MattR

We need a way to measure or gauge scout-led, older scout enthusiasm, and things closer to the fundamentals. Not sure how but it would make a lot of things easier for everyone to see issues. Scouts, Scouters, Parents, District. Who is doing the cooking (and buying the food)? Who is deciding on the events and how well are they attended? I don't even know how to do that so I'm afraid metrics can get out of hand, kind of like uniform inspections. If it were part of the regular program, say start, stop, continue, and the troop regularly did this then it would be easier to find. We talked about this once before and I had said it's too subjective. I think a few people came up with good rebuttals. Rather than giving units a canned script, have the units work with the district to write one? The reason I don't want to be a UC is tracking things like advancement is just not interesting to me as I don't see the benefit. Figure out how to make it useful and I'd consider helping out.

Many people have personal and professional accounts. Not a problem for me.

Curious about commissioner best practices: is there supposed to be a big feedback loop between units and the district staff? For example, there are 4 packs that can't get anyone to step up, let's have a barbeque and talk about how easy it is to run a pack. My district doesn't have the power to do that but I'm just wondering if that's the idea. As best I can tell the focus is mostly on fixing i's and it's. The issues most units have are people related - get more that know what they're doing.

Oops, forgot the most important item: Remove the silos. National seems to consist of disparate groups that are so focused on their small fiefdoms that, collectively, they just chip away at the most fundamental aspects of scouting. It seems there are silos for safety, future jobs, lifelong learning, not having fun with toy guns or anything that looks like it, advancement, citizenship, JTE/WB/training/EDGE, and leave no trace. In the meantime we've been wondering what happened to the Patrol Method, Scout Led, and Fun silos. These are really fundamental ideas and they've been crowded out. There needs to be someone very high up that truly understands how important it is for scouts to take ownership, and this person needs the authority to defend that from all the other ideas coming from these silos, that are just boring kids into submission. Every single MB does not need a requirement about safety or future job possibilities. There's nothing wrong with squirt guns. At the same time patrols need to be encouraged to do their own thing. This is not a program change. This is restructuring national so they focus on the fundamentals. There needs to be one super silo, the one that defends the fundamentals of scouting. This should be led by the guy with the vision that has been mentioned elsewhere.

We've had a couple of commissioners over many years. One was totally useless, but we got him because our troop was very strong. Our troop is still good and we have a commissioner that shows up at all of our committee meetings. He is a good source of information about the district. He hasn't been asked to solve any of our problems and does not attempt to. @Beccachap, there might be other reasons for a quick change in cognition, such as something to do with meds. As for kids that want to join but the parents don't speak English, you can ask the kids to translate for you. Or ask them to ask the parents if there's someone else that can help, such as an older sibling. Or use google translate.

It could be, in general. But I suspect that neither the council or area people know how to run a business. Just a few examples. The 2018 financial numbers changed between reporting the 2018 numbers and the 2019 numbers such that in both cases things looked great. That's a huge no-no. Although our membership has dropped markedly in the past 5 years there has been no attempt to lower staffing, especially the staff that do nothing, or reduce capital expenses. Currently, my council has less than the equivalent of a month's salary in the bank and there is no money expected for a couple of months. They have not hired someone to run summer camp so there is nobody working on staffing camp. Hence, they have already missed the opportunity to hire good staff. My guess is they will not hire staff until after fos comes in in May, or they will dip into money raised for capital improvement of camps, another no-no, with no idea how to return that money. However, their JTE numbers are probably silver, so things are pretty good. BTW, the reason I know all of this is because I was on the district staff. I quit because I got tired of fighting off the council, which was only interested in raising event prices to increase their income. Because they're mismanaging their money I was asked to raise camporee costs to $40.

I also told scouts they need a way to take notes. 5 points!

