ParkMan

Interesting that you posted about that. I was thinking about the same after my prior post and the right structure for longer term ownership of camping resources. Legally separate "Friends Of" organizations might make a lot of sense here. One of the differences I see here is that initially there will be a much smaller professional structure at the national level. I wonder if we will see the same at the local level. If we start removing fundraising and membership drives, the district executives role becomes smaller. I wonder if we'll see a very small number of professionals per council going forward and a greater reliance on infrastructure.

I would assume that if the new organization of large councils could control the licensing, they could in essence all become mega councils. I would gather that during liquidation all current council agreements become void and the existing councils would in turn have no ability to license program materials from the new BSA until new agreements are made. Hypothetically, say that my council survived but did not join in with the 45 others and did not obtain licensing rights. We then effectively become a regional camping club for kids with no relationship to the new national. Could I as an individual simply then start a new council in that geography and purchase the licensing rights? Or more likely, doesn't the large council that licenses from the new national simply then contact every district and ask them to become part of that council? District volunteers and units have no particular reason that they couldn't simply jump ship and help reorganize in that territory for the new council. Would this not effectively trigger a mass council re-organization? It would be messy for a few months, but I sense that the big councils would quickly redraw the map so that they are not fighting with each other for territory. So in your case, doesn't Big City council simply take over all the other territories?

Thank you for such a throughout post - very impressive. I would agree with this sentiment. Whenever we talk membership here on the forum, conversations often tend to frame it as a choice - membership or quality. But in reality, a true focus on membership isn't about lowering the quality of Scouting to get more kids to join. True membership growth comes from delivering a quality Scouting program and then building membership around that. I see the same thing. For all the reasons you listed in your post, unit execution is crucial My gut tells me that we having many of the issues we see are because of poor unit execution. While I have no doubt that these are things that could be improved, I do not think they are the major factor in all of this. The Scouting program lacks the clarity to allow your average parent to pick up a book and start a successful pack or troop. Between the dynamics of the program and the reality that Scouting is inherently a group activity, you need a small team to make it successful. That team needs support, coaching, and guidance. Yet, in the last 30 years we've seen a steady, continual decline in community support for Scouters. In person training, roundtables, district activities, commissioners, etc... In almost every meaningful way the very infrastructure that is needed more than ever is growing weaker and weaker. Quality on going training isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. As support for Scouters has diminished, so too has unit quality.

There is somewhere around 74 million kids in the United States today. At some point a program focused around providing to those 74 million kids needs to ask itself - how many are joining? The world is full of good ideas. I can rattle off 50 ideas that would make Scouting better. All those ideas require thousands of hours of peoples' time and lots of money to make them work. If every idea that gets raised is measured solely on whether it's a good program idea or not we'd be all over the map as a program. Similarly - tone person's good program idea is that it's another person's bad program idea. @David CO likes Lone Scouts and thinks it's the fix for Scouting. Others look at it and think it's a bad idea. How does one evaluate such an idea without some sort of basis to measure it. To be honest, I think that's one of the issues the BSA has today - too many knee jerk reactions to different ideas people have without really thinking through if it actually will help build a better program and attract more members. Soccer Scouts, STEM Scouts? These are all someone's good, half baked idea.

We have a BSA to provide Scouting to kids. Seems pretty natural that we'd measure success of the BSA by how many members of has. I think you know the path to seeing Lone Scouting again. If you really want it, work for it. The rest of this stuff is just platitudes.

Sort of, but I'm sure you know it's more complicated than that. Membership and money enable the BSA to provide programming. Without membership and money, the BSA would be 3 guys sitting around in a tent talking about how great Scouting could be. Yeah, it would be nice if the there was a magic fund that enabled the BSA to operate with less regard for either of them, but it doesn't. This is where a great endownment would be helpful - but alas, it doesn't exist. Membership is also what enables the BSA to fulfill it's mandate of bringing Scouting to the youth of America. If they've got the world's best program, but no-one joins then what's the point I do get your point. It would be nice to just have a great idea and the have people go implement it. But, membership is what is used in our world to measure the efficacy of major initiatives at this point. All that aside - this is where you've got to decide what you care about. If you want Lone Scouting, there's a path - demonstrating it can grow membership. Why not explore it?

Which is why I think you have to decide what is more important to you: Lone Scouting based on the BSA advancement model Lone Scouting based on a different advancement model If you care about the BSA advancement model, then you need to do this within the BSA. If you don't, then start your own. Yes - I know this is factually correct. However, I don't think getting rid of paper COs brings much real value to the BSA. The kind of value that will get the BSAs attention is membership growth.

They are council employees.

