How do membership #'s compare BSA / GSUSA through the years

[blw2 433]

Wondering if anyone here happens to know ballpark how the membership numbers compare between GSUSA and BSA through the years..... Is BSA significantly bigger?  Has it always been?

Just back form a visit to Savannah, where among other things we visited both the birthplace of Daisy Gordon Low and the first HQ of the girl Guides/Scouts in USA.  One of the points they made on the tour re the basis for the founding of the Girl Guides was that they found that girls were wanting to join BP's scout movement so they started the Girl Guides.

then

later discussing the beginnings of the Daisy years for the younger girls it was because "the younger girls wanted to join"

I couldn't help but to draw parallels with what BSA did with Tigers, and no recently Lions...opening up to younger and younger kids

and of course the recent turn with girls wanting to join BSA

and rattling around in my brain are thoughts about how that it least on some levels some of these seem more likely to be the adults wanting it for the kids, rather than the kids really wanting it....

Anyway, got me to wondering about how the membership numbers compare between the organizations...and what the current trends look like

[Jameson76 1481]

GSUSA - youth membership is stated as 1.8 million

BSA - youth membership is stated as 2.4 million

 

[CalicoPenn 729]

Hard to tell.  The Girl Scouts claim to have served around 50 million girls since their founding.  The Boy Scouts claim to have served around 110 million people.  Note the use of people and not boys.  The BSA has often included adult volunteers in their numbers when they make broad statements like that about their membership numbers. 

However, even if the BSA numbers include adult volunteers, I suspect if you strip the adults out of the number, the BSA's number would still be quite a bit higher than the Girls Scout's number.

[fred johnson 936]

15 hours ago, blw2 said:

... some of these seem more likely to be the adults wanting it for the kids, rather than the kids really wanting it....

So so true.