yknot

Any conservation project benefiting migratory bird populations would literally meet the terms of that requirement.

I don't understand how your council fees are so high. Councils aren't allowed to charge more than the national fees. Not everyone wants to attend Camporee. We almost never do. Maybe back out of Camporee as a cost saving measure this year. What is the real loss? Popcorn is not the answer. In our area, we can't even sell it. No one wants it. We've had to turn to other fundraising strategies. Precluding scouts from seeking donations or donations in kind from local businesses just means that scouting overall loses a lot of low hanging fruit. Businesses -- local restaurants, hardware stores, etc., -- who would never make a donation to a far off council are often happy to give $50 or some free pizzas or gift cards to local scouts and families that they know. Councils should feel free to target national and regional businesses and local concerns should be left to local units to solicit. While I prefer for scouts to do fundraising through service, these changed times are going to require changed views and more flexibility and innovation in order for units to survive and maintain members. The idea of asking scout families to pay $400 plus per scout is ... insane.

There is also another goal besides the money. Anyone who understands the BSA organization understands that if there are headlines about COs having liability for these decades old cases it will be the end of scouting. As we've discussed on this forum, most COs don't understand their role. They think they are sponsoring units with space and some good will. Most do not understand they have any liability at all.

Liability?

I know the history is problematic. But the fact that indigenous people were here before us is still something that stills my heart and inspires awe, no matter how horrible the history. They were still here. They still need to have their stories told. We are lucky enough to live in an area that has some local history, some of it very colorful. Oral history about trails, encampments, token local characters. I did not like the native American appropriation in the scouting program including OA, but I did try to create a sense of wonder in cubs by taking them out to hike on trails that were here before we were, to see natural artifacts -- boulders that were used as grain mortar sites, lookouts, rumored ghosts, etc. I was not above planting purchased arrowheads in waterways for cubs to "find" on hikes. I can't fix the past. I'm not exactly sure how to appropriately tell the stories today, but I try to create an appreciation for what was lost.

My opinion is that generic face painting on toddlers and young elementary kids is face painting. It's fun and they like it. Painting rank or advancement based stripes on kids that are entering the older elementary grades starts to feel a little kitschy to me.

Frankly despite past precedents and other bankruptcies I think we may be confronted with a lot of developments previously unimagined. However, it still comes down to who in reality would want to pay money for anything related to BSA aside from its physical properties.

Yeah, but I just don't see where the BSA name has any broadly marketable value compared to the GM nameplate or any other of the commercial brands cited. There's really nothing profitable you can do with the BSA brand even on a small scale. Unless I'm missing something. Maybe someone buys Philmont, Bechtel, and the BSA name and then tries to run a branded national high end resort style, high adventure program out of those two sites and you have to attend those sites or satellite sites to participate in the program and earn the credentials? But I still can't see how that would be hugely successful financially... ?

From a business sense, I do not see where the IP here holds much value or to who. The brand is tarnished and muddled, the program appeals to a small and declining segment of youth, and it has no IT assets to speak of -- no working or revenue driving website or portal, no functioning administrative interface, no real social media presence to drive marketing. It is producing a tired print publication in a world where most print publications have expired because they are too expensive to produce. The actual advancement program and handbooks have value, but there are so many knock off programs out there and online, that it's not like you'd be buying truly proprietary material. The only brand I can see that still holds possible business value is the term "Eagle Scout." Some outdoors outfitter might want to stick that on a line of products. But otherwise I'm thinking that BSA IP is probably going to stay right where it is.

Join Scouts. It's really fun, especially for the little guys. I was not a personal fan of adding the Lion year but I know many people who love it. Even if scouts does close up shop, my philosophy would be not to worry about it and instead enjoy it while you can. And if it does fold, there are a lot of nature centers, watershed associations, and parks that run their own junior ranger type programs. I've worked with several so I know they are out there.

I interpreted the second Q on this FAQ to mean that if your local council is saying no camping then you need to follow that and not camp outside of council. If my interpretation is correct then you possibly could be liable if someone contracted Covid. You also have to look at it as your Council is taking these measures not just to reduce risk to scouts within your own unit/Council but also because the scouts in your region could present a risk to scouts in another region if you take them out of Council. Considering how Covid rates have varied widely almost by zip code, it seems the more prudent option. There was a lot of confusion and many differing opinions about it this summer though. https://www.scouting.org/coronavirus/covid-19-faq/

I offered that advice because I was involved in a dispute that wound up before an administrative law judge. While of course it was thrown out, I and everyone else named had to take time off from work to attend multiple hearings. It was stress I did not need while fulfilling a volunteer role and I don't think anyone else wants to be in that position either.

I mostly agree with you but I think for situations that could possibly lead to the threat of legal action, and this in my experience is one, it's better to have everything spelled out ahead of time.

The best way to do this is to have a consistent policy at the unit level. You need to meet as a committee and lay out how you handle disruptive scouts and write a policy. In our unit, we say we make an effort to accommodate all scouts, but if issues arise then a parent or parent appointed guardian may be required to attend meetings with the scout. If a parent cannot attend and the scout is disruptive, then the parent will be called to come pick up the scout.

The purpose of BSA's ambitious but ambiguous pronouncements on YPT are based on liability and to avoid the following type of headlines: "Boy Scout Leader Charged In..." because that is what the media will focus on no matter where any alleged incidents occurred. However, while I have always tried to follow BSA policy as closely as possible, sometimes you do have to apply commonsense. A family member is an acceptable guardian of a scout, whether that is mom, dad, or an adult sibling, grandparent, aunt/uncle or cousin. As a parent you simply have to be vigilant to that fact that these relationships that allow privileged access to your child can be abused.

