dk516

@BinTharDunThat it certainly possible but also a lot of effort. We use a monthly newsletter in a standard format that we email to all active and past members and other interested people. We use Mailchimp for the newsletter campaign which lets you easily structure and format things. It also serves as Newsletter archive for the Troop. This is way less involved than actually editing a digital magazine with the idea in mind of potentially printing it. This will need a whole different skillset and publishing software if you want to do it and looking good. There are several email campaign tools out there that let you do quite a bit for free / cheap as well (a Scout is thrifty) and that look pretty decent. Email is also an easy tool to simply forward or include your recruiting prospects or other interested folks.

good evening @Val. Local Councils or even local units can add additional requirements. The Pack I used to be in for example had the same rule to have to redo YPT every year to make sure you'd always be current and up to date with any changes. Also, part of the CSA settlement is to implement an annual YPT refresher training which could also be that your Council decided to roll that out in the current form by itself already..

The process is neither new nor changed. It simply became transparent because of the electronic applications and the various status steps that are now visible. Realistically a unit was never supposed to let adults join scouting functions before they were not fully cleared. The difference was that units simply assumed that once they sent the adult application to the registrar that the process would take care of it and you're good to go. The larger problem is that BSA, again, did not think this through in practicality. Since it takes Councils 3+ months to recharter units, and since the electronic application option is disabled once a unit expires until it is fully rechartered, it ultimately harms the recruiting process. Our Council' statement was that when the electronic sign up is disabled during recharter, we can submit paper applications for adults and youth. Except that our Council' track record of processing paper applications is 2-4mts IF they don't lose them altogether. So the only thing this going to bring now is that as a unit leader I will either have to turn away interested volunteers until Council maybe eventually get around to either process registrations or recharter or I am forced to violate policies and keep doing what we did for years but really improved has nothing.

@AirForceMom welcome to the forum. Your Council may have not given you the full answer to this. The BSA YPT FAQ notes the following: https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/yp-faqs/ In Scouts BSA, he will be fully considered an adult and what he "can do" is attend Scouts BSA events as an adult. As noted above, participation in the programs that allow for older Youth to participate, he can fully participate, however, he is still considered and adult. And yes, if you want to take YPT by the book, he would no longer be allowed any socialization with any other scouts younger than 18 without having a second adult present. This one single thing is the biggest inhibitor I have seen in our Troop for Scouts to continue participate in the program once they reach 18. I have only ever seen Scouts coming back a couple years later during college once their full cohort has aged out because it just causes too much awkwardness having to follow YPT correctly and being considered an adult from one day to the next.

@Maboot38 we use SB for advancement and the related functions and whatever reporting is required from SB. We use Google because it was an easy platform for all Troop planning, hosting our website from it and for all the documents and leader collaboration which made it a natural to use their email tools as well.

This seems how our Council is functioning and I am starting to get frustrated. Our DE is great. He shows up to District events or is at the (miserably attended) monthly roundtable or other events. However, this is about as far as "professional" Council representation goes. Our Field Director I only hear from when we did not sell enough popcorn every year and our other Field Director when we do not meet our (their) membership recruiting goals. We got a new SE back in fall last year. The only thing I have ever heard/read of him was the introduction from our Council Committee Chair when they announced his hiring. Not a single word since. I understand that the SE cannot be present everywhere but would have expected to at least get some sort of welcome email and message to the Council membership about him and his ideas to get us back on track again. It's almost like Council professionals really have no interest in what is going on in their Council unless when it comes to increase fundraising and membership.

We use Google G-Suite for all of our Troop stuff. It allows you to create email groups for communication. Yes, email is a little old fashioned these days but the only form of communication you can effectively assure that adults are involved in all communication and therefore allow to be in compliance with YPT as much as possible. I accept the fact that there will always be other tools used between the Scouts (Discord, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc.) but the email groups allow for easy setup and control of what is being communicated.

