yknot

That's sort of true but sort of not. Every year since the pandemic BSA has had one scheme after another that has allowed it to carry inflated numbers so that you have not always been looking at even apples to apples when looking at Dec. 31-Dec. 31 numbers. There will be some inflation of the March/April numbers because of the new renewal scheme but it will be interesting to see what they are. If they are down from the December 31 2024 number, even with the inflationary effects of rolling renewal, that would be interesting.

That's why the March/April figures have always been more accurate. There's a certain percentage of baked in bloat year to year. This year is going to be a little harder to figure out because I think with the change to rolling self renewals vs. prorated renewals, they will continue to remain on the books for, depending on what you've read and where, anywhere from 60 to 180 days. I'm thinking March/April, though, will be a truer picture.

I think actually these might be somewhat inflated. I'm hoping someone will give us a look at the numbers end of March/early April.

It would be nice to return to the days when there were at least some independent, ethical journalists and media outlets that attempted to remain objective. As far as young reporters, while traditional print media has mostly disappeared, there are other potential arenas for scouts to try. Township and county newsletters, news services, and websites; middle school and high school morning news shows; chamber of commerce, tourism, environmental and community lifestyle publications or even social media pages are all places to pitch an article or a post about a scout event or activity of note. It doesn't have to be traditional or mainstream print media.

4-H membership has grown significantly. Pre pandemic I think they were 4 million, dropped, but are now at 6 million. YMCA youth membership is up. Youth sports participation in traditionally tracked team or conventional individual sports is down but many non traditional sports have seen exponential growth in participation.

In 2019, about 2.1 million youth in BSA. In 2023, slightly less than a million. In 2019, about 1.7 million youth in GSUSA. In 2023 slightly more than a million. As of October, there are around a million girls in GSUSA and about 880,000 +/- scouts in BSA/SA.

Good news. Hopefully some kind of public private land preservation deal can be worked out. It looks like an incredible piece of property still open space in a developing area where future parkland will be greatly needed.

The way it was explained to me was that the impacts of the bankruptcy case and lawsuits will continue to affect the liability insurance market for a number of years if not decades. As individual insurers or insurer groups encounter these rolling effects, we probably shouldn't be surprised if their recommendations change and/or rates increase.

The 22,000 are not all ineligible volunteers. It is a disciplinary database that includes a range of incidents, from the most egregious abuse to those who have been directed to complete additional training before returning to their role as either a coach, athlete, or official. Currently SafeSports is directly responsible for at least 11 million youth but throws a much wider net in that is also encompasses collegiate age athletes and beyond.

There are closer to 8,000 released files. That is not the total file count because an unknown number were removed in the 1990s in a bulk purge. Approximately 60 million youth are registered to play sports each year in the United States compared to the low numbers involved in scouting. Anecdotally, multiple victims who filed abuse claims have noted that their abusers are not listed in the released files despite having been reported to organized scouting.

I think that was for actually making up fake memberships although it predates my time. This is counting charters and memberships past the end of the year through a three month grace period that extends into March. They include them in the membership tally they publicize on or around Jan. 1. They didn't publicize a membership total in January of this year, 2024, though so even with that scheme, as the 11/23 numbers showed, it must have been a decline. Under the new registration scheme, SA will now allow themselves to count expired memberships as pending for six months while they continue to send renewal notices.

Numbers from 12/23 were inflated, as they are end of year in every report that the BSA issues in early January. That's because the BSA doesn't reconcile its membership until March. The most accurate membership number is generally April to April. Somewhere on this Forum there was a post from I think Malveaux @malraux who had an accurate count from last year that was more along the lines of 875,000.

The actual membership number July of 2023 was somewhere around 875,000, so the drop isn't that dramatic. BSA/SA has always played a shell game with its membership numbers. The ones it generally announces on January 1 or thereabouts have always been inflated. It's better to compare mid year numbers year to year. There has been a substantial drop but it's in the few tens of thousands combined.

Fall hawk watches along any of the nation's flyways are reliably good for daytime spotting and for honing ID skills. On moonlit nights, point bins up at the moon to see if songbirds are on the move. On big flight nights when conditions cooperate, it's awe inspiring to see streams of them flying by. This is a really fun tool to look at what is flying over your neck of the woods each night. You just enter in your state or county: https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/migration-dashboard/

That is limiting if it is only for 14 and up. The system I'm most familiar with is used from middle school ages on up.