How to save a rapidly dying Troop.

[Eagle94-A1]

12 hours ago, Tron said:

UK is doing a lot of stuff that is great; but they have high quality control. We can't do what they do because we do not have even half of the quality control that they have. 

Going from memory here, so bear with me. One of the reasons for better quality control is that there are a lot fewer professionals, so there is no pressure to increase membership numbers. As a result volunteers are empowered more to do things. If a group of volunteers want to clean up camp to prepare for an event, they contact the camp warden (ranger) and Bob's your uncle, you can do it.  I know of councils where  you have to go through the council office and SE in order to have a work day, and they may even deny it!

Another thing is that their standards when I was there had not changed. "One and Done" was not a thing. Emphasis on advancement, and Queen's Scout was not existent, compared to the pressure in the US. I have had folks tell me HA is a was a of time because there is little to no advancement involved. Instead their focus was on skills and adventure.

Finally, they held their Scouts to higher expectations/standards. It was not uncommon for their Scouts and Ventures to go on a week long expedition without any adult supervision as part of the DoE Award program. Even today they do "Remote Supervision" as defined as:

"Remote [Supervision]

‑ Where the Supervisor remains out of sight and hearing of the team and allows them to get on with the expedition without any intervention

‑ The Supervisor will have a good idea of roughly where the team are and how they are progressing

‑ This is the norm for the majority of practice expeditions and all qualifying expeditions. It allows the Supervisor to:

           ◦ Periodically observe the team without intervening

           ◦ Allow the team to make mistakes and to recover from them without outside intervention

           ◦ Support the team by remaining remote yet in the expedition area and able to intervene if absolutely necessary or if requested."

[Tron]

2 hours ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Going from memory here, so bear with me. One of the reasons for better quality control is that there are a lot fewer professionals, so there is no pressure to increase membership numbers. As a result volunteers are empowered more to do things. If a group of volunteers want to clean up camp to prepare for an event, they contact the camp warden (ranger) and Bob's your uncle, you can do it.  I know of councils where  you have to go through the council office and SE in order to have a work day, and they may even deny it!

Another thing is that their standards when I was there had not changed. "One and Done" was not a thing. Emphasis on advancement, and Queen's Scout was not existent, compared to the pressure in the US. I have had folks tell me HA is a was a of time because there is little to no advancement involved. Instead their focus was on skills and adventure.

Finally, they held their Scouts to higher expectations/standards. It was not uncommon for their Scouts and Ventures to go on a week long expedition without any adult supervision as part of the DoE Award program. Even today they do "Remote Supervision" as defined as:

"Remote [Supervision]

‑ Where the Supervisor remains out of sight and hearing of the team and allows them to get on with the expedition without any intervention

‑ The Supervisor will have a good idea of roughly where the team are and how they are progressing

‑ This is the norm for the majority of practice expeditions and all qualifying expeditions. It allows the Supervisor to:

           ◦ Periodically observe the team without intervening

           ◦ Allow the team to make mistakes and to recover from them without outside intervention

           ◦ Support the team by remaining remote yet in the expedition area and able to intervene if absolutely necessary or if requested."

Sounds like where we want to be as a program here in the states. 

[fred8033]

On 5/21/2025 at 12:37 PM, Eagle1993 said:

Stop the Lion and Tiger program. ...

I've said the exact same thing when I saw the Lion program piloted.   Burns out parents.  Creates the wrong perception of scouting.  Wears out the teaching elements of scouting.  It's just too, too much during the early baby sitting years.  IMHO, scouting (cub or troop) should start when scouts begin to be somewhat independent.  Kindergarten and first grade scouts are tied too too much to the parents.  

Edited June 3 by fred8033

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

On 5/20/2025 at 11:48 AM, ColorBoomScouting said:

It is unbelievable, also, looking into other Troops in the area, they all seem healthy, but, then again, all the healthy ones are co-ed, and I know that is something we don't want to do.

Apologies for the late response, but you have your answer (or at least a big part of it) yourself to what happened in just 10 years hyperlocally right here.

It's not that nobody is interested in scouting, it's the interest in single-gender scouting that's declined. It's the same in my council - coed units are doing better as a whole than single-gender units. This matters because if you did manage to boost interest in scouting in your community, it wouldn't necessarily result in a surge of new members for you if what's happening empirically is that coed units are healthy and single-gender ones less so.

Also, think about crossover friend group and family dynamics - friend groups from family packs have to choose between splitting up the group or choosing a coed troop. I see this happening in slow motion for the AOLs in my pack now. Because of older siblings and tight den friend groups, the coed troop AOLs crossed over into three years ago is going to get at least three years of AOLs from us, and us adult leaders with them. The core AOL patrol friend group is tight and wants to stick together, so no single-gender troop had a chance no matter how well run they are because there are well-run coed troops that they can choose.

If you want to solve this problem, you're going to have to figure out who does want single-gender troops and how to reach them. I'm the wrong person to have guesses, but you know your community better than strangers on the Internet anyway. Who in your community might share your reasons for wanting single-gender scouting? Articulate the value proposition clearly and go tell those people.

Edited June 28 by AwakeEnergyScouter
Typo

[scoutldr]

When did BSA policy change to include "Co-ed units"?  Just trying to keep up here.

[HashTagScouts]

7 hours ago, scoutldr said:

When did BSA policy change to include "Co-ed units"?  Just trying to keep up here.

