MattR

Sounds familiar. I got in trouble trying to make camporees cost neutral, i.e., charge the scouts no more than what it costs. All of the rest sounds wonderful, but this I have to ask about. I thought a band saw size was the largest piece of wood that can go through it, height wise. So a 92" band saw could easily cut a full sized car. Or is this the length of the band? Anyway, keep having fun. That's what rubs off on the scouts.

If I had a PL that wanted to do something like that I'd take the loophole you found and tell them to go for it. It shows initiative.

Yep. Scout is now a rank. When it was just join, the meanings were still in tenderfoot. It was honestly confusing to keep track of what was where.

Done. Thanks for the catch.

Just to let everyone know, I removed emails, phone numbers and names from that letter. Posting that type of info on a public forum is a bad idea.

You had me until jambodemic 🙂. I like it because a jamboree is out of my price range (not the event itself but the 5 fold council tax). Better yet, all scouts could participate. That would be nice. Getting every scout to camp the same week would be great, not to mention a great challenge. My hunch is you'd have to think about the details. Getting the majority of scouts together at the same time would take a lot of space. Then there's the network required. That's not cheap. But if you make it, it would be cool.

Speaking of flogging a dead horse

What I wish was doomed was this thread. Honestly, who has heard about this other than on this thread? I looked back at the start of the thread and all it is is a suspicion. Then there are 7 pages of whoa. Nothing is happening with the titles of the adult dudes and dudettes in the troop. Everything else is going to hell but the titles are good.

@TAHAWK, why are you shouting? I can read regular sized font more easily than the large font.

Someone made one mistake and it was pulled down. That doesn't sound like much of a trend to worry about. However, if they had, for example, lied 20000 times in 4 years, then you'd have something to talk about.

But think of it. An overnight campout would be like a high adventure trip.

Wow, my council only charges $200. But that was before covruptcy. It looks like the exact same formula we have. They can't require it. National said as much when they said councils can't charge more than national. We heard the same threats. We do the best we can and tell them good luck. Treat it as a recommended donation. I stopped donating all together. I'm not sure about your council but mine is doing unethical accounting at best and likely illegal. When they get their act together I will resume donating.

Just curious, when Ford came out with the Pinto and gas tanks were exploding, did you blame all the workers for that?

JTE is a wishful concept that came out of SMART goals, which gives little guidance on running a non-profit. So scrap JTE and start over. I do not know how to run a non-profit, so talk to someone that does on the requirements for this. But here are my observations. Ensure the board is separate from the staff and does its job. The board is not a fundraising mechanism. It is a way to check the staff and ensure the council is serving the needs of the youth. Budget issues are what pollutes the motivation of the council, so ensure the budget is watched closely and it's transparent to everyone. A balanced budget doesn't imply the needs of the youth are being met. Leadership is important in a council, ensure there's a process for hiring and promoting good people from anywhere, ensuring there's enough money to pay them (rather than through event fees, like my council does) and that poor performers are either improved or let go. That includes the CE. The council's primary job is ensuring the units are successful. It is not accounting or membership. I'm not sure how to measure whether a unit is successful, but JTE style metrics is not it. Is the troop actively run by the scouts? Are the scouts having fun? Is there a pipeline of leadership and growth for all members of a unit (scouts and adults)? Do all the members of a unit understand the fundamentals - that are not described ... anywhere?

While @John-in-KC is likely right that this document is some internal document, this thread also contains the monthly how-to-fix-scouting comments. I'm not trying to berate anyone as it is nice to see people that like scouting. And I'm just about to pile on. Some observations: I look at that original document and I don't see anything about helping units succeed at scouting. I went to the churchill website and on their testimonials page I didn't find the words 'non profit.' Maybe there's another document out there that talks about this but I'm not holding my breath. @Jameson76 makes a good point: We should focus on the why of scouting. The document that started this thread is like fixing hail damage on the hood of a car when what is really needed is to take out the engine and put it into a newly rebuilt frame and chassis. The why is lost in a forest of hail dents. @David CO brought up the YMCA's approach of watering it all down to increase membership, which I agree is nothing I'm interested in. So, focus on the why. @dkurtenbach said we should focus on the moms and dads to put on a better program. That would be fine if the moms and dads were as invested in scouting as we on this forum are. Rather, think about your neighbor with scout aged kids. What do those moms and dads want. Better yet, think of the moms and dads of kids in free school lunch programs. I add that last part because our economy is a dumpster fire right now, has excluded a lot of lower income kids from participating in scouts for a long time and a huge number of kids don't have parents with the time or resources to learn how to make a program work for their kids. My take away from all of this is the program needs to work comfortably with a lot fewer parents. @Sentinel947 brought up the idea of using young adults as volunteers. This could help the lack of parent issue. To me, the why is simple: For the youth, the why is learning skills to have fun in the outdoors. Those skills are things like staying comfortable in bad weather, swimming, cooking and the like. For the parents it's also learning skills to have fun in the outdoors, but the skills include things like character, getting along with others while solving problems, responsibility and all those things that aren't covered by requirements but that we harp on. One group that's forgotten is the older youth. Again, it's learning skills to have fun in the outdoors. But this time the skills include being responsible that the younger scouts have a good experience. This group is really important and they barely get mentioned in any training. This is the solution to the lack of parent problem. I'd say tell scouts, from the day they join, that they will eventually be running the program. Forget the idea of eagle by 13. I'm not sure how to change the requirements but ensure that, to get eagle, older scouts need to be responsible for the younger scouts enjoying the program. For those scouts that say they don't want to babysit, they either learn how to do it right or they don't get eagle. This will greatly increase the value of eagle and reduce the need for so many adults. At the same time, using the 18-25 year olds could make it that much better. Some of those 18-25 year olds will have more fun working with cubs than scouts, use them to reduce parent burnout in cubs. Make the constant growth from 11 years old to 25 be more visible. Maybe have leadership ranks, I don't know. Next, think about the outdoors that's needed for scouts to have fun. The absolute best times scouts have is with what they find at hand: Mud, water, snow, rocks, sticks, .... Meanwhile, council camps are going out of their way to add more and more toys (dining halls, climbing walls, atvs, shooting ranges, etc) but that's just driving costs up. I'd say a lake front in the summer, a forest anytime and hiking trails are critical. It's more important to camp at new places than places with toys.

