Membership continues to decline?

[Jameson76]

Some membership information (and membership figures are rarely provided) National SA (formerly BSA) youth membership stood at 814,950 at the end of August 2025, down 6.35 percent from 870,177 in August 2024.  This was from a summary of the CST (Council Service Territory) roll-up numbers

 

Has National office actually published any membership information recently?

[InquisitiveScouter]

Haven't seen anything "published" is the usual manner... or in Annual Report to Congress since 2023: https://www.scouting.org/about/annual-report/

Or NAM presentations, 2024: https://nam.scouting.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2024/05/Change-the-Way-We-Work-Together.pdf

Transparency has never been a strength of BSA (my opinion).  Which is often a signal that bad news pervades and must be hidden from view. (again, opinion).

 

 

[Eagle94-A1]

CST 15 posted the following

 In August 2025, there were 51,888 Scouts in CST-15, compared to 53,544 in August 2024, reflecting a decrease of 3.09 percent. National youth membership stood at 814,950 at the end of August 2025, down 6.35 percent from 870,177 in August 2024. Results per CST-15 councils are shown in this table.

Over the past 12 months, the number of units in CST-15 decreased from 2,593 to 2519, a loss of -2.85%. Nationally, units decreased from 39, 511 to 38,582, a loss of -2.35%.

[Tron]

National is not "publicly" releasing membership numbers. It's not hard for volunteers to get those numbers though, just have to ask your district leadership. My understanding is that membership is down nationwide; however, with the new membership method we won't have a really good apples-to-apples look until December 31st. My council just did a hard shift from fundraising to recruiting, and every unit in my district was given a made up recruitment number that was arbitrary. My understanding (if the numbers being shared in my council are correct) is that my council isn't even trying to recruit to keep membership stable. Even if we hit these made up recruitment numbers we're (the council) going to come in something like 5-10% below our previous post covid membership peak for this recruitment push. 

I think the most alarming thing about what is going on is the number of units folding. All of nationals numbers, analysis, etc ... from the CST's and NAM meetings were tied to the fact that packs and troops are roughly the average same size for various reasons and that "super units" are anomalies and we need more units to actually gain more scouts.  

 

[Eagle94-A1]

With national increasing prices, and councils adding their own fees, Scouting is slowing becoming cost prohibitive for most families. And do not tell me to sell Popcorn.  We have only 1 unit in my area selling it, and they are struggling. Only reason they are doing it is to have council waive their per Scout unit charge. And I have a feeling council will backslide on that.

[Tron]

Scouting is becoming more expensive but it isn't super expensive. One of my units recently got a family back from sports. They had pulled all of their kids and pumped them into baseball and after a year of the costs of organized baseball they came right back to scouting. 

I think the expensive part of scouting is hidden by bad units and units that are too reliant on district/council based programming. One of the troops that I help with is getting ready to do its big fall campout and the cost for a weekend is currently at $70 a person. I'm struggling to understand why, with our state parks and how cheap it is to camp in them the cost should be more in line with $20 a person (for a 2 night 3 day campout). 

The council fees are ridiculous. Michigan is $85 a person which is the highest in my neck of the woods. I look across the council line and I have no idea what they are getting for that $85 that we are not getting in my council and we're barely paying a council fee here. 

[DuctTape]

2 hours ago, Tron said:

Scouting is becoming more expensive but it isn't super expensive. One of my units recently got a family back from sports. They had pulled all of their kids and pumped them into baseball and after a year of the costs of organized baseball they came right back to scouting. 

I think the expensive part of scouting is hidden by bad units and units that are too reliant on district/council based programming. One of the troops that I help with is getting ready to do its big fall campout and the cost for a weekend is currently at $70 a person. I'm struggling to understand why, with our state parks and how cheap it is to camp in them the cost should be more in line with $20 a person (for a 2 night 3 day campout). 

The council fees are ridiculous. Michigan is $85 a person which is the highest in my neck of the woods. I look across the council line and I have no idea what they are getting for that $85 that we are not getting in my council and we're barely paying a council fee here. 

I agree. I also would add I have no idea what any of us are getting for the $85 membership fee that goes to National HQ. 

 

Sorry if I sound jaded with HQ as of late; I am.

[Jameson76]

3 hours ago, Tron said:

National is not "publicly" releasing membership numbers. It's not hard for volunteers to get those numbers though, just have to ask your district leadership. My understanding is that membership is down nationwide; however, with the new membership method we won't have a really good apples-to-apples look until December 31st. My council just did a hard shift from fundraising to recruiting, and every unit in my district was given a made up recruitment number that was arbitrary. My understanding (if the numbers being shared in my council are correct) is that my council isn't even trying to recruit to keep membership stable. Even if we hit these made up recruitment numbers we're (the council) going to come in something like 5-10% below our previous post covid membership peak for this recruitment push. 