NAM 2024 they announced pilot for mixed gender troops. My former linked units merged to single mixed gender unit for 2025 re-charter. NAM 2025 briefly mentioned it- no immediate plans to fully incorporate it as a full-fledged program option yet, but as I understand it, the plan is to expand the pilot in additional councils in 2025.

https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/NAM/2025/0 - Opening General Session.pdf

 

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

15 hours ago, scoutldr said:

When did BSA policy change to include "Co-ed units"?  Just trying to keep up here.

I have to apologize, I didn't want to type the whole phrase "family packs, linked troops, and coed troops" every time and made the assumption that readers would know that cub scouts has family packs (coed), but that there is a range of coed-ness among troops, depending on whether they're in the pilot or not and how closely linked troops operate. Some operate completely independently, others have meetings and outings at the same time.

To supplement the troop information above, coed packs have been around since 2022. I was surprised it was so recent when I looked it up, but I suppose that's because we joined a pack in the pilot in 2022 and I didn't realize it was new. I was so relieved to find my normal I didn't think about it further.

https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2023/06/22/cub-scout-family-dens-what-they-are-and-how-they-could-work-for-your-pack/

The relative newness is perhaps also why so many people seem to not have thought about the choices AOLs have to make about troops and friendships. It's been obvious to me from the start, and I've wondered why I keep running into people who seem blindsided or surprised by that if AOL friends choose to stick together, then that rules out a single-gender troop that operates independently. But it may be because most US scouters truly haven't thought it through from the perspective of AOLs crossing over from coed packs because it's so new to them.

At a troop fair last year, I was a little surprised that several single-gender units schmoozed me up without announcing that they were single-gender or checking to see what gender my cub was. I assumed that if they didn't take half the cubs they'd say that up front so parents and cubs would know the limitation before wasting time. But now I realize that this may literally be the first years of cubs from coed packs that have been together from Lions on up together crossing over.

[Tron]

On 6/28/2025 at 8:19 AM, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

Apologies for the late response, but you have your answer (or at least a big part of it) yourself to what happened in just 10 years hyperlocally right here.

It's not that nobody is interested in scouting, it's the interest in single-gender scouting that's declined. It's the same in my council - coed units are doing better as a whole than single-gender units. This matters because if you did manage to boost interest in scouting in your community, it wouldn't necessarily result in a surge of new members for you if what's happening empirically is that coed units are healthy and single-gender ones less so.

Also, think about crossover friend group and family dynamics - friend groups from family packs have to choose between splitting up the group or choosing a coed troop. I see this happening in slow motion for the AOLs in my pack now. Because of older siblings and tight den friend groups, the coed troop AOLs crossed over into three years ago is going to get at least three years of AOLs from us, and us adult leaders with them. The core AOL patrol friend group is tight and wants to stick together, so no single-gender troop had a chance no matter how well run they are because there are well-run coed troops that they can choose.

If you want to solve this problem, you're going to have to figure out who does want single-gender troops and how to reach them. I'm the wrong person to have guesses, but you know your community better than strangers on the Internet anyway. Who in your community might share your reasons for wanting single-gender scouting? Articulate the value proposition clearly and go tell those people.

I can add that in my area a couple of hold out packs decided that they wanted to be boy only. A couple of packs tried to do single gender dens. In both scenarios everyone watched as those units shrank, and shrank, and shrank while the family packs maintained or grew. The last couple of hold out packs are basically cookie cutter of each other now, 5-6 scouts with 5 adults; everyone in the district knows that those packs are folding when a member of the Key 3 crosses over with their AOL. 

My buddies pack tried to stay boy only until they got down under 10 scouts; they went to district and some of us peer leaders at other units for help and the shock was insane. I had to tell my buddy that I was not wasting my time trying to help him recruit when he could easily pick up another 5-10 scouts by just letting the sisters that were tagging along to meetings and participating join the pack. The COR of that pack, his head, it was deep raspberry with rage, I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel in both of his eyes; he really didn't like me telling him to his face that he was killing his pack by being sexist. 

[HashTagScouts]

43 minutes ago, Tron said:

I can add that in my area a couple of hold out packs decided that they wanted to be boy only. A couple of packs tried to do single gender dens. In both scenarios everyone watched as those units shrank, and shrank, and shrank while the family packs maintained or grew. The last couple of hold out packs are basically cookie cutter of each other now, 5-6 scouts with 5 adults; everyone in the district knows that those packs are folding when a member of the Key 3 crosses over with their AOL. 

My buddies pack tried to stay boy only until they got down under 10 scouts; they went to district and some of us peer leaders at other units for help and the shock was insane. I had to tell my buddy that I was not wasting my time trying to help him recruit when he could easily pick up another 5-10 scouts by just letting the sisters that were tagging along to meetings and participating join the pack. The COR of that pack, his head, it was deep raspberry with rage, I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel in both of his eyes; he really didn't like me telling him to his face that he was killing his pack by being sexist. 

In the two years of fumbling it took us to get enough girls to start a girl troop, we lost five kids (two sibling pairs + 1 friend of of one of the families) from out of our own pack to a neighboring town because they had a functioning linked boy troop and girl troop. We managed to get our stuff together to charter a girl troop with minimum #s that next year, but by year's end one aged out and one of our female adults moved. We were down to four girls going into 2024 and knew one would age out over the summer, so the mixed gender pilot was the saving grace for 2025. Very doubtful that BSA is going to drop that, and would bet the farm that by 2026 it is just one of the membership options that any unit can use.