This is where we need a group of proponents of Lone Scouting to advocate for it. If I wanted to see this happen, I'd get my fellow Lone Scouting supporters together and come up with a description of how it could work and the value it would bring to Scouting. How would it attract new youth to Scouting, what would they do, how many members could it attract, how would it be additive to our current programs? Then I'd call up a progressive local Scouter (a District Commissioner, District Chair, or VP of Programming perhaps) and get them on board. From there we'd take it to the Council Key Three and get them to support it. What I find becomes important in this is that a group needs to have a plan that they enlist others to support. That plan has to bring value to Scouting and be achievable. If the council key three and board support this, then the OA will make it work. I suspect that this is a non-starter. Why would the BSA ever agree to this? If the BSA did this they'd in essence be starting a competing Scouting program using the intellectual property of the BSA. Hows does doing that help either the BSA or the youth it serves? I think you'd find a lot more support for this within the BSA. However, if you just want a "Lone Scouting" program that doesn't use the BSA's materials, then I don't see why you can't just go start one.

Interesting development. Seems like the BSA has a real opportunity to clean up their IT systems so that the role of the registrar is substantially easier. If ever there was a position in the professional staff that could be made easier - it is that one.

It's very interesting. I gotta wonder why the color choice and shoulder loops though. Color scheme is 100% BSA colors. Good for the GSUSA, but I don't get it. Is an announcement coming I don't know about?

My gut tells me that in this climate, if a group could articulate a mechanism for a lone scout program to work and coexist alongside traditional patrol based programs then it's a possibility. I've been around enough high level Scouters to know that the door is open for all kinds of innovative activities right now. The challenge in things like this is knowing how to talk to the right people about it. You call up your DE or local membership chair and start talking Lone Scouts and they'll go tilt. They are generally not going to have the right opportunities in the organization to even know how to raise it. But, if an organized, knowledgeable group had the right approach for raising it internally, then anything is possible.

This sounds like a wonderful program - even in today's uber connected world of 2020. I don't know why this is an either/or scenario. You want the lone scout experience - join up that way. You want patrol method Scouting just a Troop. Both can exist can't they? I'm on board 100% - what do we need to do?

Hi @5thGenTexan, Congrats on getting ready for the course. You have my sincerest hope that you have an absolutely wonderful time. I attended just before I became a Cubmaster and it was a great help for me as I took that role on. Like you, I have a hard time with delegating. I had a blast and really enjoyed it. I've since staffed three times in large part because of the wonderful experience it was. I'm looking forward to hearing about your course as you attend! @BAJ - Thanks for the amazing review. It's great to hear such positive feedback. Those of us who will be involved with staffing the new curriculum are excited about it and so it's wonderful to hear such positive reactions from someone living it. I'm thrilled that you are excited for weekend 2!!

What I'd like to see if an agreement that within the confines of this forum, we are all open and encouraged to share our opinions honestly. I, for example, have no problem saying that I think that the professional structure is too autocratic and that this has a very negative result in how professionals interact with volunteers. In a society which is moving in the direction of high skilled, knowledge based workers, too many of the structures we have in place in the BSA run contrary to that. I would hope that we can find a way to generally agree that we have a shared goal of building a stronger Scouting program centered around the organization we know as the BSA. We can debate and discuss the strengths, weaknesses of the BSA. We can discuss how to deal with them. We can discuss how to advocate for change in light of them. As much as possible we need to try and rally around constructive solutions - even in the issues and politics part of the forum. I would like to see our collective knowledge help someone like @Eagle94-A1in his problems with a dysfunctional district/council. We shouldn't leave him feeling like the only resolution to his problems is to have the BSA get liquidated. I guarantee that it is possible for volunteers with the right acquired skills to reform his district. We should be offering ways to accomplish that instead of commiserating about how awful the professionals are. And yes, there are some things that we cannot change. I think we should be free to remark about how stupid particular choices and decisions are - but then follow it up with strategies for making the most of them. My Scout law parts here are: helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, & cheerful.

Remarkably well said. Thank you for capturing it so well.

I mean no disrespect by this, but that feels like a distinction without a difference. Within the community here, I think open dialog and yes - complaining makes complete sense. Express your frustrations and I'll be here to support you in that. I think that's the benefit of a community like this. The term "inside baseball" comes to mind. By and large, most Scouts, families, and frankly - even Scouters - are not that worried about these things. I'm a pretty with it Scouter and I've got absolutely no idea what the national professional structure that oversees the programs really is. Where do we camp, how do we get more members, who's going to take the kids camping - these are the things that occupy most leaders minds. At the district/council level concerns are things like - how do we get more units to our summer camp or how do we help those packs with 8 scouts get to 30+? You and I have had conversations about how criminal it is that your experience is not better leveraged in your district. To me, that's my basic premise. We need people working in Scouting in constructive roles at the district & council level to build the kinds of programs that kids want. We cannot wait for national to make some sort of program ruling on how things work. We need knowledgeable Scouters engaged. Yet that engagement has to be constructive. If you want to come over to our district, I think we'd love to have you.

