Double dipping rank and merit badges, and how do you define "participate"?

[Tron]

7 hours ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

I think my time in Scouting is coming to a close. Troop is fighting to survive another year. Wife is hoping it doesn't.  She says I have given so much to the program that the changes in the program are affecting me. Plus the lack of support from the council. She says I need to reclaim my time. and she may be right.

Support from the council is one of those weird things. The council is the volunteers; there is no one to help if no one is staffing those district and council committees. If your time at the troop is sunsetting, and if the troop is folding, it might be time to consider a district role.

[Eagle94-A1]

On 8/8/2025 at 4:08 PM, Tron said:

Support from the council is one of those weird things. The council is the volunteers; there is no one to help if no one is staffing those district and council committees. If your time at the troop is sunsetting, and if the troop is folding, it might be time to consider a district role.

I have stepped back from all council and district positions to focus on the troop. What ticks me off is that I had done so much to help the council in the past when I was able, but now when I need help because I an not able,  I am on my own.

 

On another note, this past weekend will probably be the last weekend when all my registered Scouts, "adult participants," and 20 y.o. ASM got together and had a blast. One final campout before school and college starts up.

[skeptic]

On 8/8/2025 at 1:08 PM, Tron said:

Support from the council is one of those weird things. The council is the volunteers; there is no one to help if no one is staffing those district and council committees. If your time at the troop is sunsetting, and if the troop is folding, it might be time to consider a district role.

Sadly the council often sees those coming from independently viable units as somehow out of their "often set in stone" plans.  Particularly true if the unit was doing their won thing much of the time due to a weak council that ignored new or established success stories.  I have been suggesting that ours may find more success over time if they develop, or redevelop, Council-level options for more adventurous activities that tend to need more adult help and that would draw independent youth from a larger pool.  And not just High Adventure Bases, but also things like the annual Desert Caravan we once had, or Ships opening a cruise to new places, or planning repetitive service events on local trails and community recreational areas.  Too often, the resource help in people are simply waiting to be asked.  The largest issue with our council seems to be umbrage by the Council Exec board and the executive when troops that have gone on their own most of the time due to poor council plans and support choose to continue that most of the time.  Then when those units decide to step in and offer to participate and even help, they are given a cold shoulder.  

[InquisitiveScouter]

6 minutes ago, skeptic said:

Sadly the council often sees those coming from independently viable units as somehow out of their "often set in stone" plans.  Particularly true if the unit was doing their won thing much of the time due to a weak council that ignored new or established success stories.  I have been suggesting that ours may find more success over time if they develop, or redevelop, Council-level options for more adventurous activities that tend to need more adult help and that would draw independent youth from a larger pool.  And not just High Adventure Bases, but also things like the annual Desert Caravan we once had, or Ships opening a cruise to new places, or planning repetitive service events on local trails and community recreational areas.  Too often, the resource help in people are simply waiting to be asked.  The largest issue with our council seems to be umbrage by the Council Exec board and the executive when troops that have gone on their own most of the time due to poor council plans and support choose to continue that most of the time.  Then when those units decide to step in and offer to participate and even help, they are given a cold shoulder.  

We get this all the time...

Our council and district calendar is slap full of activities.  If a Patrol Leaders Council wanted to, they could simply attend all these events, and not have to plan much at all in the way of outdoor activities.

But, the PLC in our unit simply does not want to attend the events.  The are often sub-par events, with many units attending with youth who simply do not act according to the Scout Oath and Law.  Since our Troop is large, our PLC plans events that they want to do, and that, then, are well attended.  These have built a great unit identity and sense of Troop cohesion... and our PLC wants to guard that, as I understand it.

District and Council volunteers and professionals often ask me why our Troop does not attend their events.  I answer simply, "Because our PLC has chosen to do other events." 

There are a great many volunteers and professionals out there who actually think that unit adults should tell the youth where to go and what to do.

[Tron]

21 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

We get this all the time...

Our council and district calendar is slap full of activities.  If a Patrol Leaders Council wanted to, they could simply attend all these events, and not have to plan much at all in the way of outdoor activities.

But, the PLC in our unit simply does not want to attend the events.  The are often sub-par events, with many units attending with youth who simply do not act according to the Scout Oath and Law.  Since our Troop is large, our PLC plans events that they want to do, and that, then, are well attended.  These have built a great unit identity and sense of Troop cohesion... and our PLC wants to guard that, as I understand it.

District and Council volunteers and professionals often ask me why our Troop does not attend their events.  I answer simply, "Because our PLC has chosen to do other events." 

There are a great many volunteers and professionals out there who actually think that unit adults should tell the youth where to go and what to do.

This is a good example of how councils need to craft their annual plan and market their annual plan to the units in their area right? If they have a lot of large independent troops they don't need a council even every other month; on the other hand if the council is mostly troops of 1 patrol then they need a council event every other month. 

It's clear that we have the infrastructure (councils and properties) for a much larger organization; however, I wonder, what was really in place in those first 10-20 years of scouting in America? Were troops just camping on their own every month? Without resident camps were long term camps the product of strong well run troops and more wilderness and self reliance based? 

[HashTagScouts]

2 hours ago, Tron said:

TIf they have a lot of large independent troops they don't need a council even every other month; on the other hand if the council is mostly troops of 1 patrol then they need a council event every other month. 

