Should SM Cancel Campout When Only 3 of 25 Scouts Decide to Go?

[highcountry 13]

We cancel if there are less than 6 boys signed up for an activity, it is a waste of time for our adult leaders to hold events with such little support. Some times considerable time and effort goes into planning events, arranging a group rate, potential rides etc when only a few sign up. We try to sell events a month or more in advance to the troop where we see very litle interest and they know they best get thier buddies to sign up or the event is off. This helps minimize the wasted effort by ASMs and activities coordinators before something is cancelled for lack of interest.

I have been SM for about a year and when I took over the troop put WAY too much on the activities calander, too much to plan, too much to do and too many places to spread the scouts around, about 75% got cancelled for lack of participation. It was burning people out. I stepped the activity level back when I took over but it was still a little too much. We live in the Colorado Rockies and we have plenty of outdoor experience opportunities right where we are. I let the boys run with the first 6 months of activities calander and true to history they put in about 40% activities down in the City, indoor climbing, fencing and the like, and sure enough only 3 or 4 boys signed up for each and they were cancelled. It was a good example to point to for PLC and the next 6 months they eliminated these side bar/suburban type activities and reduceced the calander to a more managable volume. If I had gone to the end of the earth to hold activities that almost no one supported from lack of sign ups I felt it wouldn't teach them a thing and they would go on filling future calanders with other un-popular stuff. It is the boys decision to plan out the calander but in the end, we adults have to facilitate it and if it creates extra work for no benefit it helps burn out adult volunteers. The JASM's and SPL understand this and are helping lead the boys thoughts and decisions accordingly. It used to be in our troop the boys ahd a loose brain storming session and tossed every idea they could think of out on the table, when it came time to vote, all one enthusiastic scout needed was one or two buddies who would stick thier hand up and some activity that was doomed to fail was on the adults timeframe to try and facilitate. Bike trips are a classic example, we had this activity on the list twice a year and in 5 years we ended up only going once. All teh cancelations were finally recognized by the SPL and the boys consdered this historic pattern when deciding on future calanders.