MattR

Welcome to the forum, @SWOKlahoma The numbers you mention are local, not national. The charter organization is who owns the unit. The unit also resides in a council. Those two groups can have fees, one of which you should have some say. The $250 can't be a council fee for reasons that are too complicated to explain. The real question is why won't your district help you set things up?

Welcome to the forum, @seagrinch

Welcome to the forum @Cubscoutgirlmom416. It sounds to me like you don't have anything to be ashamed of. Go talk to the Chartered Organization your pack belongs to along with the COR (chartered org rep) and just let them know what happened.

Welcome to the forum, @ASMwquestions.

That's good news! But id basically say what ssscout said: put it in a trust that is obligated to work with scouts. Giving it to a council will be a bad idea for some time. Giving it to a group of troops is equally bad. I like the idea of renting it cheap to youth organizations to cover costs. Even charge scouts if it's really cheap, so no lawyers can "say sure, but ..." I mean, that was the point of councils and that didn't work.

There's one thing missing in this idea that scouting excels at relative to other youth activities. I think it's magic when older scouts teach and help the younger scouts. It could still work in a goal oriented approach. I noticed that a lot of older scouts that stuck around until they aged out really responded to the younger scouts looking up to them. Some didn't, but that's okay. For those that like it, service to younger scouts could certainly be part of their challenge. I think some sort of service should be part of every Scout's plan. Another point is could this work within the context of a regular troop? I don't see why not but that could be changed. Finally, someone mentioned summer camp as the culmination of a patrol. I like that, but not at a summer camp strongly based in merit badges. I'd think the merit badges would need to be done or mostly completed before camp because that would be the emphasis of camp.

Congratulations!

I think it needs to account for something else that just about every other youth activity has: a culmination. Sports have playoffs, theater has a play, robotics have competitions, band has a concert, 4H has shows. They all have something everyone works towards, new skills to learn, there's inherent teamwork required. And scouts has just 3 more campouts. Seasons are certainly a good idea but there would have to be a lot more planning. Rather than one high adventure trip a year there needs to be something special each "season." There might be one week long high adventure trip a year but maybe 3 other long weekends? Maybe wrap this around a specific goal like learning a skill and having a meet that goes into it much more deeply than the usual camporee? The yearly planning session picks the challenges and patrols are formed around those at the start of each season. It sounds nice but it looks like a lot of details. How much can the scouts do?

It certainly isn't obvious to me. All I know is that your version of Lone Scouts and anything we can find in the documentation are not the same. Furthermore, I still don't know what your version is. You've mentioned no adult structure, pick up baseball, and now home schooling. That's all I have to work with. It sounds to me like Lone Scouting is a handbook, the rest is up to the scout. That could be easy but I'm not sure how many parents see that as anything they're interested in adding to their pile of work. A quick google search shows 3% of youth are home schooled while there are 2.2M BSA youth out of roughly 30M total available youth (~7%). Certainly that number is inflated but still, I'm not sure the home schooling mindset is what parents want. I'm not sure why you need any organization if it's equivalent to home schooling. So why replace BSA with something else. Create a wiki and a forum and just ignore the BSA. You can use their handbooks and MB books and you're done.

Welcome to the forum, @OLDRIFLE. That's a really tough question. You can ask your District Executive or your chartered org rep. I hate to say this but you can also look for another troop.

Maybe it's also be the only thing holding scouting back from being something much more enjoyable and meaningful? A point of discussion is whether burning down BSA national will help it get back to the basics. Some think that's extreme, myself included. But I have to admit that bling is a double edged sword in this program. While I agree that the adults are the last line of defense from Lord of the Flies, they have more use than that. If they weren't so caught up in bling they might be easier to train to help impart wisdom to the scouts. But why even consider creating a new program? That's beyond anyone's control. Why not just make the change within your unit. "As a troop, the adults are not going to do anything to promote advancement. The adults will encourage learning skills, doing service and going on adventures that the scouts are interested in. The adults are only interested in developing character. The scouts mostly decide what the methods are." Try it out. Nobody will stop you as long as you're true to the safety issues and the aims of scouting. The rest is baggage that you can dump. If it works then let us know and let your neighboring units know. If it works really well then it will grow and eventually take over. That would be much easier to implement than starting over.

Wrong question: At what speed is the train shorter than the tunnel? To answer the original question, follow the money. Big city council's camp is starting to lose customers and hence money, thus putting it into a death spiral. Rich council has the more enjoyable camp because it has an endowment to hire good staff, and hence troops start going there, thus helping rich council's financials. They can buy and run one of the other camps so distance is no longer an issue. Their funders are not interested in merging with other councils. So, final answer: Rich council keeps running as a normal council, the lawyers end up with most of the camps, all the other councils fold, some enterprising group of volunteers decide "we don't need no stinkin' council" , make a wiki with ideas on how to run scouting in their area without camps or local councils and generally have more fun than before. Eventually they join the Trans Atlantic Council because that's the easiest way to handle all that other stuff. (mainly because someone at the trans atlantic council figures they've been doing this for decades so they should profit off of it.) Oh, and the train fits at 80% of the speed of light.

