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

[Eagle1993]

8 hours ago, Tron said:

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

Fully agree. I understand my council knows they will merge with another council; however, that council is not in great shape financially and likely needs to close a camp or two.  My council is holding off on the merger so they aren't blamed for the camp closure.  I'm sure there are many similar stories, so national will have to step in.

During the bankruptcy a small/secret meeting was held by a fee national leaders.  Their PPT slides were reviewed in court but never added to the docket.  They included recommendations for a major reduction in councils among other ideas.  It is needed and hopefully coming. 

[yknot]

5 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

Fully agree. I understand my council knows they will merge with another council; however, that council is not in great shape financially and likely needs to close a camp or two.  My council is holding off on the merger so they aren't blamed for the camp closure.  I'm sure there are many similar stories, so national will have to step in.

During the bankruptcy a small/secret meeting was held by a fee national leaders.  Their PPT slides were reviewed in court but never added to the docket.  They included recommendations for a major reduction in councils among other ideas.  It is needed and hopefully coming. 

I think that slide is here somewhere in one of the bankruptcy threads. I know I've seen it, and I'm pretty sure it was here. 

[Eagle94-A1]

22 minutes ago, yknot said:

I think that slide is here somewhere in one of the bankruptcy threads. I know I've seen it, and I'm pretty sure it was here. 

It is. I remember seeing it. 2/3s of the councils gone if memory serves.

 

[PACAN]

I heard there are a large number of councils under conditional charters for 2026.   If they don't meet certain benchmarks )  I assume membership growth and raising $$ they can subject to be merged.

Free membership for military scouts is an interesting idea.   My friends troop is made up of Colonels and Lt Cols who certainly can afford the registration.   Junior soldiers most likely do not have children who are of scouting age.

[PACAN]

There used to be a chart showing number of scouts by sponsoring organizations.  Anyone seen that recently?

[MikeS72]

2 hours ago, yknot said:

I think that slide is here somewhere in one of the bankruptcy threads. I know I've seen it, and I'm pretty sure it was here. 

It was here, as I recall it also.  If I remember correctly, it showed a move toward mergers eventually bringing us to around 80 councils.

[Tron]

On 3/5/2026 at 12:44 PM, PACAN said:

I heard there are a large number of councils under conditional charters for 2026.   If they don't meet certain benchmarks )  I assume membership growth and raising $$ they can subject to be merged.

Free membership for military scouts is an interesting idea.   My friends troop is made up of Colonels and Lt Cols who certainly can afford the registration.   Junior soldiers most likely do not have children who are of scouting age.

I have also heard that there are a large number of councils under conditional charter; that came out of last years NAM and was related to some sort of discussion related to the financial health meeting. I believe the number was somewhere between 20 and 50 councils left the NAM being told that they might be placed on conditional charter before the end of the year. 

As I understand things national is looking at a handful of metrics: rolling 90 day cash-on-hand, unrestricted endowment contributions/growth, membership in relation to total-area-youth, and an amalgam of safety. Based on the councils that got merged out last year and so far this year the trend seems to be that if a council is surviving off of their endowment national puts them on transitional or if a councils membership shrinks below some ratio they are put on transitional. A good example of the financial is Suffolk Council in Long Island and their financial situation. A good example of the membership was Ohio River Valley (who had everything going good except the whole council was basically a district in membership).

[jcousino]

On 3/3/2026 at 7:27 PM, 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.

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.

One new unit of what 6 Scouts( many just shifted from other units or cross overs), not a profitable goal when a good unit, at least at one time, had 24 Scouts. The number of units is a shadow game. Bring in 10 new scouts; non-cross-cubsover is a goal that would help. Work to improve 3-year retention.

 If you are truly getting good feedback do you have the will to change weak and bad programs or leadership both volunteer and paid. 

[Tron]

15 hours ago, jcousino said:

One new unit of what 6 Scouts( many just shifted from other units or cross overs), not a profitable goal when a good unit, at least at one time, had 24 Scouts. The number of units is a shadow game. Bring in 10 new scouts; non-cross-cubsover is a goal that would help. Work to improve 3-year retention.

