Scouterlockport

Those would still be under the bsa umbrella, so I dont think that is the program he is talking about

The crazier part of this is would still be over 22 dollars per scout before hand. What are we paying them for. At least other CEO/VP positions in other nonprofits have connections in there given field or community. In the scouting model SE are just flown in from some other part of the country without an connection to the local area. I just looked up tax information pre covid it would have been 23 dollars per scout and now it is up to 27 per scout. And that was up in the north east.

Former pro here, I am theoretically for going to a user fee model instead of Fos. If councils were doing these four things with the funding plan. 1. All council and district events would be free or at a heavily reduced rate for units. The idea here is if you want a well funded event tell them it was already paid for with the council fee. 2. Fos goes away forever, and hopefully the field people can start developing relationships with units on a human basis instead of a fiscal one. Field Pros do have a limited amount of hours and it should be spent on unit support, and volunteer support, not Fos presentations and 40 dollar donor calls. 3. A better explanation of council finances, explains why we need to increase fees and show much of the budget goes to camps, memberships, SE Comp, staff comp etc. My former council was under 30% of the total budget for all council employees as an example. Which would be low in any field. Also I think you should be breaking down how much of the scout fees goes to each budget line. Ie 7 dollars per scout goes to camping etc. 4. Give units a way to reduce the fees by responsible fundraising, also councils have the demographics research on every zip codes. No matter how much the lower middle class and working class units try it is too hard to sell anything when you have no buyer or engaged parents. There should be reduced fees for units in the bottom third of income in councils this is something that as a low level de I was able to look up in no more then 10 mins. And a reasonable system for poor individuals in better off areas to also get some help. 5. If the fees are going to be over 80s buck per head, then we should find a way for uniforms and books to be covered in that cost. Maybe council covers the first year of books for new cubs. And the highest growth packs get free uniforms as a reward. The days of fun popcorn prizes are done, now it is all gift card anyways. Give the parents a break on something that helps the scouting experience. Currently none of these things would be taken seriously, so there should be no council fees, but I dont think council fees would have to be bad if councils did something to show they cared about scouting families or had not spent the last 40 years torpedoing all trust between units and them.

This is the problem with the funding of councils, the funds that go to keeping camps running and maybe the salary of a DE (in theory) none of the fees help troops with their running of their units.

Thanks for adding a lot to the discussion a month or so after everyone else. My reason for the down voice is that this wonderful organization is not going to survive if we keep requiring people to have a religous creed to join in a growing non religious nation. Just like modernizing by adding female scouts, we need to look at requiring a relationship to god. Less and less people are openly religious and the advantage of those charter organizations is going away forever.

Scouting needs to understand that ability to have a ton of willing volunteers, helping with committee, camproees, Fos, and volunteering in general is not possible anymore. A lot of this is tried to councils pissing off and damaging relationships with many scouters. But the bigger part is that it was one of the baby boomer bubbles, ie there was a lot more people who could help out with everything because there was more people in the age bracket. But now that a lot of baby boomers are getting into their late 60s and early 70s they can't help with as much as they once did even 10 years ago. Many correctly are choosing to help out at the unit level were they can have the most impact instead of getting involved in bs at a higher level or what every pet project a career scout executive wants to waste funds and time on.

Most not all lol, so nothing of value or law wise was added during the enlightenment? If you feel that way then we shouldn't listen any of our nations founding documents. Is it chaos with religion too, like people already pick their morals they like and ignore the ones they do not like from their own religions. And the line is god AND COUNTRY so would we not still have the American way find for morals? And Barry the 10% number is probably uncutting the total number. Talk to anyone one of your scouts or listen to them they are not as religous as they seem.

So to have morals you need to believe in god? It isn't very moral to have your only motivation to not commit a crime be for god to caught you. Not all moral codes have been founded on a foundation of god.

Dont tell people on here you knew a non theist scout there are some people who wouldn't want him in our organization because he doesn't believe in a god. As backwards as that opinion is.

Dont let some of the people on here see this message, they are gonna call you a woke marxist if you keep bring up correct facts like this. We should be talking about our mistakes of the past rather then run from them and call it a wokeness taking over scouting.

I dont disagree that experiences are important to the goals of the scouting movement, but we are complaining about only 5/6 of the required merit badges 21 being book learning based. This thread continues to feel like people are complaining about times for changing when that continues to happen for any organization. Any one with kids understand we need to have scouts ready to learn/ survive in a more diverse environment with people from different backgrounds and opinions then there own. This isn't just race, it is even just economic or religious background. That is all the evil citizenship in society badges is trying to teach.

I agree that the nature section of scouting should have more eagle required badges. But to say there is none is not true. There is environmental science, which would cover that hole. I wish they would add a triple headed requirement for nature like (hiking/swimming/cycle)

We are not talking about a individual skill like cooking though. Citizenship is one of the most important parts it shows up in the scout oath. Cooking does not. The actual equivalent would to the topic of citizenship is the topic of outdoor skills which has a total of 4 badges also in first aid, camping, cooking and hiking/swimming need for eagle.

Not all merit badges are based on being active alone. There always has been a few book learning (American heritage, Law) ones and to act like that hasn't always been true is a lie. To only have 4 or 5 of them be eagle required is not a crazy amount, no matter how much our older forum members complain about. We are talking about less then a quarter of the badge required for eagle?

This is all the new badge is trying to do, reinforce some of our failing from the past. It sucks that councils are not communicating with units to get councilor information to them