I think the most alarming thing about what is going on is the number of units folding. All of nationals numbers, analysis, etc ... from the CST's and NAM meetings were tied to the fact that packs and troops are roughly the average same size for various reasons and that "super units" are anomalies and we need more units to actually gain more scouts.  

 

Any time membership drop is discussed there are always qualifiers; well it was this, it was that, it was letting females in, it was not letting females in soon enough,  it was the Mormon Church leaving, it was letting in 5 year old Lions, it was COVID, Scouting cost too much. it's the way too long Cub program, it was the bankruptcy, we need to wait for this date to normalize, the new registration system messed up stuff, etc etc.  All very good assumptions, but an best anecdotal.  There are no facts and no real understanding of why membership continues to drop.  

There are never any facts (from districts / councils / national / executive board) to support and figure a path forward.

What SA (formerly BSA) is NOT doing is root cause analysis; for youth leaving / not joining OR for successful units.  Where are the actual exit interviews, where is the research, who is benchmarking successful units with floundering units.  Yes there is universal leader / volunteer training but what works and what doesn't?

IMHO National and Councils are mainly looking at dollars raised.  I got a survey recently about my perception (attitude??) about Scouting America.  In summary it was mainly about donations and financially supporting Scouting.  In my council there is no emphasis on adding members.  DE's focus on raising funds, so the council can hire staff to raise money.  All events are monetized.  Goal of Scouts is to raise money, that is the bar.

Until the BSA comes to really understand underlying issues, what needs and perceptions are not being met, and what needs to be changed, nothing will change.

Bottom line, 815,000 youth in 230 (or so) councils means 3,500 youth per council.  If a Council Executive (average) pay is $200K (all in) that means just for the local CE there is a burden of $57 per member.  Data suggest 3,100 or so SA employees, so that may indicate (with benefits) just labor overhead burden of +/- $190,000,000 or $233 PER YOUTH member.  That is before any other overhead costs such as IT, liability insurance.  SA (formerly BSA) needs to reduce the costs, focus on growth, and get rid of what doesn't add value.

 

[mrjohns2]

3 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

NOT doing is root cause analysis; for youth leaving / not joining OR for successful units.  Where are the actual exit interviews, where is the research, who is benchmarking successful units with floundering units. 

It wasn’t covered in the roll out of the unit metrics, but those are rooted in research. A Scouter in my district was literally the guy who came up with them. Units that score 4 or 5 have a very high (90%+) likelihood to recharter. Units with 0 or 1 have a very high likelihood to fail and not recharter. Data was gathered, by hand, for about 4 years and in the 4th year he could predict units they wouldn’t recharter very well.    

Edited yesterday at 12:40 AM by mrjohns2

[Tron]

16 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

Any time membership drop is discussed there are always qualifiers; well it was this, it was that, it was letting females in, it was not letting females in soon enough,  it was the Mormon Church leaving, it was letting in 5 year old Lions, it was COVID, Scouting cost too much. it's the way too long Cub program, it was the bankruptcy, we need to wait for this date to normalize, the new registration system messed up stuff, etc etc.  All very good assumptions, but an best anecdotal.  There are no facts and no real understanding of why membership continues to drop.  

There are never any facts (from districts / councils / national / executive board) to support and figure a path forward.

What SA (formerly BSA) is NOT doing is root cause analysis; for youth leaving / not joining OR for successful units.  Where are the actual exit interviews, where is the research, who is benchmarking successful units with floundering units.  Yes there is universal leader / volunteer training but what works and what doesn't?

IMHO National and Councils are mainly looking at dollars raised.  I got a survey recently about my perception (attitude??) about Scouting America.  In summary it was mainly about donations and financially supporting Scouting.  In my council there is no emphasis on adding members.  DE's focus on raising funds, so the council can hire staff to raise money.  All events are monetized.  Goal of Scouts is to raise money, that is the bar.

Until the BSA comes to really understand underlying issues, what needs and perceptions are not being met, and what needs to be changed, nothing will change.

Bottom line, 815,000 youth in 230 (or so) councils means 3,500 youth per council.  If a Council Executive (average) pay is $200K (all in) that means just for the local CE there is a burden of $57 per member.  Data suggest 3,100 or so SA employees, so that may indicate (with benefits) just labor overhead burden of +/- $190,000,000 or $233 PER YOUTH member.  That is before any other overhead costs such as IT, liability insurance.  SA (formerly BSA) needs to reduce the costs, focus on growth, and get rid of what doesn't add value.

