Advancement Resources

This was a pretty good den meeting, considering the low cost and prep time. I highly recommend for future Ben Den Leaders. Save it for midway through the year when you're burned out and the weather limits your options.

Some of these issues were caused by the councils and how they have things configured in AKELA. For example, one of my units hit "the naughty list" for not rechartering timely and I was confused so I spoke with the COR; the COR completed recharter the first week of December (all online). I then went to the DE and let him know that the unit rechartered online the first week of December, and was promptly notified that "whoopsie" council has an "introduced" manual process that blocks all recharters for a manual review that caused the issue. We're never going to have a smooth process if the professionals are introducing extra steps to try and keep this 1970's style.  $237 isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things but what are the scouts getting back for that? The fee's are not bad if the scouts are getting value back; I just don't see the value back when visiting these high fee councils.  One of the councils adjacent to mine has a $160 council fee; they have 18 more fulltime paid staff than my council and they have several hundred fewer scouts; what value is that council getting? 

Oh, but council can add weird fees.  A friend of mine's council has a $77 Council fee added to the individual, and a $75/Scout fee added to the unit recharter. $85+77+75 = $237 per Scout per year in that council. Don't forget awards and activity supplies have skyrocketed too.  

Different experience here... 1.  The new registration regime actually caused more work to ensure that Scouts remained registered, and could, therefore, enjoy the benefits of "membership".  (I'll elaborate on that in a bit.)  Because the transaction now goes directly from family to BSA, the burden of action was shifted to the family.  Most families are not fully on top of all the minutiae they have to manage in their lives, and the required action of reading the emails from National (which probably went to spam) and figuring out what to do to register their Scout (admittedly a very low priority), especially around the holiday period, meant that about one third of our Scouts did not have a current paid registration going into recharter. 2.  Once the recharter process started, our Troop became "locked" somehow, and no adults or Scouts who delayed could register in the unit until the recharter was complete.  Those who attempted got some sort of "Unit Not Valid" message, and the system would not process their registration or payment.  Now you have doubled or tripled the amount of work a family / Troop has to do to get on top of this, as they have to monitor the recharter, then notify parents to try again, and then do the payment process again. 3.  Even though there is a "grace" period for individual registrations, until the unit recharter went through, adults in our unit/district/council could not manipulate calendars or input advancements (we'd get a message for a Scout that said they did not have a valid membership.)   After a huge outcry to District Commissioners/District Staffs/Registrar/Council Staff (folks at our January Roundtable were quite testy), the council office pulled folks from other duties to assist Registrar in tasks needed to complete the effort.  Still not done for all units due to adult application issues (for position changes to make sure a unit has the required leadership to recharter), but the majority in our District are now done. Finally, consider the amount of money being wasted on this process... every family has to pay something like a 3% convenience fee to do this online with a credit card. For those who went to the Scout office and paid in person, because this was an option presented to avoid the card fee, their registrations were held up until staff went through that paperwork in office.  (Of course, the checks were cashed right away, but renewals were delayed... optics on that not so good either.) I'm with @Tron... these two actions should be de-coupled by some significant space in the calendar.  My take:  Units should be prompted to renew FIRST.  Once a unit renewal is complete for the next year, the demand signal for individuals to renew their memberships in that unit should go out... There are a lot more moving parts to this, I'm sure...  

I don't think this was a blunder. From what I have witnessed this was a good thing. Just to be clear as to what I was seeing in my area; we had a pack charging $500 pack dues and blaming council & national. Now that it has become infinitely harder for that pack to munge all the dues together at 1 point in the year and blame recharter, council, national, santa claus, and whomever else for the steep fees that pack is down to single digit membership because all of the cubs in that area are going to other packs now.  Whatever happens going forward membership cannot overlap with recharter; membership with national and council "service fees" have to be clearly defined so as to prevent bad units from scalping parents.