Let me get this straight. The strategy is to complain about what we have, hope it fails, and then hope it is the replaced by an organization like you like. If so, I am quite certain that there is no chance this works out as you hope. The most likely path to getting the Scouting unit you want is to be building such a unit now. Then, when there are opportunities for change and influence, provide both. This is part of why constructive engagement is so important.

I expect you are correct that WOSM would likely appoint someone to replace the BSA as our representative the world body. However, I do not think it would result in a successful Scouting program at anything approaching the levels of involvement of the BSA. The national Scouting resources are owned by the BSA and would most certainly be lost. Philmont, Northern Tier, etc. would go away. Since the idea is that councils would go away in favor of this new entity, I suspect that almost all council camps would be lost. You'd have a new Scouting program that is unfamiliar to most. What keep generations coming back has as much to do with history as it does a fundamental commitment to "pure" Scouting. Maybe many years down the road the new organization would be stronger - but I seriously doubt it. Many of the core issues that people complain about are simply the result of how the BSA has dealt with real world pressures: YPT - the pressure of lawsuits, insurance, and risk management focus on membership - this is the result of an organization that has to deliver on membership growth numbers dilution of the program - again, the result of trying to make membership numbers focus on money - the minute you have facilities and staff someone has to pay for them I don't see how some other fledgling organization would make choices all that much different from the BSA. If anything, I would expect the new Scouting organization to give volunteers even less control over the program. Further, I suspect any new Scouting program to look a lot more like the GSUSA model than the BSA model.

I don't think there is a Scouter.com problem at all. If anything, I think that what we see here is emblematic of the country as a whole. It strikes me that there is less knowledge sharing today and more debating today. What I cannot figure out is where people go who have questions on how to implement the best program possible. I guess I wonder - when does our interest in discussing the future of the program overwhelm our ability to enjoy the program and advocate for it? I am the first to acknowledge that national policies and structure are important. It strikes me that the challenge is to keep our feelings on the big picture balanced with our desires to build the best local program possible. In the midst of these lawsuits, this seems to me to be the big question. While one may think the BSA organization is a joke and that it led to all these cases of abuse, but why turn that into a desire to see the BSA fail? The likelihood that a "better" version of the BSA will replace it is very low. So, are we not better off working internally to build the best Scouting programs possible? Is it perhaps a more contemporary idea that we should dissolve and replace organizations instead of improving them?

Scouting is a strange volunteer experience. Scouting needs volunteers in a number of difference levels in the program. We need people who are thinking about how to take a 9 year old on the best weekend trip ever or how to take a 16 year old on a meaningful backpacking trip. We also need people who are thinking about organizational issues at the unit, district, council, or area level. One of the wonderful things about the program we have is that there are places for all kinds of volunteers with all kinds of skills. I think we'd be better off if we simply recognized that and embraced it. @MattR - I hear you. I periodically get to the point where I need to step back for a bit myself. For me, the spring and summer so far have been that. Maybe it's just me - but it feels like we are always pissed off about something in Scouting these days. Unit leaders hate district, council, and national. Volunteers dislike professionals. etc.. We don't like Wood Badgers, OA members, <insert your own group>. What I miss are the days of volunteers working together to try & make Scouting great - at whatever level you volunteer at.

Yes and no. Legally, structurally, and financially yes - the bankruptcy judge has the primary impact. However, in the hearts and minds of volunteers and members, the bankruptcy judge is a smaller factor. What I expect will be just as destructive to the future of the BSA is how the active volunteers support the program. The more of us that lose faith the more challenging it will be for the program going forward. If the BSA has a committed group of volunteers it can recover from anything.

They may not be different, but they get to the nature of someone's dislike of the BSA and our prospects in the future. For those people who so strongly dislike the BSA, I suspect there is no path forward that keeps the BSA in place as an organization that provides a Scouting program. If someone is upset about what happened years ago, then there is a chance a reformed BSA that demonstrates it's commitment to youth safety can win their trust. For those who strongly dislike (dare I say hates) the BSA as an organization, then I find it improbable that those people can find a way to support the BSA.

Does your dislike of the BSA as an organization all stem from the actions of the abusers years ago and the BSA not being more aggressive in stopping it? I was under the impression you disliked the organization because of it's structure and distinction today.

I don't think that we are even remotely talking about the same here. You seem to have a visceral dislike of the BSA and want to see it fail. I believe that having a strong Scouting program in the USA is a good thing. I'd rather see reform of the BSA so that it can really focus enabling successful Scouting programs in our communities.