochas 658]

   In my years as a scout leader this was the only time parents had ever told me their sons were not joining because of money issues. As many of you have suggested there was some other reason for their refusal to join Boy Scouts. I scaled the program costs so far back that one of the dads told me out of frustration "stop trying to sell us on joining, its not happening". Even parents that I thought may have a legit money problem would never come out and say that was the reason. At the end of the meeting the CC told me that she felt I had scaled it back too far, I told her that I could have went even further and they would not change their mind. They just did not expect me to be prepared for the "we can't afford this" line. Had more respect for the other 2 parents who admitted up front that their sons were not joining. Our SPL and PLC put on a great "join our troop" type meeting. All the cubs enjoy and are involved in the process. Selling the kids is the easy job, selling parents, especially those who have already made their decision is the tough part.

 

   I guess the reason I brought this up was because as a Boy Scout our troop grew more from walk in scouts rather then cub scouts moving up. In my 11 years as SM we only had 3 walk ins 2 friends and 1 cousin of scouts in the troop. Now to answer it further we get plenty of community exposure, our troop runs the canoe races at the 4th of July community picnic (most popular event) we have a large banner with our name and where we meet plus handouts, local paper always has differnent projects or services that the boys have done, prepare and deliver holiday meals for the less fortunate, etc.

 

    Nobody feels that the economy has any major effect on BSA declining numbers?

 

If the economy was the problem, we would have had a big drop 6 years ago.  I think it's just an excuse.  I don't know what the answer is. I know our troop has actually gotten more expensive (used to be $5 a month, now we are at $99 a year, and our campouts are more expensive both due to inflation and higher adventure (not high adventure yet, but higher than when my oldest joined the troop)).  We've grown, and about half of our growth is from Scouts from other troops.  We've gotten a good reputation in the area from other scouts. 

[perdidochas 658]

Bad Wolf, your signature line is apropos. So why choose a linear model based solely on the last few years?

Well, the last few years, IMHO, the main reason for a more precipitious drop is the gay issue. The President of BSA just made another announcement, about an issue even more controversial than allowing gay scouts, which is gay leaders.  It's not going to help us. On top of that, we are getting a lot of bad press about the water gun silliness.  Nationally, we don't get much good press.  It's not a good thing for us. I'm afraid that my grandkids (who are theoretical and better be at least 10-12 years from existence) won't be able to join BSA. 

[Gone 435]

@@DuctTape and @@Stosh, true that forecasts are based on trends with assumptions to account for certain, possible scenarios. This is where modelling comes in. As in the financial industry, forecasting membership growth/decline is fairly predictable UNTIL radical change (as variables) are introduced; hence why it is not an exact science. Then again, predicting near earth objects colliding with the Earth is not an exact science either as it depends on a body maintaining the same path it has in the past. One change to the gravitational constant and you have a whole new trajectory.

 

Will membership continue to decline at the 1998-2010 rates? Will it increase as it has since 2012? To paraphrase Dickens, if these shadows remain unaltered I fear no more of my kind may find the Boy Scouts of America. "Change" is what is needed, but a positive change that can impede, reduce or alter the increased average loss of membership we have seen since 1998. 

 

@@perdidochas, while no direct study has been made of out going members to ascertain their reason for leaving, I would also conclude that the steeper decline in the last year years is directly tied to that issue. I suspect the 2015 numbers will level out a bit BUT once Gates makes good on that promise of his my bet is you will see a double-digit drop in the following 2-3 thereafter.

[Stosh 3452]

It has always been my philosophy in life that when faced with a downward death spiral, doing anything different will alter the course.  It make make it worse, but it may correct it as well.  One never knows until they try.  I've gone along with some really stupid, far-fetched ideas people have come up with over the years and surprisingly, some of them actually worked.

 

Ever raffle off a goat?