Nathan, poke around this site and look for discussions about merit badges, merit badge fairs, merit badge universities, etc., and the concerns abou them. I think you will see why there is some reticence. You are young with a lot of enthusiasm. I think most of us on this site are older with a lot of cynicism. I think what we need to deal with is that the scouting way of old is really an anti app culture, but the scout of tomorrow is likely going to want apps. Somehow, if scouting survives, people like you will need to figure out how to make sure scouting stays both personal and relevant. Good luck.

Millennials are less likely to marry, less likely to have children, and are having fewer children than previous generations. Fathers are less likely to live with their children, and those Millennials that do have families are delaying them until later in life. Millennials are also far less likely to participate in an organized religion or community groups. They carry more debt than any other generation in history. There is little brand loyalty when shopping for anything. They rely on social media reviews and price has become more important to them than quality. They will donate money and time but they eschew leadership commitments in organizations because they want to be free to move on to their next cause of interest. Millennials place an importance on academics but they are far less objective driven (read advancements driven) than prior generations. These things are all going to have an impact on future recruitment trends and what fees can be charged for scouting.

I call it hands vs. heads. It is relatively easy to get Millennials to show up and help out as a pair of hands for something. What's hard to get is a commitment to take a more involved leadership position -- heads. They want someone else to do it for them. In their defense, family life has never been harder to juggle. In the 30 years I've been involved with youth organizations, the number of families with both parents working has increased to be almost all. The number of single parent families has increased. The digital revolution means that jobs never end. It is very difficult for managerial or key support people to disconnect for a weekend and sometimes even for night meetings. Summer camp staffing depends on where there is wifi so that volunteer parents can still plug in laptops and be engaged with work when they are supposed to be watching kids. It's tough and a new world. That's all in their defense. What is sad and what I would say in criticism is that there is no connection to tradition or legacy. They don't have patience with it or interest in it. They are sick of hearing about everything from 9/11 to whatever your local annual community event is and why they should step up and run it. Somehow scouts has to try and navigate this.

I think scouts is going to have to accept many paradigm shifts in order to survive. This type of thing might be one of them. Declining volunteer rolls isn't a problem unique to scouting. Scouting is the most volunteer intense organization of any I am involved with, and parents frankly have less and less time to give and money to spend. It's also generational. Millennials do not seem to have the same interest in volunteering as prior generations. Or maybe they do, but they want to do it differently. They certainly do not want to waste their time with ridiculous paperwork. Instead, they want phone apps and seamless, one stop digital portals for registration, payment, scheduling, and management of their child's activities and their involvement with them. The youth organizations that are succeeding are ones that are adapting to this and looking at new ways of operating.

Just as a point of comparison, some volunteer youth programs have gone to a kind of quasi paid model in the form of a stipend. This is often supported by some kind of a family bond payment above and beyond fees. If you want the bond money back, you take on a volunteer job. If you feel you don't have time to volunteer, you forfeit your bond payment and that money is provided as a stipend to someone else who did step up to volunteer. It's not really pay -- the hours required are still way beyond the stipend -- but more of an enticement or motivator.

Agree with all you said except for one thing: We don't send the whole medical binder anywhere. The set of "to go" forms for each scout are in their own clear plastic, largely water proof closed file. These can either go in the traveling binder for a camp site location or just clipped together on a ring for a backpacking trip. The medical binder has been lost once in a tip over so we never leave the unit without a master set. It is also a lot of volunteer hassle to have to recreate it. Also, it might be silly, but it feels like a privacy thing. No reason why med forms for 40 kids should go on a trip for 10.

This is interesting because I think it's one of the things needs to change. I've had to scan in and submit health records for other youth activities. Not sure why BSA is continuing with paper. How our troop handles it now though is to require parents to submit two copies of all forms at registration. One set always remains in the master binder kept at the CO. The second set is pulled out and put into a trip binder for each trip and then returned. In the event that copy is ever lost, though, a master set remains in the unit's possession. I also think one of the things that has to be considered is what makes the most sense from a volunteer sense. Requiring a scout to bring their own form to each trip, and then requiring someone to keep track of that for each trip, seems like a whole lot more work than just asking for two copies of the form. Finally, the BSA policy on health forms predates some of the issues that are becoming common today and can require frequent consultation of these forms. I'm thinking of food allergies, behaviorial meds, diabetes management, etc. Ideally in most cases a parent is along or a child is capable of overseeing his or her own care, but any adult in charge of the trip would need to be aware or monitoring just in case. This has been a problem in our unit because whipping paper documents in and out of a binder under weather conditions on the trail has not always been effective.

There have been efforts but the BSA organization itself is not structured to be very workable in at risk communities. Other youth organizations, like youth sports, have managed to do a fairly good job but not BSA. And none of those other youth organizations claim many if any of the higher goals so vocally promoted by scouting. It is an odd disconnect. I'm not saying BSA should have organized itself around serving inner city or rural poor youth, just that it shouldn't be so difficult and expensive no matter who you are to implement the program.

How many of those kids realistically have ever been part of the scouting universe from the National perspective? A tragic mistake, because if scouting was living up to its own values, those kids would have been the target audience. But the corporate marketing reality is that they are not and never have been the goal. The market at least in recent decades has been families that want their kids to get to Eagle and are able to spend on on all the uniform and advancement permutations along the way.

The issue is not the monthly expense it is the perceived value. BSA does a terrible job of promoting value. It's marketing for the past few decades has relied on Eagle Scout but that does not appeal to the broadest cross section. It should be focusing on outdoors.