Why? If your Council is anything like mine, these Council weekend camporees and events are adult planned and adult lead, not Scout planned or Scout lead. Taking a smaller, younger unit to one a year to spark them to suck up some knowledge might be good, but otherwise, I'd rather have them off learning by doing. Making mistakes is a part of learning in my book.

 

It is long and complicated history to get all into Scout camps and long-term resident camp structures, but for me one has to first look at the program itself and how it morphed over time. The earliest days of Scouting were small and fairly widely distributed on units that were formed prior to 1910 and in that first decade 1910-1919. Mostly rural, and camping meant hiking across town to a patch of woods rather than trekking off to some 500 acre camp. BSA growth from 1920 to post-WWII was predominantly in urban areas, and that began the rush for councils to acquire property for these units to have spaces of their own to build out and structure for solely Scouting purposes. Not all of these properties were huge tracts, some were just several acres. Residence camp ("summer camp") for many was multiple weeks, and didn't involve brining in adults to lead- the Scouts/units themselves generally lead the program. Our legacy council was split to three districts, and camp, up until the early 50's, was two weeks per district. The SE was the camp director and in charge of logistics (how to get Scouts and food to camp), and there was one other adult that was "staff"- that was the program director and worked with the with units to carry out their planning of daily activities. The camp property the council had in those years had no dining hall, no showerhouse, etc. There were only three structures on the property when it was sold in the early 1950s and they acquired a new, larger property. Beginning in the 1970s, as membership had peaked and began to drop in many areas, "excess" properties began to be sold off or sometimes transferred to state/municipal entities. For New England as a whole, from about the mid 1990s to present, about two dozen properties have been sold or transferred (many in the later category will still allow some limited weekend usage by Scouting units). Some of those were several-hundred acre type properties, some were hold-over small properties (often with little to no developed structures or water/electricity supply) from decades past. From the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s, several dozen properties were dispatched, often as part of paying down debts to stave off inevitable council mergers.

 

Our youth several years ago tried to get SPLs from other district units together to plan a fall camporee, as our troop stopped going for a few years because it was all adult lead. The District Chair and the District Activities Coordinator were all onboard, until suddenly after a few meetings they weren't. The weekend went off fully adult planned and lead. When we inquired why this had changed, the response was that the "at large" District members (these are adults that are not registered to units, and not in a District Key 3 position, but are still registered to BSA) felt that they were being "left with nothing to do". Our unit had nothing to do with Council/District, aside from Eagle Boards, for the next four years. We couldn't understand how adults that were supposedly sticking around in a front of "supporting Scouting" took over youth running an event, and that seemed appropriate to everyone in a position of authority.

I certainly don't have all the answers, and I may be completely wrong on this (even just for simple basic "health and safety" concerns we have to face today), but I am fine with the organization being at the size of youth membership that it is today, if only we could go back to that simpler time when a Council was only a small cluster of towns and had one employee, and camping and program in general wasn't big production. If we could process paperwork with nothing more than typewriters and the USPS back then, technology today should certainly make it feasible to scale appropriately without over-the-top bloat. 

[Eagle94-A1]

On 8/8/2025 at 4:08 PM, Tron said:

Support from the council is one of those weird things. The council is the volunteers; there is no one to help if no one is staffing those district and council committees. If your time at the troop is sunsetting, and if the troop is folding, it might be time to consider a district role.

I was involved at the district and council levels for a very long time in several capacities, sometime 2 at the same time. I also servedwith a pack and district committee at the same time. I had to step back from district and council roles when oldest joined a troop, and I was with the pack and the troop. Even then I got Shanghaied onto the district committee when at a RT I was told I was running camporee with 2 months notice. So I did 14 months in that role and ran 2 camporees. But the pros caused a lot of problems. You can read about them in other threads.

While "the council is the volunteers," the professionals, through their actions, can tick off the volunteers. Ticking off volunteers will lead to  not having any volunteers to help on the district or council level.

 

[skeptic]

On 8/12/2025 at 10:21 AM, Tron said:

This is a good example of how councils need to craft their annual plan and market their annual plan to the units in their area right? If they have a lot of large independent troops they don't need a council even every other month; on the other hand if the council is mostly troops of 1 patrol then they need a council event every other month. 

It's clear that we have the infrastructure (councils and properties) for a much larger organization; however, I wonder, what was really in place in those first 10-20 years of scouting in America? Were troops just camping on their own every month? Without resident camps were long term camps the product of strong well run troops and more wilderness and self reliance based? 

I no longer am sure where the tale I am sharing next is located in my "stuff".  Never been well organized, and I have read so much over five+ decades that it gets mixed a bit.,  Anyway, I recollect reading about an early Chicago unit in the teens that would gather downtown near the train station, hop on a train to the outskirts of the city, and hop off with their gear.  Then they just took off down a country road looking for a spot to set up.  They tried to take note of farm houses nearby for possible meal resources.  While they had very basic stuff, so would not starve, and they were not remote per se, back then it was still fairly remote compared to today.  Anyway, the story told of them sending the most likely young scout, usually very young and skinny, and send him to the doors of farm house asking for some food for the group.  It worked well enough that they seldom really had to eat the less than tasty stuff they did have, and sometimes they even ended up invited in like part of a family.  Seems to me that they did offer to do some work for the help, but often were just fed.  Try that today.