What?? You've Got to Be Kidding Me with These Membership Numbers!

[Tron]

6 hours ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

I do not know where you live, but in my neck of the woods $237 IS a lot of money for folks, especially with multiple kids. I am in a rural area with high poverty rate.

As for value, (sarcasm on) what's a professional? Are those the paid folks who are supposed to help units with recruiting? I have heard of these mythical creatures, and thought they were extinct since it has been so long since I have seen one.(sarcasm off)

If I wasn't trying to laugh, I would be crying.

I'll jump on the pity party. 64% of my town lives at or below the poverty line.  $237 is not a lot of money. 

[Eagle94-A1]

17 hours ago, Tron said:

I'll jump on the pity party. 64% of my town lives at or below the poverty line.  $237 is not a lot of money. 

Glad you got a good job, cause i sure don't.

 

[InquisitiveScouter]

UPDATE:

01 March ended the grace period for those memberships which expired on 31 Dec.  Those expired memberships have now dropped off the rolls.

Let's look at the updated numbers now...

As of 03 March, numbers pulled moments ago...

Same Month Last Year: 980,311 (Mar 2025)  all programs...

Total Current Youth: 781,539 (Mar 2026) a 20.28% drop from last year.

Last Year End:  907,950 (This is the 31 Dec 2025 number in the system.)  This changed by +1  from previous reports. (weird, huh?)

Dec 2024 End of Year number was: 986,520

These numbers include Learning for Life,  33,478 on the books now.

Edited Tuesday at 04:45 PM by InquisitiveScouter

[InquisitiveScouter]

Taking out the LFL numbers, we now have 748,061 members in all unit based programs.

Last time it was that low?  1933

[yknot]

5 minutes ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

Taking out the LFL numbers, we now have 748,061 members in all unit based programs.

Last time it was that low?  1933

Thank you for posting numbers. The nadir during Covid was at one point around 650,000, but that low included a lot of paused not lost memberships.  

[InquisitiveScouter]

3 minutes ago, yknot said:

Thank you for posting numbers. The nadir during Covid was at one point around 650,000, but that low included a lot of paused not lost memberships.  

That was in Scouts only, not all programs.  All programs 2020 was about 1 million.

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

[InquisitiveScouter]

Those slides from 2024 NAM.  You'll notice the projection for end of 2025 was 1,224,000, all programs.

Actual 2025 end was 907,950, so 25.8% below projected.

[Jameson76]

3 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

UPDATE:

01 March ended the grace period for those memberships which expired on 31 Dec.  Those expired memberships have now dropped off the rolls.

Let's look at the updated numbers now...

As of 03 March, numbers pulled moments ago...

Same Month Last Year: 980,311 (Mar 2025)  all programs...

Total Current Youth: 781,539 (Mar 2026) a 20.28% drop from last year.

Last Year End:  907,950 (This is the 31 Dec 2025 number in the system.)  This changed by +1  from previous reports. (weird, huh?)

Dec 2024 End of Year number was: 986,520

These numbers include Learning for Life,  33,478 on the books now.

 

The current group of professionals and key volunteers know how (in some cases) to raise money.  Grow program, not so much.  Sad part is they are raising money on the nostalgia of the BSA, not the current BSA

No real effort being made to add units or expand the program.  Lots of excuses as to why membership decline, just no real honest effort to make updates so people (families) may want to buy what is being sold

 

[yknot]

5 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

That was in Scouts only, not all programs.  All programs 2020 was about 1 million.

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

The 650,000 was a membership snapshot number posted on Scouting Forums before they closed it to general discussions.  It wasn't from NAM. The NAM reports use annual numbers which for multiple years during and post Covid were artificially inflated for a variety of reasons. 

[jcousino]

Add those numbers to the loss of formality paying military members, and the shortfall gets worse. Looks like we are in a death spiral: fewer members lead to higher dues, which lead to more member losses. 

 

We will likely follow the Girl Scout lead, with maga-sized councils and less council contact. Single units covering large areas  

[MikeS72]

3 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

No real effort being made to add units or expand the program

I guess that all depends on where you are located.

The goal here is for each of our districts to add at least one new unit each quarter, with an emphasis on every current charter having both a pack and troop.

We are also putting an emphasis on contacting every family who had someone not renew their membership, find out what caused them to leave, and see what we might be able to do to bring them back into the program.

