Eagle1993

My understanding is that there is always a delay between administrations. If there is an issue with Trump's approval, perhaps this is a good opportunity to move away from the President of the US as the honorary President of Scouting America and have someone else serve in that role. David Montgomery? Mike Rowe? I'm not sure if there is an issue, but it would be interesting to see someone who is actually a former scout and exemplifies scouting ideals as the honorary president vs politicians.

This is from a FB post...

One interesting comparison. GSUSA has slightly more members but only 111 councils.

There is nothing in the bankruptcy settlement that forces council reduction. What was discussed during the bankruptcy was a BSA executive meeting at Philmont in August of 2021. This meeting was focused on BSA post bankruptcy. Devang Desai was on the stand talking about this meeting as insurers went slide by slide. Here were my notes (it was illegal to record the hearing so all I could do was quickly type away). Note that we are now nearly 4 years after that meeting ... so I expect some of this has changed. CO model may need to be replaced Councils are in trouble ... $400M of debt. Goal was to become the National Leader in Youth Safety Grow our Membership by making our program more relevant, easy fun. Fully digital program Make a single scout program (that was confusing to me, but on a slide) Slide showed reduction of councils down to 80 (but that was then marked up and changed with "streamline") Need to change how girls are included Outdoor method was mentioned in a lot of slides Goal of eveyone getting to 1st class Expand recruiting & fundraising Now, this was many years ago, so I expect national may have moved on from that meeting.

In the interview, based on info from former SE of Hiawathaland: - National forced them to merge as they believed small councils cannot succeed They joined Bay Lakes as it was in good shape Bay Lakes has been in decline since (membership & financials) They joined MCC Camp Hiawatha no longer in jeopardy due to scouting council realignment

I expect that will happen. During the bankruptcy, there was a cross examination of a National leadership meeting that occurred, including a review of the slide deck. The leadership meeting was a small group (sounds like less than 10 people) who admitted that BSA is in crisis and drastic actions would have to be taken. One part of that was about a significant reduction in councils and their target was 80 total councils. This was several years ago. I expect the financial picture is clear now and the results of the recent fundraising push will be in soon. We know National believes we have too many councils given the number of scouts we have, so I won't be surprised if they start "DOGEing" to reduce the number of councils.

My council has sold off 3 of its 4 camps over the last decade or so. Each time, they promised to reinvest the funds in the remaining camp(s). I saw nothing of the sort, only investment in new hires whose sole purpose seems to be gathering videos to help fundraising efforts. We had some tremendous volunteers in my district who planned an amazing celebration of our Cub Scout camp many years ago (when the camp was turning 100 years old ... before it was sold off). The idea was a council wide camporee, climbing walls, various scouting events, food trucks, fireworks, etc. Council leadership cancelled it as it had the chance to lose money (ignoring the publicity it would have generated). This led to a few of our key district volunteers leaving, never to return. Our council does almost nothing for Scouts BSA outside of merit badge clinics. They invest heavily in Cub Scouts but seem to think the program ends at 5th grade. Our Troop has a few members of the executive board, but it seems like they have become disillusioned with what they have been able to impact. Personally, I hope my council is absorbed my one of our neighboring ones, which seem to be better at putting on events for Scouts BSA and investing in their camps.

I think one issue is that too many try and recruit from unit volunteers, many if not most are parents of youth. District/council would be best served finding younger adults (21 - 30) before they have kids or former unit volunteers (50+). I used to be more active at the district level, but as my kids got older and their interests were varied, I ran out of volunteer hours to give ... and all of mine will be at the unit level. That said, my kids are aging, one will be headed to college in 2026 and the other a few years later. I could see volunteering at council/district level at that point.

Regardless of the month, all of the numbers show a program either in decline or barely hanging on.

We recently discovered and resolved an issue that had been preventing new users from signing up on Scouter.com. Thanks to @SCOUTER-Terry for their swift response in fixing this! If you’ve recently invited others to join and they had trouble signing up, they can now create accounts without any issues. Thanks for your patience, and we look forward to welcoming more scouters around the campfire! @MattR @RememberSchiff

This looks like a response to a request from a Pack for the IRS to provide tax guidance. I think it has been clear that scout accounts are in the grey area of tax regulations. This is a case of don't ask permission and you will likely be fine. If some kid buys a C8 Corvette with his scout account, the IRS may have some questions. Outside of that, I have never seen evidence of a single issue with the IRS.

Eagle Scout David Montgomery

Knowledge not shared is lost. Thanks for sharing..

Lujan rejected a substantial settlement in the Guam lawsuit right before bankruptcy. Now her clients will receive less than that offer and I expect she is personally and professionally vested in doing everything possible to undo that mistake. The BSA bankruptcy possibility was very well known, I'm not sure why she rejected that initial offer. I give her credit, she is fighting hard to represent her clients; however, over the last four years she seems to struggle to make solid arguments in court and rarely wins substantial rulings. I highly doubt the appeal will work.

I agree. One "benefit" of today's higher fees is that registered members are more likely active members. I remember earlier on, if our Pack didn't hear from a scout, we would pay for their renewal to avoid paperwork if they decided to come back. In addition, we had many scouts where parents would pay the renewal and we would end up rarely (if ever) seeing the scout. Given today's costs, I no longer see this behavior. I tend to believe the numbers today (perhaps except scout reach).