yknot

It's policy in your state as of last year and the policy was enacted with the broad support of tribal associations in your state. Several schools have given up Warrior appelation.

This has been long overdue and likely will have spillover impact on the BSA's continued inappropriate appropriation of aspects of Native American culture.

Anything notable was discussed at the subsequent committee meeting and became part of the minutes.

Our campout critiques were always delivered in the form of roses and thorns at the meeting following the campout. I think the idea that everyone thinks of both a positive comment as well as something that could be improved was helpful to getting useful feedback.

It will be the last year for at least a full two maybe three year cycle depending on how long they now keep lapsed memberships on the books before there is any stability in the year to year numbers.

The past couple of years National has reported growth on January 1 using the December 31 numbers but after March 31 you would see that it was an actual loss not a gain for the reasons you note. Based on what we were shown here in early December, it seemed like that wasn't going to be able to work for 2024. I just wondered if anything had changed. Keep in mind with the new rolling membership strategy, the March recharter cut off may lose some of its significance. I'm not sure how they are going to work it, but I think BSA said new rolling memberships would have a six month renewal grace period so while the charters might be accurate, they might still claim the memberships under the rationale that they are hoping they will transition over to another unit.

Like PACAN I'm still looking for some national 2023 membership numbers. As far as I can tell, BSA hasnt yet published a year end recap unlike most prior years. The last numbers kindly posted by Malraux didn't seem to trend toward an increase for 2024 but you never know.

I think they can say you can't do it, but I don't know that they have a way to prevent you from fundraising if you decide to ignore them. The popcorn thing is a huge problem for many units and you would not be alone in going rogue. Far from it. They do have some sticks they can beat you with though so be prepared. Our units opted out -- politely, but firmly -- and endured a lot of threats. But we continued to make an in lieu contribution to council from our new, more successful fundraising efforts and our membership grew, so within a year or two they left us alone. Hopefully you're in a reasonable council.

Keep in mind there are currently 75 million school children in the US and close to to 10 million adults working in K-12 educational settings each year. While CSA is a concern in any setting where adults have access to kids, the numbers in scouting spike high given the relatively small slice of the population involved.

There is no point comparing sports to scouts, either as an activity or as an expense. Ten days at Philmont can break down to be just about as much.

I think the arctic fox numbers you cite are for parts of Scandinavia where they are doing poorly. Elsewhere they are doing OK. My oldest son went to Svalbard on spring break hoping to see polar bear among other things, which supposedly outnumber the human population there, and saw not a one although conditions were not optimal -- near whiteout most of the time.

When I'm discussing this issue I prefer to frame it as habitat loss. Climate change can be endlessly debatable. What is a much more concrete and obvious threat is that with 8 billion of us on the planet and at least three billion more to come before things supposedly level out, we are not facing a survivable future without behavioral changes. Even if climate change didn't exist, our destruction of livable habitat around the globe is turning many species into token fringe survival groups. People crow success when there are 30,000 of a species that used to number in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. At those population levels, they are already functionally extinct. It doesn't take debatable climate change to destroy them; one bad weather event can wipe them out. Surely we can be more thoughtful than this.

Kind of how I see it. Maintaining a livable planet isn't political it's survival.

Who knows if the teacher had that challenge or not, the point is that her horror led her to report it immediately and she got results. My aunt was attached to the court system, not a district employee. It's a relevant contrast to the 1935 article detailing BSA's already long history dating back to the 1920s with moral perversion and degenerate behavior in scouting. I don't understand the prevalence nor the persistence in perpetuating the idea that BSA was simply dealt a wrong hand by the rest of the world and not a victim of its own actions. It met a moral challenge of its times and fell short, decade after decade. This kind of perspective allows organizational moral failings to continue at a time when I really wish it could overcome them and move on.

In my school district in the 1970s a teacher reported a suspected case of sexual abuse by a parent. My aunt was the child psychologist involved with the court system and delivered expert testimony in the case. People were plenty aware of CSA well, well before that. BSA certainly was -- it kept "red" files as far back as the 1920s where it documented moral perversion and degenerate cases in it's "red" files, as James West detailed in a 1935 New York Times article which you can easily google.

Here's one retrospective that was written after the Sandusky case: https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3262&context=vlr This recounts teachers being added to the list in many states by the 1970s. To me what's more relevant than the state laws -- because BSA was and is a national entity -- is that there was growing awareness of these issues and high profile discussions in youth settings from the 1960s forward, unlike what BSA seems to continually claim. As perhaps the nation's leading youth organization, with it's own long history of abuse incidents dating to the 1920s, it's impossible that its awareness would have been so low, and that it couldn't have looked to these sources as a guide on how to formulate a more proactive response of its own. Many voices in youth settings on state and national levels were pushing for mandatory reporting and greater awareness of these issues throughout many of the decades when BSA stayed mute.

There are two similar cases involving scouting within the past year in my area. In one case it was youth.

In about half of states, teachers were mandatory reporters by the mid 1970s, so... no.

To be honest, scouting has been mismanaged, both organizationally and financially, for decades. Better management could have resulted in better cost efficiencies, but the reality is that scouting has long had an over reliance on volunteers and families paying the way with no real back up plan in place. With membership declining, volunteerism interests shifting, fundraising become more difficult to do in general, and families less willing to contribute to FOS, scouting's old staffing and financial structures no longer work and the only real viable short term plan to survive is to raise fees. The liability insurance market impact and fall out from the bankruptcy has yet to be fully felt from the national down to the CO level and this will likelydrive yet higher fees in years ahead. The only good news I've heard is a rumor that BSA is piloting a new online fundraising platform but trying to run an organization in 2023 off fundraising is still a tough challenge even with better options available.

That's why I'm certain fees will have to rise -- I can't recall where the settlement plan is but I think we were supposed to see a modest gain of around 1.2 million by now. There was a modest national annual fee increase attached to that plan so if the numbers are lower, the projected increase will likely be higher unless another revenue stream has developed.

Ours said the same thing when it increased council fees but never really actually stopped soliciting for FOS, it just became somewhat more low key about it for awhile. You'll have to see what yours does going forward. It's pretty certain that national fees are going to continue to increase.

I don't know what you're looking for but there are ranch and riding outfitters that make rain proof dusters that cover your back and near full leg on or off a horse. I think they'd do what you want. I had an old oilcloth Jackaroo duster I wore for 20 years and kept rewaxing. I think you can still find them but I replaced it with a regular raincoat duster. These are a lot lighter and they pack up nicely when not needed.

Arguing on the numbers it seems far worse. The next most egregious offender, the US Catholic Church, has had about 10,000 claims.

Thank you, Malraux. Interesting, because those numbers include rolling vs. old prorated new fall recruitment numbers that will remain valid even if they have dropped out before the end of the year. If you think of it, would love to see this chart again in January or February to see where everything lands.

There's a difference between competently managing an organization to maintain a healthy balance sheet while still effectively delivering your product, and propping up institutionalized dysfunction when you can't deliver your product. Our product isn't fundraising. If the results of fundraising in a nonprofit aren't being applied mostly to the product -- the unit level program -- then something is wrong.