A few things: 1) Entry into scouts at different ages. There seems to be this model that we have to grab youth when they're young because after that we'll never see them again. Hence tigers and lions. Rather, I like the idea of splitting cubs in 2 and encouraging the idea that the older cub and scout programs are a great time to enter scouts. Less burnout for one. Also, a lot of kids are starting to drop out of sports just about the time scouts starts up. That's a big, untapped group of kids. I don't know how to encourage this. I think too many parents, that don't understand scouts, just assume scouts is just more of the same cubs. 2) Move the emphasis from advancement to having fun learning skills. A) Scouts want to do. Rewrite all the requirements so scouts are doing more and talking less. The point is not to perfectly train a scout in any skill, it's to make trying the skill fun. B) Learning skills is more important than advancement. Yes, I keep pushing for simplification and I apologize, but advancement is just a huge resource sink. It drives unit activities, summer camp, and MB fairs. It drives kids away from scouts because they aren't so much interested in check boxes as having fun. It's not that I want to get rid of eagle, I just want to get it back to the point where eagle was nice, not the sole purpose of scouting. There are requirements for MB counselors as to who can be one and what they should do. Just enforce them. Remove MB fairs. Make summer camp more about doing fun things and less about the class block schedule. C) Write the Big Book of Scout Fun. This is a resource for patrols and den leaders. It's a big expansion of the field guide and program features. It includes multiple, specific ways to have fun learning a skill, with your patrol. It can also include ways to make money. Dutch oven cooking, making a knife, starting a lawn mowing business, fun games with orienteering, identifying trees, making your own tent, star gazing with phone apps, cooking the perfect pancake. This could just as well be a wiki. The point is the focus is currently on advancement because it's laid out so well, whereas fun is just an abstract idea. Make fun ideas more concrete. 3) Make a push for after school scouts. After school scouting would take care of marketing and also open up scouting to more kids. Parents picking up their kids would see other kids wearing a neckerchief and they'd start asking questions. Also, make a push to get scouts back into schools. Even if it's the normal evening meetings. It would help make scouting more visible. 4) Combine scouts, sea scouts and venturing. Again, the focus is having fun, not eagle. If a troop wants to focus on sail boats then encourage it. Same for climbing, shooting, skiing, biking, service, running after school programs and anything else that a scout might enjoy and find a purpose in. Maybe, after getting First Class, a scout should decide on his path. Besides, there's no reason for entirely different uniforms for these programs.

Well said. Isn't this what servant leadership encompasses?

Perfect timing, @Cburkhardt. I just spent last evening talking to a financial guy about how totally screwed up our council is. The SE hires the board, so they will never complain. A capital fundraiser of $6M is in progress and the SE is already siphoning money off of it for other things (he can't explain what, though) The council president is a yes man. And the area leadership is chummy with the SE, so they will never do anything about the issues. The point is, for at least 20 years our council has been run by 2 different SE's that have no expertise in how to run a business. It used to be that we'd get enough donors to cover the mistakes. No more. All of the training in the world can't fix this hot mess. So, the most important change is replace the top down culture with servant leadership. The relationships between areas and councils, councils and districts, and districts and units needs to change. "How can I help" and "tough love" should be the mottoes. Also, have a standard best practices for every council that is transparent so anyone can see financial mismanagement. JTE is not enough. A council is a business so run it that way. This includes oversight to ensure the SE is doing a good job. The CO's should get annual reports that clearly explain the finances. Change the hiring model. Allow councils to hire the best people they can find rather than the current internal dictates from above that we now have. A retired VP at one of our local companies could do more in a day than our SE can do in a month. Once we get real leadership all sorts of possibilities arise. The same thing applies for areas. Make it possible to fire people that don't perform.

I won't flame you, but I do have a slightly different experience. We had two different scouts that were on the spectrum. One might have been co-morbid with ADHD. Anyway, one scout had a parent that was heavily involved, knew the issues, and taught us how to work with his son. Everything worked great. Another parent didn't want to admit their son had challenges. They did volunteer for a while but eventually their son got in so many fights that they took him out. So, it depends on the parents. I will add that kids with hyperactive ADHD likely will not sit still for advancement. They should have been taken out and run around. That's how they're wired. For inspiration look up famous people that have/had ADHD.

True, but a program that only needed 2-3 people working 2 hours a week would eliminate the issue of not having enough volunteers, or those volunteers would be having a lot more fun. And, as @yknot said, scouting would be more competitive with other youth activities. Since this thread is about helping districts help units, the question is how do districts help units run a program with fewer volunteers? Off hand, I'd say units need a lot more training that isn't even close to what districts and councils currently give. JTE certainly needs to be rewritten.