 

Basically from what I have seen and pieced together a council needs to be about 15000 scouts to be financially viable. I think the issue really is that there are far too many councils, national knows it, talks about it, had a report recommending mergers and consolidations. Everyone is resistant to it. The professionals are resistant to losing their jobs (understandable but doesn't trump saving the program and organization). The volunteers don't want change and far too many don't understand 4 season programming. As an organization and movement we have to grow past an 8 week utilization period for our camps, and our camps need to look at the hotel and for profit camping industry for appropriate usage levels; we have too many properties competing for summer camp dollars and as an organization we don't have any idea on how to run the camps the remaining 44 weeks of the year. 

13 hours ago, mrjohns2 said:

It wasn’t covered in the roll out of the unit metrics, but those are rooted in research. A Scouter in my district was literally the guy who came up with them. Units that score 4 or 5 have a very high (90%+) likelihood to recharter. Units with 0 or 1 have a very high likelihood to fail and not recharter. Data was gathered, by hand, for about 4 years and in the 4th year he could predict units they wouldn’t recharter very well.    

I think I met this guy you talk about earlier in the year when the metrics rolled out. Everything about the metrics makes sense except the fact that units are not being forced to comply with data entry, and units still think they can just "not engage" with district or council. In my neck of the woods I would cull the bottom 3 troops every year for a couple years (not packs, I would give them more freedom to figure it out), but I would totally cull the bottom 3 troops for sure. 2-3 years of culling the S-heads who are not running the program and things would change so much for the better.

[Eagle94-A1]

13 minutes ago, Tron said:

In my neck of the woods I would cull the bottom 3 troops every year for a couple years (not packs, I would give them more freedom to figure it out), but I would totally cull the bottom 3 troops for sure. 2-3 years of culling the S-heads who are not running the program and things would change so much for the better.

Not necessarily. I gotta be in the bottom 3 due to size. I could be wrong though. We are running the program as it should be run. Biggest challenge is no feeder pack, and have not had one for approximately 12 years. We got most of our scouts from existing ones who were dissatisfied with their troops. A few others who were never in Cubs, but had friends having fun with the troop was the other source. As the council stopped recruiting, packs have dwindled and died. Troops take a little longer since it is a 7 year program, and not a 4.5, now 5.5 year, program like Cubs.

The Strongest troop does things their own way, and are successful because they are extremely protective of their pack. Leadership is shared, and they get fussy if other Scouts even talk to theirs.

[Jameson76]

1 hour ago, Tron said:

there are far too many councils

As an organization and movement we have to grow past an 8 week utilization period for our camps, and our camps need to look at the hotel and for profit camping industry for appropriate usage levels; we have too many properties competing for summer camp dollars and as an organization we don't have any idea on how to run the camps the remaining 44 weeks of the year. 

Councils - 

Absolutely too many councils, too much overhead.   As long as they keep raising money on the nostalgic memory of BSA, they will survive I guess

Properties - 

My understanding is (2024 I believe) for summer, if you took all the BSA properties, totaled up all the available slots in the camp (for example a camp is open 5 weeks and capacity is 250 per week, available slots are 1,250), the overall usage was maybe 30%.  That means there is a lot of unused capacity.

Data shows top 3 property attendance

1. Philmont
2. Seabase
3. Woodruff (Blairsville, GA)

SA (formerly BSA) clearly needs to resize and figure out how to efficiently deliver program, how far will units travel, how many weeks can they operate, what can they do to fully utilize the property.  If one were to combine councils the properties could be passed to other groups (State / County / City parks for example) and the maintenance and sunk costs could be eliminated.

[skeptic]

Cooperative uses of propeties by youth serving groups, and family serving entities should be a no brainer.  Looking at the history of BSA, it is hard to imaging what may have evolved WITHOUT the YMCA and the involvement of community groups.  We now have NO camps, yet the GS camp sits empty much of the year, and they choose to NOT make it easily used by Scouting America.  It seems logical to me, but what do I know, that all of these groups should be designing cooperative involvements, not just for camping on owned properties that are still viable, but also for programming.  The often over used "it takes a family" seems to fit here.  Early towns survived by cooperative methods.  While religions have slipped to the background in modern society, the silent familial opportunities still fill a huge hole in betterment of society.  Another otion might be for the large corporated outdoor and sports corporations enter into the saving of camps still there, but slipping, and develop coordinated events with updated facilities, open not ALL youth serving groups, perhaps on the traditional Summer Camp model, but also in special camps to support the environment and to introduce the trades and so on.  So many options that go untried for whatever excuse, while billions of dollars are wasted on foolishness and destruction of our world.