Leaderboard

My viewpoint is based on literally talking with people and making sure they understood what was coming and they blew it off. I'm a unit trainer and I literally had a leader tell me this was their excuse to exit the leadership and blame national when I reminded him 72hrs out and asked if he needed any help. The quality of our leadership is garbage; I can't do the training for the other leaders and (in my unit at least) they refused help prior to the cutoff and are now blaming national for screwing up.

All volunteers are in decline, but I think your viewpoint is part of why volunteers are declining so much in scouting. Volunteers are largely viewed and treated as unpaid employees and this is a condition pretty unique to scouting. As far as YPT, there has been a lot of confusion and many complaints down in the weeds about the process this year. I do think younger generations have less patience today for putting up with the kinds of organizational dysfunction and poor leadership that older generations did. They also expect technology to be their friend and for any portal or interface to be functional, user friendly, and seamless.

No, it is an attitude issue. Sadly I have seen too many pros over the years who could give a flip about the program and volunteers, they just want FOS dollars and membership increases. Fixed it for you

The problem isn't necessarily salary bloat, it is that the resource has been mis-applied. To survive, scouting is going to have to devote more resources towards unit operations even as unit numbers decrease. That's because the bar is always being raised due to incidents and liability issues. One of the huge issues facing scouting is the degree to which it has always relied upon volunteers. Volunteers and volunteerism, though, are in general decline. Unlike other youth organizations and many nonprofits, scouting has never developed strategies to cope with this reality, largely because it requires re-engineering structure far beyond consolidating councils. Apart from not having the bodies, scouting also lacks reliable expertise. You can't train unpaid volunteers enough to be considered expert in some of these areas. The aforementioned Range and Target sports is one example. In the years ahead, that is an area where scouting is likely going to be forced to either contain those activities to places where it can provide professional level supervision, provide direct paid unit support, or contract with third party providers.

I dont think we can cut enough salary bloat to save the camps; save some maybe, but there is going to be winners and losers.

Thanks...you made my point for me. Those axed volunteers go back and spread the word and we lose more volunteers. Recent resetting the YPT date to 5/31 to a large majority of adults is another case where a national decision is driving more volunteers away since they see no value added.

Nada in the slide presentations.

The quality of out professional leadership is garbage, they keep changing requirements and processes without any consideration for the volunteers, creating further problems and hassles for volunteers to deal with. Fixed it for you.

Beginning of June update: Total Unit-Based Youth: 746,579, down 8,061 from last month, or -1.1% (this does not include numbers for Learning for Life)

A very interesting Youtube video from Ken LaCorte about the decline of the Boy Scouts. Not sure I agree with the claim of the title but much of the content is good.

I was skeptical of his 'facts' right of the bat with the comment the Boy Scouts have disappeared, (we have not); and the claim that in the latter half of the 1900's 20% of boys were Scouts. We discuss membership numbers every month at our Council Commissioner meeting. While it has looked bleak for a while, at least in my council, numbers are starting to stabilize. We have more units this month than we had at this time last year, and while only by a handful, we have more Scouts than the same time last year. I am hopeful that some of the changes coming out of NAM will result in meaningful improvements and will put us on the path to sustainable growth.

No, it is an attitude issue. Sadly I have seen too many pros over the years who could give a flip about the program and volunteers, they just want FOS dollars and membership increases. Some of the reasons I have seen quality volunteers leave: being yelled and cursed out at by pros; having pros cancel your event ( which has been going on for decades) to push the new council event; asking council for help, and being ignored; running an event and being told you have to have a second event at the same site and time; running an event , creating your supply order well in advance, and finding out the week of that no supplies were ordered, then having the pros ticked off at you for going over budget purchasing those supplies; and I am sure I forgot a few.

The larger issue may well be that those "quality" people are discouraged at every turn. I can only speak locally, but more and more are just thowing in the towel because of foolish and non responsive local council people, many who have no idea about the program as it was framed. A really sad example; this past week a Council individual involved in eradicating some of those pesky actuall Scouting people, cleaning up a space, came across a stash of poles and staves. He tried to throw them out as trash wood. When he was challenged he had no idea they were kept to use for lashing and pioneering practice. Tossing old patrol flags because nobody cares. Suggesting uniform closet is a waste of time, and they can "buy" a uniform. Surely most here can add many similar disconnects. Will maybe discover what my status is this evening when the take over squad meets in our location to straighten it all out.🫥🤔😡

I think quality volunteers is in decline. We're seeing this right now. After 60 days of reminders we now have hundreds of volunteers in every council running around with expired youth protection training because they are of such low quality that they couldnt do free training with up to 60 days of reminder notice.

I would expect that response as I have heard it before. If the claim is fundraising is necessaryto provide service to the units, there should still be a measureable service to the units as a result. Fundraising may be a means, but it is not the end. The metric for success is the ends; service to the units. If this metric is not met, the funds raised are not being used, or used improperly. I would be happy to go toe-to-toe with any council executive.

You went on a Chat GPT binge of legal advice and opinions.

You got me.

To me, one of the hard parts may be dealing with the egos of the adults from the combined units. The fight will be over who's in control. This is the way we did it; no, we did it this way. Does not change the cause of the failed units. Until we address the reasons youth are not coming or staying, scouting will go the way of G-scouting.