Absolutely, the gear can be done on the cheap. I still have a Tyvek tent we made. But what about the other costs? $100 for unit dues, $400 for summer camp, $200 for weekend campouts, $200 for FOS (that is the "recommended" amount per scout in my council) and $60 to national. So, without gear or uniform or high adventure it's over $900/year. Oh, and parents that volunteer also get charged. Of those costs, the money used at the unit level are $300. If we did our own summer camp that would cut costs by about $150. If we skipped camporees and did our own that would save about $50. I'd rather see scouts working a job and getting paid than working on eagle. Better yet, working as a patrol. Wouldn't the program be more meaningful if there were half the campouts and the scouts worked together to pay for their trips by raking leaves, shoveling sidewalks, walking dogs, or cutting lawns - rather than selling popcorn for the council? Talk about life skills. Forget personal management MB, just pay for summer camp. I bet a lot of scouts would be a lot more critical of summer camp if they had to pay for it. I know some parents that did this but I wish more had done it. How much money can a scout comfortably make? I think that should drive their expenses, and what the council and national charges.

let me see, someone was complaining about not enough comments on this thread? I think this thread has mostly come down to there are needs for more volunteers. The bigger question for me is why does scouting require so many volunteers? We have 1000 scouts in our district and we have, I don't know, 2 dozen units with, say a dozen volunteers in each unit and the district needs another 60 people (but isn't close to that). So we need nearly 1 volunteer for every 3 scouts? That's crazy.

I'm not talking about scouts, I'm talking about 20 something folks. Likely the same ones that work at the summer camps. Is that who you're disagreeing with? Ideally, it would be nice to get college students to volunteer but my experience has been they aren't very reliable. BTW, I took my daughter out of girl scouts because the troop was charging other troops to have her train them.

And that's how we could get scouts as an after school program, making it so much easier to recruit scouts. And those older scouts in high school could be used in those schools. I think one could apply for grants to fund it.

Reducing or simplifying the program to make it easier on volunteers should be national's vision. That vision should be simple enough that every volunteer understands it. That would help everyone. Volunteers, parents, scouts, district, council, donors, prospective parents. Everyone. Let's just say the vision is "fun with a purpose" and the purpose is developing responsible young adults with good character. Cub burnout is certainly going against that as so many cubs leave before they get to scouts. Another problem is advancement at all costs. It seems like a lot of district effort goes into that. It's not that advancement is bad it's just that it's sucking limited resources. One event that districts shouldn't have to put on are MB fairs. Shouldn't the district focus be more on helping units achieve the aims of scouting? Rather than a MB fair a video on how to cold call a MB counselor as well as efforts to make more MB counselors available would better help that vision. Good training is something the district or council can provide. One thing I've noticed is that the reason there's so much focus on advancement is that it's all laid out. Requirements, ranks, badges. It's all so simple. Just follow along. On the other hand, having fun learning skills is this vague abstract idea that requires a lot of work for people to turn into something concrete. It requires some imagination and time to play with the ideas. I've spent years coming up with ideas for my troop and the district and it takes a lot of time and effort. Training to help scouters with that might be really beneficial. The same goes for developing camaraderie within a patrol and the patrol method for that matter. That is getting closer to the vision. That all said, the district nor council have the resources to make this training available. Again, national could really help with this.

Maybe a quote about how challenges can be blessings in disguise will help? (maybe for you or maybe your troop) Anyway, suggestions in no particular order: Talk to the parents of the scout with the most severe disabilities. Can they help? Having to remind a scout to go to the bathroom is asking a lot. If scouting is just a reprieve for the parents then ask your troop if this is what they're interested in doing. If so, figure out how to share the load. Next, talk to the scouts. The issue you brought up is competitions between patrols. First of all, find out if they have a problem with the competitions. If they don't care about the competition then your problems are over. If they do or just some do, then next talk about the scout law. At the same time recognize that their problems are real. On the one hand they need to help and on the other they want to compete. Now you're set to ask the most important question: how do you guys want to solve this? You might be surprised at the insights they have.

