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

[skeptic]

1 hour ago, Eagledad said:

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

 

Three words that maake a huge difference.  "balance", "awareness", and "responsiveness".  And these concepts actually relate to youth moving from group levels anywhere.  And let them fail, as long as it is safe and then pick them up to try again.  All of this of course needs adults to "adult".

 

[qwazse]

On 12/15/2025 at 1:13 PM, Tron said:

This is bad. I don't think the program is dying; however, when is national going to institute some quality control to end the membership exodus? 

Based on data from other countries, it takes about two decades for scouting organizations who open membership to girls to stop losses and recover membership. And, those groups weren’t sued into bankruptcy.

So, don’t expect to hit bottom for a while.

[Tron]

1 hour ago, qwazse said:

Based on data from other countries, it takes about two decades for scouting organizations who open membership to girls to stop losses and recover membership. And, those groups weren’t sued into bankruptcy.

So, don’t expect to hit bottom for a while.

What does bottom look like? I think we hit 730,000 with the Mar 1st membership roles cleanup. Is bottom 500k? 400k? I mean we're losing on average 100k a year right? Is it all hands on deck, the ship is burning in 2 - 3 years? There is no doubt that a key part of the problem is leader training: is when we hit 400k that national makes position training truely and absolutely mandatory?

[InquisitiveScouter]

11 minutes ago, Tron said:

What does bottom look like? I think we hit 730,000 with the Mar 1st membership roles cleanup. Is bottom 500k? 400k? I mean we're losing on average 100k a year right? Is it all hands on deck, the ship is burning in 2 - 3 years? There is no doubt that a key part of the problem is leader training: is when we hit 400k that national makes position training truely and absolutely mandatory?

I just went in to look at the 31 March numbers.

The membership tools system now does not have any numbers posted past 31 Jan 2026.

 I'll check again over the next day or two to give an update.

But, if they have stopped posting numbers because of the story the numbers are telling, then, my friend, that is what the bottom looks like

[Tron]

15 minutes ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

I just went in to look at the 31 March numbers.

The membership tools system now does not have any numbers posted past 31 Jan 2026.

 I'll check again over the next day or two to give an update.

But, if they have stopped posting numbers because of the story the numbers are telling, then, my friend, that is what the bottom looks like

Didnt something similar happen last year in the lead up to the NAM? I do recall membership numbers going off line for a time last year.

[IanR]

2 hours ago, qwazse said:

Based on data from other countries, it takes about two decades for scouting organizations who open membership to girls to stop losses and recover membership. And, those groups weren’t sued into bankruptcy.

So, don’t expect to hit bottom for a while.

With that outlook, the Scouts won't be able to financially hold on to any facilities by the time they hit bottom, at which point there may not even be 50,000 total members left.

As regards the member numbers, remember how they stopped issuing nice annual reports about seven years ago when the numbers started collapsing?

[Tron]

12 minutes ago, IanR said:

With that outlook, the Scouts won't be able to financially hold on to any facilities by the time they hit bottom, at which point there may not even be 50,000 total members left.

As regards the member numbers, remember how they stopped issuing nice annual reports about seven years ago when the numbers started collapsing?

Yeah but those previous annual reports were odd though right? The public facing annual reports always use total unique individual counts inside a time period. Truest headcount for non profits are typically measured as a year over year comparison of actual headcount on the same day.

[IanR]

56 minutes ago, Tron said:

Yeah but those previous annual reports were odd though right? The public facing annual reports always use total unique individual counts inside a time period. Truest headcount for non profits are typically measured as a year over year comparison of actual headcount on the same day.

Not having the "inside" data, I just relied on comparisons for each year's reports. Even if they were massaging the numbers, it still looked horrible.

[Tron]

59 minutes ago, IanR said:

Not having the "inside" data, I just relied on comparisons for each year's reports. Even if they were massaging the numbers, it still looked horrible.

Totally. My council has this BS membership number based on "unique members" in the previous calendar year; which causes some bleed over year-over-year that inflates membership numbers above any single headcount in the past 365. EG: We had 5200 unique scouting expeciences in 2025! But in reality at no time in 2015 did headcount on any given day or hour exceed 3500.

 

5200 is very low when conaidering our population and total area youth.

Edited April 1 by Tron

[yknot]

3 hours ago, qwazse said:

Based on data from other countries, it takes about two decades for scouting organizations who open membership to girls to stop losses and recover membership. And, those groups weren’t sued into bankruptcy.

So, don’t expect to hit bottom for a while.

The only big one in recent memory was Scouts Canada but their decline wasn't due to girls. 

[InquisitiveScouter]

On 3/3/2026 at 11:42 AM, 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.

UPDATE:

OK, the system is back up, and showing current numbers...

As of 01 Apr:

Total Current Youth 782,466 (Up 927 from last month, same time)  this is all programs, including LFL

Total Current Unit-Based Youth 749,343  (this is Crews, Posts, Troops, & Packs)

End of 2025 Total Unit-Based was 877,399  (Total including LFL 907,946)

So that means, from end of Dec 2025 to now, the total unit-based has dropped by 94,933, or 10.82%

[IanR]

4 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

UPDATE:

OK, the system is back up, and showing current numbers...

As of 01 Apr:

Total Current Youth 782,466 (Up 927 from last month, same time)  this is all programs, including LFL

Total Current Unit-Based Youth 749,343  (this is Crews, Posts, Troops, & Packs)

End of 2025 Total Unit-Based was 877,399  (Total including LFL 907,946)

So that means, from end of Dec 2025 to now, the total unit-based has dropped by 94,933, or 10.82%

That's a 21% drop from my numbers for cubs, bs, and venture in 2024.

[Tron]

10 hours ago, IanR said:

That's a 21% drop from my numbers for cubs, bs, and venture in 2024.

Correct, membership is on a near linear decline 10%(ish) year over year. From what I have seen its fairly uniform across the whole country, no single council or region is responsible. I'm increasingly believing that the issue is just a significant amount of untrained or poorly trained unit leaders pushing families out of the program by not running the actual program.

[InquisitiveScouter]

2 minutes ago, Tron said:

Correct, membership is on a near linear decline 10%(ish) year over year. From what I have seen its fairly uniform across the whole country, no single council or region is responsible. I'm increasingly believing that the issue is just a significant amount of untrained or poorly trained unit leaders pushing families out of the program by not running the actual program.

Agree that this is a large factor.

I have noted the culture at Council and National of taking adult leaders for granted and simply expecting them to always be there.

We have units folding in our council due to lack of adult leaders.  And also have units who have names on a roster who do nothing for the unit.  These "ghosts" allow their names to be used for registration (as long as the unit pays their fee) and never intend to do any serving, outings, or training for BSA or the youth they are on the roster for... 

It still baffles me, too, how many people think that the unit leaders get paid, or get some of the money from their registration fees.

 

[IanR]

So why are groups like Trail Life flourishing?

Could it have anything to do with the complete about face in the BSA over mission and membership over the last ten years?

All the training and programs that national can come up with can't fix that.

Edited April 2 by IanR