MattR

Posts have been moved

If the judge is talking about it, put it in the ch11.5 thread. If the judge is not talking about it but you think it's related to ch 11, put it here. Honestly, the simplest solution is if the judge is talking about it then put it in the ch11.5 thread, if not start a different thread. Unfortunately, we've tried that for about a year and everything keeps going back to the same thread. This is a forum, not just a single thread. To paraphrase an old TV show, we have the technology The problem with jamming a whole lot of threads into one is that there are people that would rather not read every single post trying to find the few subjects they are interested in. There was a post where someone was seriously asking for help deal with their trauma but it got lost in a long argument about legal vs moral. I'm not sure how moral that was.

I just did move them. Kind surgery with a chain saw. Let me know if I messed up.

I think there's just more opportunity for a scout to find something that resonates them. On the other side of the coin, that takes more adult volunteers. I agree. Unfortunately, you're preaching to the choir. But back to the OP, how many kids in a poverty and crime infested neighborhood can go to Philmont? That's a barrier. Another is setting up units in those areas. As I said above, it requires a lot of volunteers to make this program work. But when those parents are struggling to find time just to make ends meet ... there's another barrier. The BSA has certainly tried to make their program available in poor areas with not much to show for it. I'm not sure it's the right organization to do that but that's a different thread.

We can move them.

Just a friendly reminder, but we split the ch 11 thread such that topics including tcc and bankruptcy plans would stay in the old one and all the other topics that came up about yp, moral vs legal, the future of scouting, etc, would go here.

This is the part that sticks with me. Scouting helps kids that need it. Why is that? And is scouting much different from other activities? Or is it just that scouting just attracts different kinds of kids than, say, sports? In my case I did both scouts and sports and I seemed to have kept different aspects of each (with some overlap). Second, what are the barriers to these types of activities for families in "an urban mess, with a lot of poverty and crime"? Again, is scouting unique? The BSA has been trying to crack that nut for a long time and have failed. I have my suspicions why but lets just say the BSA might benefit from the paper @Armymutt is writing.

I'm voting with there needs to be a better relationship with the CO. That's where all the grief is coming from. It doesn't even matter whether this story is believable, the COR is a pain and the only way to fix that is creating a better relationship with the CO. Also, expecting a better relationship with a new CO, where there's no effort to create a good relationship, is just kicking the can down the road. It may be a lot easier to repair the current relationship than find a new CO. As others have said, go talk to the CO.

@Eagle1993 for CSE!

It will be a lot like this past year - in flux, fewer volunteers, trying to figure out how to recruit.

You can do that. Nothing wrong with saving time.

I have 2 simple goals that could be made smart. 1) Ask a random sample of parents whether they want their children in scouts. Answer on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is absolutely and 5 is not on your life. Measure the percentage of 1s and set a goal for that. The point is raise awareness of scouting. i.e., get some marketing that works. 2) For those that said absolutely, make them successful volunteers. measure how many are volunteering 3 years later in a gold status unit. i.e., make sure they understand the program, are well trained and helping out. So, I'm not interested in membership numbers. Rather, more visibility and quality units. That all said, the issue i originally brought up was not CSE pay but how much money councils burn through and how much of that is making it to the scouts. I suppose one could set similar goals for councils. How many parents want their kids in the local units and how successful are new parent volunteers?

First of all welcome to the forum. If every patrol is always required to achieve honor patrol then it's fine. However, if this is an extra requirement for a patrol that has a PL needing something signed off then it's an added requirement. Added requirements are not acceptable. I wonder how the patrols respond to this. Will they vote against a scout because they'd rather not do honor patrol? There are better ways to motivate patrols. And that is the key, motivate the entire patrol rather than just the PL.

And the reason they want to raise Cub Scout membership even though cubs get burned out before scouts is bringing in more money. As I said, membership is more important than quality. We're 3/4 of the way through that year and the troops in my district have been told they need to sponsor a pack because so many packs have completely collapsed. On the other hand, I think it gives us the opportunity to find kids that aren't burned out on cub scouts. We just need to figure out how to recruit from the middle schools.

I agree. Still, they have a lot of assets. And since they have so much they've gotten in the habit of spending a lot of their efforts making that pile bigger. So the focus is on money. It is not on the aims or quality of program. If there's ever a choice between increasing membership, units, anything that brings in more money, or increasing the quality of units they always lean on more money. What is more important to a DE, increasing membership and units, or improving quality of existing units? Has a DE ever said let's take 3 weak units and combine them and support it so it's a quality unit and it just brings in more scouts. Eventually, when it's big enough we can split it in two and we'll already have trained volunteers. Or, is it that anyone with 5 kids and no experience that wants to start a unit is encouraged?

