ParkMan

I suspect that if we look around the country, most councils are acting like the othe non-profits you describe. I know that our council is absolutely trying to do the right thing.

Let's take a look at some numbers. I pulled Orange County CA's website and 990 and took a look. According to their website, they serve 20,000 youth members. From their 990 in 2018, they had expenses of $11.8 million dollars. Of that $11.8 million, they spend: $4.8 million in salaries $1.1 million in payroll taxes and benefits $1.1 million in depreciation/amortization $1.2 million in occupancy $879K in office expenses $299K in staff travel $272K in insurance $270K in interest on loans $1.9 million in a variety of other expenses For income, they had $10.2 million. It came primary from: $3.6 million from contributions and grants $5.2 million from program income $500K from investment income $600K from inventory income (not sure what this is) $400K in miscellaneous income. I too think that a program fee is the direction councils need to move in. I look at these numbers and am struck by how little though the program fees move the needle. At a $60 fee per youth, that amounts to about 10% of their total budget. Councils will still have to obtain the bulk of their revenue in other ways.

Yes, you are correct - sorry to have been vague. The poly wool pants of link to look nice and go with the poly wool shirt: Scouts BSA Polyester Wool Uniform Short Sleeve Shirt, Men's I'm happy I purchased a set, but I don't take them to camp.

FWIW - It's not so much that it's anything goes. There is one set of pants that goes with each uniform shirt. Microfiber shirt - you purchase microfiber pants Canvas shirt - you purchase canvas pants Poly/wool shirt - you purchase poly/wool pants. Though I am sure that you technically can mix the materials, I almost never see that in reality.

Agree 100% - each uniform material has it's place and a contingent of folks who like them. Myself, my favorite uniform is the venturing nylon ones. I wish the BSA would produce a tan version of those. They are light, comfy, and keep up pretty well. My outdoor uniform is canvas. My son had the microfiber ones and I never liked how they aged. I thought that they look nice at first, but given a couple of years they start to look "soft" and. I've got a poly/wool uniform too. I like the look of it, but it's not rot really an outdoor uniform. You buy dress slacks to do with that shirt, which won't hold up well camping. I put this one as a uniform for folks who don't mind acquiring a variety of uniforms for different purposes.

I do believe that JTE needs to exist in some form. I was a long time Troop Committee Chair of a solid "Grade A" troop. Were we perfect - no, certainly not. But, when we got to JTE time we always achieved gold because we were doing most of the things on the form already. We had high participation, great program, lots of advancement, were the largest troop in the district, had a lot of adult volunteers, etc. We achieved all of this because we had a solid team of adults volunteers who were minding the ship. When I retired and started helping in the district, I realized the same thing as @Eagledad. Many units (perhaps more than 50%) were struggling with the basics. The common thread was usually a lack of focus on fundamentals. Monthly outdoor activity - maybe. Recruiting plan - nope. Patrol method - sometimes. So yes, those average and above average troops don't need JTE. But for those troops who are struggling it's a good blueprint of some things to focus on. Perhaps the mix isn't quite right and could be tuned - but I think it helps to have something.

While we can point to other institutions such as schools that require a lower adult presence, the BSA is simply not in a position anymore to do that. We can mourn what once was, but the reality is that even if the BSA had the ability to go back to the way it ran 30+ years ago, it really should not. Perhaps one day down the road trust will return and processes will improve, but that is unlikely to occur in any of our lifetimes. The best thing for Scouts now is to figure out how to best operate in this new reality.

If I look at the JTE requirements, 5 of 11 are program related. Pointwise, they contribute 900 points towards the total. You only need 1,000 points in 2021 to achieve gold and so almost all of the focus of the troop could be program and they'd get gold. I am sure there are other measures that would define a troop with a good program. Should we: replace some of the existing program items with new program items? replace some of the non-program items with more program items? add more program items keeping the scores the same? add more program items and increasing the scores needed at each level? Myself - I'm all for #4 here - adding more program items and increasing the overall score a troop needs to achieve at each level. I would be fully supportive of some of the kinds of program @TAHAWKmentioned above. I also very much like @MattR's suggestion including the honor patrol program. I could see adding an item to JTE that awarded points if the patrols are attempting to achieve honor patrol status. I do not believe that I would remove the non-program items though. Generally they all strike me as good goals for a strong troop to accomplish.