Sounds like a cool building. Anyway, a couple of unorganized thoughts: Your title might give you your answer. What do you think about "scout reach?" If you're looking down on that then don't do it. If you're unsure about what scout reach could be then you're not ready to answer your question - time to do some research. Is it possible that you are tied to the building more than the scouts? If so, that's a warning sign. What kind of help are you getting from the church? Does anyone know these kids and can they help you? Are there any other adults around to help that have a lot of scouting experience? Without any help this is going to be hard. Do these scouts trust you? They won't pay any attention to some random adult that has been assigned to them. You have to gain their respect. They likely don't have the faintest idea what scouting is about so asking them to bring their handbook to a meeting is a thought that will be flushed down the black hole of teenage forgetfulness. Until scouting means something to them you are pushing a rope up hill. But that doesn't mean this is a total loss. What do you know about these kids? They can't afford gear, that's for sure. They were told, much like going to school, that you're the teacher. Rather than ask them to meet you at your level, where you know all about scouts, it might be easier for you to first go meet them at their level. What do they want to do? Have they ever gone camping before? If all they know is baseball then that's a good place to start. I guess my point is these scouts are likely much different from what you're used to. There's going to be a bit of culture shock from both sides as you figure each other out. And it might be a good thing for both of you. Sorry, I can't answer your question, though. That one's up to you. Good luck.

I think you should start a new thread. There were some threads about scouting with covid but you might be bringing up a bigger issue?

So you're equating optimism with propaganda? That doesn't sound right ... Ah, now I see where you're coming from. You just want to start with a clean slate. As others have pointed out that's going to take a lot of leadership. There are roughly a million volunteers involved with the BSA and in order to make this new program work you would need to convince a big chunk of them about your vision. Right now there are roughly a 100 people paying attention to this forum. You need to grow this by roughly four orders of magnitude. How are you going to do this? I'm a lousy salesman but one thing that always helps is enthusiasm. I used to tell scouts that sometimes leadership is hard - sometimes you just have to convince yourself to be enthusiastic when everything is looking bad. The weather sucks. The fire won't start. Scouts are whining. You really just want to bag it and go home. But you're the PL so you just have to suck it up and find something to laugh about. Get a few scouts doing that and suddenly everyone has accepted the challenge. That's great leadership. But that takes optimism. And that is where I was coming from. Sometimes we get so caught up in the weeds that we forget the basics. Cheerful and Friendly can be really hard when ashes are coming down around you (I live near fires). Right now, if you're associated with the BSA, ashes are piling up everywhere. Shouldn't we, on this forum, try and live up to the same ideal we encourage our scouts to live up to? This is more than an ideal. It's about being practical. If we can't come to agreement on a uniform then we won't come to agreement on what national should be doing even if they had enough resources. We will never all get on the same page and agree what should happen with OA, palms, eagle projects, advancement or any of the other thousands of details we argue about. So why worry about those details? How about just focusing on the very basics - like modeling Cheerful and Friendly to scouts when the ashes are poring down. I'm thinking that getting everyone on that page is more likely to have a positive impact than coming up with the perfect program. I'm not trying to muffle anyone. If you really want to keep arguing then I won't stop you. But wisdom is focusing on what you can control and being content with the rest. National is way beyond our control. So is starting a new program. Making this forum a welcome campfire so more people participate is within our grasp.

I don't know, Barry, anyone that can be positive about scouting these days deserves some respect. Has anyone noticed the marked drop in both posts and participation of different people on this forum? We always wish more people from National would listen to us but maybe we're not that big of a voice. Maybe we're not as wise as we'd like to believe. Maybe some chuckling at ourselves, some Cheerful and Friendly, might be more inviting. I know that I sure haven't had fun scouting on this forum. No amount of pontificating here will make up for the loss of one fun campout. Between that and the virus I'm ready to join those that have already left. Maybe those scouts could reteach us something.

Welcome to the forum, @RicRosenkranz.

We did as well, but not nearly as high a percentage in the troop as that of the regular population. Scouts sells fantastically well to some people that know what it's about. For those that are unsure, all that added time and cost seems like a real barrier. If the BSA could crack that nut I think the national charter would carry a lot more weight. Rather than parents being so involved a mix of college aged kids and retirees could cover things. It could give some people on this forum something to do.

I disagree, to a point. This program requires parent participation, evenings and weekends, money and gear. For single parent families, those with multiple gig jobs, and those not making much money, this program is a hard sell.

Not all adults. I always insisted there be a big block of time for scouts to figure out their own amusement. Some would explore. Some would work on advancement. Some would play cards or just talk. Most of them really enjoyed that time. I never made it to Philmont but a common comment was that it's a constant push. Get up and get going so you can get to the next event in time. It's a great way to encourage teamwork but not my idea of how to enjoy nature. I'm sure it would have been fun, don't get me wrong, but I do enjoy the tranquility after playing hard.

What a perfect fundraiser for boys. Catch rats. Kill them, with fire no less. Get paid.

My troop is doing outdoor activities. Bike rides, rocket launch, just anything that sounds fun and takes lots of room. No meetings in buildings but they are doing Discord meetings.

I remember in Junior High, when we learned how to write checks, that the teacher said you could write a check on anything, and assuming the bank trusted you, would pay it. We thought that was cool. Never thought it happened, though.

I watched the video. Good stories. I was a scout in the Transatlantic Council so it brought back a few memories. Something that would be good to hear about would be about the Kurdish culture.

Kind of like how this one is? Unfortunately, I haven't used bills or coins since covid started. Neither the hardware stores nor grocery stores are too keen on them. Ahh, to go someplace that uses cash .... Some day.