 If you are truly getting good feedback do you have the will to change weak and bad programs or leadership both volunteer and paid. 

Im torn here. I get that just adding units makes no sense from the standpoint of some new units just "steal" scouts from existing units. The flip side is that we do have scouting deserts that need new units. Perhaps there us a flip-flip side? What if our 40% churn and lack of retention is caused by all those stuck in their ways garbage units we all know about? What if the retention issue is literally only solved by having these rinky dink 1 patrol troops running around? 

[jcousino]

11 hours ago, Tron said:

Im torn here. I get that just adding units makes no sense from the standpoint of some new units just "steal" scouts from existing units. The flip side is that we do have scouting deserts that need new units. Perhaps there us a flip-flip side? What if our 40% churn and lack of retention is caused by all those stuck in their ways garbage units we all know about? What if the retention issue is literally only solved by having these rinky dink 1 patrol troops running around? 

New troops made up of new scouts ok. Increase the number of scouts needed to form or maintain a unit. Good idea, but it's never going to happen. Merging small units to free up adults to do other tasks. Reconnect a good program to good retention.  Letting girls in good.  The bad side is giving a bleeding patient a pint of blood without fixing the bleed. Sorry, but still seeing BA looking more like the GS track record on negative growth.

[Tron]

58 minutes ago, jcousino said:

New troops made up of new scouts ok. Increase the number of scouts needed to form or maintain a unit. Good idea, but it's never going to happen. Merging small units to free up adults to do other tasks. Reconnect a good program to good retention.  Letting girls in good.  The bad side is giving a bleeding patient a pint of blood without fixing the bleed. Sorry, but still seeing BA looking more like the GS track record on negative growth.

Totally correct. We (at least those of us at this level) are not privy to what exiting families are stating as to why they are quitting the program. We can guess as to the reason, I think a lot of us have a good "feel" but can't really prove what we think the issues are.  Does anyone know, are there any real exit interview results out there for scouting? In all my time I have only been able to get 1 family to openly tell me why they really quit scouting and that led to a leader being terminated (but the damage was already done). 

[PACAN]

I remember there were codes you put on scouts that you weren’t rechartering.  E.g. aging out, moved, didn’t want to recharter etc.   where did that data go and why doesn’t bsa collect it?

[Tron]

2 hours ago, PACAN said:

I remember there were codes you put on scouts that you weren’t rechartering.  E.g. aging out, moved, didn’t want to recharter etc.   where did that data go and why doesn’t bsa collect it?

I think that has been replaced with only "opted out".

[Eagle94-A1]

This is not a scientific poll. This was something I did trying to get more Scouts in my troop. I got a hold of the district dropped list, and called everyone. A few earned Eagle and quit, while one or two moved. But the bulk fell in one of two categories: 1. they were bored at meetings and/or not camping and lost interest or 2. New Scouts who were not prepared for transition from Cubs to Scouts. One troop lost an entire Cub Scout den over it.

[Eagledad]

14 hours ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

2. New Scouts who were not prepared for transition from Cubs to Scouts. One troop lost an entire Cub Scout den over it.

Yep, we’ve been talking about this statistic for a long time. The largest group of dropouts in the scouting program are first year troop scouts. And, it’s been that way since National has kept those kinds of records since the 60s.

There is a cultural shock going from being hand held through the first 10 years of life by adults to spending the night in the dark woods with only youth leaders for protection from the sounds of darkness in a tent.

its not an easy problem to solve. Our troop work a number years and different approaches to our program to fix it.

We learned that scouts who hang around after their first summer in the troop, will likely age out in their program.

We were a patrol method, mixed age program heavy on outdoors. We found scouts needed an adult nearby the first few months of their experience to learn how to trust the youth leaders. But, the youth leaders have to be the responsible one-on-one leaders of the new scouts or they likely will not develop that trust for the youth leaders. At least not in the first few months.

Its is a delicate situation that requires creativity, courage and persistence from both the scouts and adults working together to get over the hurdle of getting new scouts past their first summer camp.

Barry