I am sure this is the trade off of all such strategic goals. Do we set an attainable goal or do we set an aspirational goal? I believe the BSA went for aspirational, not attainable. Both approaches have merits. I think it's just a choice in style.

I was thinking something more like: By 2030, we want to achieve 30% female youth membership. But, you are correct - simply saying that councils should show annual improvement towards the goal does allow for councils to claim success prior to achieving the 50%.

RIght - it strikes me that they believe the Scouting membership should mirror general population trends. We saw something similar with minority recruiting. I think one could argue that they could have introduced a series of graduated steps with milestones for councils to achieve. It looks to me like they just took the overall goal and said - "councils, make this your goal too." We can differ on whether it's the right goal or not, but it does seem to be what is happening.

Possibly it's a mistake - but also perhaps not. Scouting membership is in the range of 3% of total available youth today. Female membership is certainly much, much lower. It would strike me that there is a good probability that increasing the number of female Scouts is an achievable goal.

Hi @Chadamus, Sorry to be a few days late here. It's probably also worth noting the BSA publication, "Troop Leader Guidebook, Volume 1" describes a role of Assistant Scoutmaster for Advancement In the same manual, it also says: My interpretation of the BSA's materials is that a Troop can assign most of the traditional duties of an advancement chair/coordinator to an ASM. There still should be someone overseeing this on the Troop committee, but the week to week work can indeed be done by an ASM. Hope this helps.

Pardon a very off topic post... And thank you for being such a tremendous member here as well. Your posts are always well thought out and bring a lot to the discussion. Thank you for all your contributions over those five years!

Again - this continues to point to nothing but sour grapes from the GSUSA. I don't think anything. As far as I can tell, everyone here agrees on this topic.

Thanks! That mirrors what I've seen too. I'm happy to let the lawyers battle out who needs to pay what as a result of these mistakes. Myself, I'm willing to chalk to up to mistakes were made as long as the BSA does the right thing going forward. To me, that would seem the Scouting way to handle it. Somehow I do not expect that the GSUSA sees it the same way.

Do you have reason to show that it was not accidental?

I have no doubt that when the BSA first started the programs for girls at the Cub Scouts and Scouts BSA levels, some mistakes were made. It did not take long for us to receive clear instructions that we were in no way supposed to represent that were "Girl Scouts". Usually instructions like that come because someone made a bad choice and people recognized that more needed to be done. Though I am not a Scoutmaster like @Cburkhardt, I've seen enough of what has gone on in the formation of our troop for girls to know that everyone involved knew that this was not the Girl Scouts. Let's recognize this for what it is. Some units and some paid local professionals made some poor choices in the early days of rolling out the program for girls. The GSUSA is attempting to leverage those mistakes in an effort to punish the BSA. I expect that the GSUSA lawsuit is partly a rigorous attempt to protect it's branding and also partly an effort to harm the BSA out of spite. I have no doubt that within the GSUSA inner circle they are hurt that the BSA made this choice several years ago. I would suggest that we not feed into the GSUSA posturing. There is absolutely no organized misdirection effort by BSA at the national level. The BSA has been clear that we should not claim or suggest that we are GSUSA units. The BSA is not attempting to mislead families into joining the BSA. There may still be people out there who make poor choices - both at a volunteer level and a local professional level. When that happens I've no doubt that the BSA will stop it. This is one time that the BSA is attempting to do the right thing and I think we should recognize that.

Fully agree. I've made it a point to stop using labels myself whenever I can. If I sense myself about to add a label, I try to catch myself and internally ask - "why am I adding this label to the description?" I found that after a while, I really don't miss the labels at all.