If units, districts, and councils continue to just look at declining numbers and not look at why they are declining and work to mitigate those reasons, the decline will continue.

[MikeS72]

21 minutes ago, jcousino said:

Add those numbers to the loss of formality paying military members, and the shortfall gets worse. Looks like we are in a death spiral: fewer members lead to higher dues, which lead to more member losses. 

Heard second hand that a member of the national executive committee was at a council leadership summit and told people that the membership for scouts from military families was something they had already been working on and that there were large donors lined up to cover the costs. 

If accurate this should actually help with overall membership numbers, as I am sure there are a lot of kids out there who would like to join but the program is out of reach on a military salary.

[Eagle94-A1]

2 hours ago, MikeS72 said:

I guess that all depends on where you are located.

The goal here is for each of our districts to add at least one new unit each quarter, with an emphasis on every current charter having both a pack and troop.

I wish.  My troop folded in December after years of begging council for help.  They said they needed to start new units instead of helping existing one. They didn't like the fact that I told them  that National predicted membership and units would decline for a few years after the lawsuit before stabilizing, and that it is easier to keep a  stable unit going than start a new on. 

And at my new troop's meeting tonite, we had visitors from the only other existing troop in town. They are joining us on a camp out this weekend.

2 hours ago, MikeS72 said:

If units, districts, and councils continue to just look at declining numbers and not look at why they are declining and work to mitigate those reasons, the decline will continue.

 Oh we know what is causing the problem, we are not recruiting. And Council is not helping us in this matter.

 

One CST's stats. Look like those councils with metro areas are doing well. Rural areas not so much.

 

 

[jcousino]

19 hours ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

I wish.  My troop folded in December after years of begging council for help.  They said they needed to start new units instead of helping existing one. They didn't like the fact that I told them  that National predicted membership and units would decline for a few years after the lawsuit before stabilizing, and that it is easier to keep a  stable unit going than start a new on. 

And at my new troop's meeting tonite, we had visitors from the only other existing troop in town. They are joining us on a camp out this weekend.

 Oh we know what is causing the problem, we are not recruiting. And Council is not helping us in this matter.

 

One CST's stats. Look like those councils with metro areas are doing well. Rural areas not so much.

 

 

So what are they calling a new unit: 6 youths, 2 new youths, 4 for another unit, all 6 from a failed unit, with 4 never coming back. The real metric should be 10 new scouts gain. for every 12 scouts who did not recharter. You will need to bring in 22 new. Real numbers that affect membership gains

[Tron]

On 3/3/2026 at 8:47 PM, Eagle94-A1 said:

I wish.  My troop folded in December after years of begging council for help.  They said they needed to start new units instead of helping existing one. They didn't like the fact that I told them  that National predicted membership and units would decline for a few years after the lawsuit before stabilizing, and that it is easier to keep a  stable unit going than start a new on. 

And at my new troop's meeting tonite, we had visitors from the only other existing troop in town. They are joining us on a camp out this weekend.

 Oh we know what is causing the problem, we are not recruiting. And Council is not helping us in this matter.

 

One CST's stats. Look like those councils with metro areas are doing well. Rural areas not so much.

 

 

Rural units are struggling due to young parents moving to metro areas to have consistent work. We have a very geographically large rural council in my state. They are fighting demographics which is not their fault. Where I am at the further you get from the big city the more socially conservative the people are; this VERY rural council decided to jump into the fight against Hegseth and pop off about DEI publicly. I expect that they will hemorrhage several hundred youth and adults before the end of the year and accelerate their march towards being merged out. Sometimes these council leaders need to shut up and just let all the arrows hit national. 

 

On 3/3/2026 at 6:07 PM, jcousino said:

Add those numbers to the loss of formality paying military members, and the shortfall gets worse. Looks like we are in a death spiral: fewer members lead to higher dues, which lead to more member losses. 

 

We will likely follow the Girl Scout lead, with maga-sized councils and less council contact. Single units covering large areas  

We're going to have mega sized councils regardless; we actually need them. The administrative infrastructure and overhead of Scouting America is a pre-technology based structure that is BLEEDING funding away from program. National needs to force mergers, tell councils they need to embrace remote work and tele/video conferencing. Every DE should live and work in their district, not at council HQ. Every council HQ should be a tiny hole in the wall or a cabin on the council camp used as basically a logistical hub to feed the districts.