I just got back from a hilly bike ride with my kids. Makes everything better.

One handbook per program. One shirt. Nothing is sewn onto the shirt that ever needs to be removed (flag, wosm, aol). No council patch, city and state is fine. In fact, transferring stuff to a larger shirt is something a scout can do in about 10 minutes. As for program features, training, general info, make a wiki and identify volunteer editors, that reflect the program, to make a living document.

The style of ours is mainly to get the adults out of camp. Examples are do a polar plunge, go to an adult shoot, visit the canteen for coffee, do one of the hikes, do some adult meetings, go fishing and, while not getting out of camp, take a nap. I believe there's another patch for that, the Grinch Master. 😀 I enjoyed being childish around the scouts. It's the same reason that I'd kneel down to get at their height when talking to them about something serious.

Assuming the scouts didn't get sick the more important idea is that a bunch of scouts had fun. If they could do this at summit they could do this at any camp. I hope the good news holds.

By less sympathy for the perpetrators do you mean harsher sentencing? And what is an example of more sympathy for the victims?

Nice story but it would seem better to have gotten involved in that kid's life before he became friends with the other two that were arrested. The real story is US incarceration rates are high. We all know that. The fact that the BSA can't get something like Boy Power to work suggests something the BSA should work on rather than put out a new MB.

Pads are more than padding, they're also insulation. Also, the bottom of the sleeping bag doesn't provide any insulation when you smash it flat. IF it's cold out you need a pad with insulation. So, whatever pad you'd use on the ground, put it on put on your cot and you'll be warm.

Let the fight begin. It would have been easier if they had started with the last sentence. I wonder what happens in the scenario where a council property is "hidden" by giving it to a holding company with the intent of getting it back in the future, the council is disolved and a new one replaces it. Where does that leave the property? Legal ring 6, probably.

Of course you can't! My guess is you do indeed have a lot of fun howling at the moon on campouts. I also suspect you enjoy ribbing both scouts and adults, given your penchant for sarcasm I see here. The thing is, I don't think that has anything to do with humility. I do all those things as well because it's fun and the scouts really enjoy seeing an adult that can be silly, make a joke and take ribbing as well. Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. And yep, that's a quote. You can be loud and boisterous and still think of others. At the same time, humility is hard for me. It's a lot easier to decide if I'm being cheerful than humble. I don't mind talking about my religious views. I'm sure @SSScout would enjoy it. The timing is good as last week's Torah portion has a lot to do with humility. It's where Korach and his patrol confront Moses and say "you're not my boss." Moses, replies that he never asked to be SPL, and that Korach should be careful. Korach isn't, Moses begs the Great Moderator in the sky not to wipe out Korach's entire family and Moderator says okay, fine, I'm just going to smite the one patrol. This portion is full of "wait! what?" moments but, after reading some opinions reaching back 2500 years, of others far more knowledgeable than I, at least to me this is about humility. One rabbi wrote that this is about how to argue with others. Arguing is fine, but there are good arguments and bad arguments. If the goal is to win or bludgeon the other then the argument is useless and should be avoided. Rather, if the goal is to find common understanding then it's good and should continue. It doesn't mean you have to come to agreement, but if you're going to argue then do it right. That takes humility. @Eagledad, I put it here for a reason. The term Scoutmaster is denigrated because somehow all masters are deemed bad. But it's worse than that. All leaders, bosses and even knowledgeable people are considered highly suspect these days. That's a problem. There is not enough humility. And in another thread about how to sell scouting to parents, trying to sell leadership skills to people that don't even understand what good leadership means, that don't even trust leadership, doesn't seem to be productive. I agree that there are other problems that are more tractable for us to argue about.

It's a hundred year old program with hundred year old titles, oath and law. What's more, I first got into it just about 50 years ago. So, that makes me old and I've never really thought about the titles. I honestly don't care whether the titles change or not. If it works for new scouts and parents then we should do that, as it's for them anyway. I'm not sure they would care so who knows. While we're here I would like to add a 13th point to the scout law, however. I think Humble would be a good one. Maybe the assumption is that in order to be all of those other things like courteous and helpful, one has to be humble so there's no need to explicitly say it. It would just be easier to talk to some scouts, that are too full of themselves and starting to annoy everyone around them, that humility is a good thing. But that's a different topic.