This looks to me like simply legal posturing by the GSUSA. Having seen a couple of years of recruiting girls now, it's all been what you expect and it's all quite ethical. It's a big country and so I'm sure they'll find a few cases where this has happened - but it's far from a systemic issue.

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and feelings on the subject. I would simply offer that while there is a truth in much of what you write, this day had to come. There was no way that the BSA would ever be able to indefinitely continue to have a magazine called "Boys Life" in a true co-ed program. Youth today benefit from Scouting. Youth participating in Scouting need outstanding adult leaders to help them benefit from the program. We can all mourn what once was - but it doesn't help the youth of today to benefit from Scouting. I would hazard a guess that there is more you like about Scouting than there is that you dislike about Scouting. I would encourage you to fInd those things in the program that you enjoy and the youth enjoy and focus on it and help develop it.

Thanks. This looks like a good decision by the BSA.

For a newer troop, I would think a model like ours would be more challenging. Our system relies on the notion that our fixed costs are fairly low. We don't need to acquire equipment. We have a healthy stockpile of awards. I believe to make a model like ours work you'd need to increase the core dues and run pretty lean while you build up supplies. Angel donors are always a bonus if they exist. The downside to our model is that it financially discourages participation in events. Our low fixed costs make it easier for youth to join, but then backload many of the fees over the course of the year. So a scout constantly has to ask their parents for money for events. It makes it trivial to add more events and so it's possible to constantly be doing things in our world. This is in part is why we have the model we do - it allows us to be exceedingly dynamic. The upside to a model like @Cburkhardt has is that it reduces the barrier to event participation. A scout has already paid for the event, they might as well go.

I imagine our troop is somewhat traditional but has evolved to a model that appears to work well. In short, we have a budget model that attempts to separate fixed costs with those costs incurred from activities. Fixed expenses are shared by everyone, activities expenses are covered by people participating in activities. Fixed budget - We have a modest fixed budget that covers things like advancement, meeting supplies, adult leader training, new equipment purchases, and some upkeep on major equipment. The fixed budget comes out to $35 a year per scout. Activities budget - Every event has a separate cost that follows a pretty standard formula. The event fee covers food, gas, and incidentals for the event. There is also a small fee of a few dollars a scout that is added on to help cover overall budget items which are closely related to usage. Wear and tear on trailers is a good example of this. Event fees generally range from $15-$40 per scout per event depending on the size and scale. Pass through fees - We collect national dues and council program fees and then pay them to council. These vary year to year. I think that they are around $140 right now. This all gets very complicated. To make it simpler, we do allow Scout and families to prepay and have some money in reserve. That way when an event comes up a Scout doesn't need to pay each time. This is pretty popular. Council Fundraising - We generally avoid council fundraising. We will organize popcorn sales, but it ends up being more just for fun. The vast majority of our families would prefer to avoid any fundraising and so we don't build any expectations on fundraising into our budget. Enough of our scouts enjoy it that we do it as an activity. We make enough money for council from this that they don't grumble about our approach. A good portion of the troop's take from this goes into our scholarship program. Council FOS - We encourage robust participation in FOS. Behind closed doors, we have all the normal leader grumbles, but come FOS time and in front of families we enthusiastically support FOS. Yet, we don't twist arms or pressure people. The net from this is that we do very well for FOS and those families who contribute are happy to do so. Scholarships - We have an active scholarship program administered by the SM, CC, & treasurer. There are few rules on this and basically if either the SM or CC decide to shift some money to a scout it happens. There are no forms or anything here. These leaders have the flexibility to make the right call when it's necessary. Net of all of this - money is not an issue for our troop. We have enough funds to do whatever we want to do. We have a healthy bank account which enables us to make investments when necessary. Our families do not feel overcharged because they determine cost by participation. We are frugal enough and transparent enough with fees that parents don't grumble as they believe we are being fair.

That's good to hear. That would be smart of them. Yes - I concur that having it first would have been preferred. I couldn't agree more.