I knew you'd have this available. Thanks! Anyway, $3.3B / 750k scouts is $4400/scout. What other youth organization has anything close to that? What was the plan for all that money? How was it helping achieve the aims of scouting? I'm sure its spent on something, but my impression is the plan, somewhere along the line, morphed from help units into grow the endowment.

I didn't say no money, I said it shouldn't be the focus. Every decision seems to be based on increasing membership rather than improving, say, the aims. Why have lions and tigers if kids get burned out before they get to the best part of the program? Seems clear to me it's about membership/money. I'd like to know what BSA's total value is compared to its yearly budget (including all councils). What other non profits measure assets in billions and spend so little per target member?

Or maybe the criteria for being an asm needs changing. Call an 18 yo that's still in HS a JASM and the problem is solved.

Maybe we should have called this thread "ch 11 paradoxes." There are lots of hard problems. This is just one of them. I'm not sure the bsa is equipped for that. Maybe that's the biggest problem - create a servant leader driven professional structure. Make it so the volunteers can be the focus rather than money. I know, wishful thinking.

We're making this up as we go, and your job is to find the corner cases so we don't end up with 18 yo asm's not able to hang out with their friends. so .... The TCC posted something about what they think each council is worth so that goes in the other thread. Councils post what they have to pay (yeah, right) because that is certainly part of the bankruptcy so that goes in the other thread. Now, if you want to discuss what's fair, moral, etc, it belongs here.

Sorry to butt in, I'm 7 pages behind but, please read this before you reply to anything. we're splitting this thread in 2. This thread will remain as a discussion about the legal aspects of ch 11. Everything else will go to a new thread: it's better explained there. I doubt if the moderators have the energy to sift through 50 pages and split this but we might try and split out the last day or so.

We're going to split the ch11.x thread in 2. The original will be kept as it was intended, for the legal aspects of the case and everything else will go here. In a nutshell, if the judge is dealing with the details of it or the lawyers are arguing over it, it goes in the old thread. Everything else goes here. That means if it's about what's morally correct vs legally correct, it goes here. If it's about the future of the chartered orgs, it goes here. If it's about what the BSA knew when, it goes here. If it's about healing, it goes here. If it's about what YP should look like, it goes here. Clear as mud, I know. We're trying. For those of you that are only on this forum to look at one thread, it's time to learn a new trick. Any threads related to the bankruptcy will have the tag "ch11". You can limit what threads you see by using a custom Activity Stream. As described below you have to set either what tags you want or to just display what you're following (in which case you also need to follow the these threads) If you are on a laptop: Go to Feed -> My Activity Streams -> Create New Stream. You can either explicitly just display threads with the ch11 tag or you can follow both of the threads and just display threads you follow. To follow a thread look in the upper right of the page and click on follow. If you're on a cell phone: click on Show Filters and set either the Show Me field to only look at the ch11 tag or the Following field to show only the threads you're following. To follow a thread go to the bottom of the page and click on follow. Once you have that set up all you need to do is use the custom activity stream. If you want, you can use that as your default feed where the Unread Content button is (I guess it looks like a newspaper)

You can't post other topics now? Strange, I can. Anyway, I found something really cool on the UK Scout forum. Someone started a single thread that's been going for years and all it is is a place to talk about good news. Now, I've tried that here before and it lasted about a week at most. Maybe you'll have better luck. Or maybe it's just that Americans like to whinge about things. Think about it, what are the British famous for with regard to personality? Dour, stiff upper lip, subdued, all that. And yet, they have this fantastic thread that's been going for years about silly little wonderful news and all we do is complain about national, or council, or woodbadge, or family scouting, or the G2SS, or eagle mills, or obnoxious parents, or uniforms, or membership, or .... wait a minute, what were we talking about?

Well, it seemed you both were coming to a consensus. Maybe just my view but bankruptcy court is not necessarily moral, at best they just spread the pain around?

@Eagle1970, I think there's a mechanism that might keep you from missing out. Suppose there are 5 threads related to what you're really interested in (all threads related to ch11). Since there are a dozen or so people that are going to have the same interest we can tag those threads and show all of you how to only look at those threads. So, when you click on unread content it will only show, from the list of 5 threads, which contain new material. You wouldn't miss anything and could read it in the order you'd like. Would that help? My fear is, because of the volume of posts, people are missing things anyway.