I agree in that what a council really needs is just one person with a vision. One of two people needs that vision. Either the council president or the SE. If they don't, as in my council's case, I'm not sure how any of the changes discussed can happen. My council is broke and the board is just another income stream. That's all it does. But bankruptcy will likely not change anything with the councils. If anything, there will be less oversight. I'm not sure how there could be less, though. @David CO, I will add one thing, though. I like your idea of getting the CO's more interested. Every CO I know of is interested in helping kids and in particular, kids that need more help. Their input would be very valuable. And the goodwill between CO's and the council would help the local scouting scene.

Maybe that silence tells us where people see the issues.

I think there are different types of people needed. Those that understand bureaucracies, those that understand scouting and those that understand the kids in their community. I wish luck to anyone looking to change their board.

I think that's great and I wish it were the rule rather than an exception. It doesn't appear that anyone is promoting it. I looked for scoutreach websites and found something on the "wayback machine" (an archive of old web pages). I'm not real familiar with Boys and Girls Clubs, so I looked around. In my county (which is also my district) there are 3000 youth in B&G clubs while there are 1000 scouts. B&G clubs do have leadership opportunities for 11-13 year olds and 14-18. I don't know much more than that and there certainly is some overlap. Outdoors and adventure, not so much. As for barriers to entry, the challenge seems to be the same as the BSA - finding adult-ish help and donations. I'd be up for helping these kids do scouty things once a week.

Rather than hijack @Cburkhardt's thread(s) on restructuring councils I'm starting a new thread. Between those threads and my recent trip to Rwanda visiting a kid my wife and I sponsor, it just seems to me that the BSA has bigger problems than how to deal with scout shops and the annual membership fee to national. Kids in Rwanda don't need scouts so much as they need a full meal every day. The organization that connected my wife and I to the kid we sponsor are focused on these poor kids. They constantly ask: what do we need to do to help these kids? The BSA, on the other hand, is not asking what do the vast majority of kids in the US need? They're asking how do we get more kids in scouts? Essentially, they've got a hammer and they're looking for nails - and communities have shifted to wood screws. The kids that could really use scouts aren't in it. When we compare the cost of scouts to elite sports teams we exclude all those kids that can't afford elite sports teams. In the meantime I saw estimates of 20 million kids that are waiting to enter an after school program. The BSA model is expensive in both money and parental time, neither of which a broad section of our society has. If the aim is to help kids grow then those 20 million kids are low hanging fruit compared to the 2 million currently in the BSA. The problem is those kids don't have money. While there has been some attempts at including these kids, like Scoutreach, they gave up. (Go to scouting.org and search on scoutreach and it's a ghost.) They likely gave up because they wanted to keep the same scout model of parents running programs in the evening. Why the evening and why parents? After school and with retired adults along with high school and college students sounds much more appealing. Rather than the goal be eagle, how about helping run a unit at a local middle school? Certainly money is an issue. Donations have dropped off. Some people blame it on membership rules. Maybe it's also because, being an elite youth organization, donors don't see it as helping the kids that need help. We've all noticed that CO's typically don't participate in units, either monetarily or in decisions. They provide a place to meet and that's about it. If, instead, scouting was directed at the kids that these CO's are more interested in, is it possible donations would start going up and participation would increase? Churches? Schools? United Way? What kids are they interested in helping? I don't know what the answer is, I just see a problem. Or maybe I'm just ready to move on.

Just a hunch, but maybe this extra digit thing is a leftover from bad software practices decades ago and each council decides their own way to deal with the fact that there's still no way to filter a database by unit type. It's just truly amazing to me that this is still an issue. It's sort of like why ID numbers are still not unique across BSA. Oh well, something else for the new guy to fix.

For the scouts that join my troop it makes me feel like we're doing the right thing. For scouts that join another troop it gives me pause to wonder why, but I'm sure glad they stay in scouts. Usually, scouts join our troop because we do more than their old troop. The scouts that join other troops from ours go because they want a smaller troop or they have friends there. A few transfered because they wanted to do less (!)