usarasa

I couldn't speak to how well, but our town isn't very large, with only one middle school and one high school, so I'd say it's fairly likely they know each other, with the possible exception of the newer Scouts that would still be in elementary school. I'm unaware of any matters of ego regarding the adults that resulted in the present situation.

I agree that this would be the best solution, but right now it's a non-starter with the other units, so my idea is hopefully an alternative that they'll find acceptable. Maybe they'd be open to it after spending some time in this arrangement, we'll see, but for now the answer is no.

All elected positions of responsibility would be maintained, and the SM/SPL opening the meeting would rotate every so often, time frame TBD. A single common program would be settled on, I'm thinking that the longer things go, the easier it would be to have everyone on one program anyway. As far as any kind of an exit strategy once there are enough for each participating troop to be decidedly more self-sufficient and competitive with the larger troop, my attitude was that we would cross that bridge when we come to it, since it could definitely take a while to achieve. I would imagine that at first, all Scouts would gravitate more towards the adult leaders they came in with, but the more they're used to the other leaders, the more they'll trust them, and the less any of the adults would likely mind.

Thank you for all of your excellent feedback, sorry I haven't had a chance to respond until now. What I had in mind was indeed that each troop act as a patrol within the larger group, keeping their unit numbers. The overall SM/SPL running a given meeting would rotate every so often, but leadership of the group as a whole would be a shared effort among all adult leaders. There would not be one single leader. The Scouts would all work together to form the program, just as they do within their own units now. Which patrol a new applicant would join is not something I've managed to figure out yet -- we certainly could run into the same issue of units being devoured that we already have. I'd like to think that since we'd all be together anyway that we could make an attempt to keep things relatively equal between the new sub-units, but that's definitely a subject that needs to be broached if this concept did get far enough along to be discussed with the other troops.

Hi everyone, here's the situation. Our town has 4 troops. One troop is somewhat large, and the vast majority of new Scouts go there. The other three troops are very small, each with around 5 or 6 Scouts, and when crossover time comes it's considered fortunate if one or two Scouts sign on with one of the smaller troops and not with the larger one. There have been years recently when no Scouts have gone to a smaller troop. It's getting to the point where we're concerned about the larger troop finally cannibalizing the others and being the only game in town. The quality of each troop's program doesn't seem to be a factor here, best as we can figure. A couple of the smaller troops have been around for 50-plus years. They've each said that merging is not an issue, as they all want to keep their troop numbers. So here's the idea I wanted to throw out there; I can't find anything suggesting this has been done or can/can't be done, so please forgive me if it's been brought up before. My suggestion is that the 3 smaller troops combine our efforts in such a way that we're not merged, but we're all at the same unit meetings together, we all do activities and events together, we recruit together, we fundraise together, we share each other's leaders and other resources, so that we can better compete with the larger troop. This would be a temporary set-up, where each troop gets to keep their numbers and the bank accounts and Scout shop accounts are still kept separately. Then when the group has grown to the point that each troop has a self-sustaining level of membership again, where they can compete with the larger troop on their own, everyone goes back to their separate ways (unless it's decided they want to continue being combined, if not merge). Apologies if I've not worded this very well. I'm hoping this will help keep the smaller troops alive and give the Scouts in our town a choice. Thanks in advance.