@MattR I don't know if parents believe in Scouting or not. I think they still want it for their Youth but I think there are many factors that affect Parent' willingness to volunteer. I just went through recharter with my units and lost several long standing adult volunteers. These volunteers would show up once or twice a year to provide their expertise to the troop on a specific subject. Our Council this recharter decided to double the adult programming fee. Together with the National increase, this almost doubled our adult cost which I think was just too much for some. Other factor is the administrative burden. I lost several MBCs or folks interested in becoming MBCs who simply gave up after 3 or 4 months and their applications were still not processed in the Council office or Council forgot to send them the renewal notifications and then just turned around and made them do it all over again. Scouting, especially in the higher ranks of the Scouts BSA program is a significant volunteer time commitment for Scouts and adult volunteers that not everyone is willing to make anymore these days and also not just the time but also the combination of time and cost. I hope that Mr Krone and his team will invest a significant amount not only in the program but also in optimizing the membership tools and other IT infrastructure and greatly reduce the administrative burden. I.e. why can I submit any Youth application electronically but if I want to do that for an adult, I still need to have a paper application, get it wet-signed by the COR only to upload it to the electronic membership application that is going to get signed by the COR AGAIN!? Stuff like that is what drives adults from Scouting and that could be so easily resolved because many other Youth organizations can do it as well. Our council is the same. It declined from 10'000 to barely 2'500 over the last 6 or so years. They merged several times with other small councils but kept the whole overhead and all properties but tried to operate with a declining youth membership ever since. As much as I appreciate that, it just makes no sense economically and it takes the professional focus away from programming and becomes 100% fundraising oriented to fundraise their own operation rather than focus on growing membership.

@Jameson76 we actually had this discussion in our district. Your numbers are actually great! Experience in our council has shown that with all attrition on the Cubs level, you want at least 2 full Packs for every Troop in existence in order to cross over enough Cubs into Scouts BSA. Our district/council has seen a steady decline in Troops because they cannot get enough Cubs to cross over and retain to keep the units running. Our current split in my district is almost 50/50 and we feel it every year. This combined with slow recruiting has not been very successful.

Our Council does. It is organized on District level in similar manner as "regular" Cub Scout Packs. The difference is that it is run by a local non-profit that already does outreach / after-school / youth program work and it is slightly different in programming structure. It is run by the staff and volunteers of the outreach organization and supported by a UC like any other Pack. Membership for these Youth is sponsored between the non-profit running it and Council Scout Reach funds. This just recently started again in our District so it will be interesting to see how it will work out. It seems to me that they should have a more stable membership since it is an integral part of their offering, similar to some religious organizations using Scouting as their Youth program and with that being more integrated into their offering compared to Packs where everyone is recruited and then hopefully retained.

What is going to happen to the Pack when your Scout crosses over? *Are you going to stay in the Pack forever? What is to say that the current structure isn't going to fail regardless once you leave but maybe just in a year or two from now rather than sooner? And sometimes things have to fall to ashes so the Phoenix can rise again and maybe somebody else will actually come along and bring in a new motivated network to take over. I've seen Packs come and go. With the right group of adult volunteers where everyone is pulling in the same direction it can be great. In the end, you are a volunteer and give your resources running the Pack which the least of reward you should get from is that you and your family have fun and your Scouts can thrive from it. I have been in a lot of volunteer organizations and sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on to still have a rewarding opportunity rather than try and hang onto something that is not going to make it.

Yes and no. I had a multi-level Den years ago because of lack of numbers. The first year was easy and everyone was working on similar steps for the requirements between the ranks. The second year was actually a lot more tricky to make sure for the "younger" rank part of the Den it did not simply become a repetition of what they already did with older rank during the previous year. Most Troops I know recruit in February March in order to have at least 2 full outings and the spring quarter to bring incoming AOLs up to speed for the summer camp "shock". Wanting to provide a serious program in 5th grade will have to compress the programming time for AOL adventures for them to cross over in March since pretty much all Packs I know in our area do not do rank advancement throughout the summer. It'll certainly need some finetuning and I guess we'll see what this is going to do to the Pack-to-Troop transition or how much of the AOL in reality will just end up being pencil whipped to be able to cross them over in February / March timeframe.

@fred8033 I understand the economy of scale but I think this is not the only factor we should look at. The Council my units are residing in has been merged several times in the past 5 years. It has been in constant decline, even with the mergers and is now less than 3'000 active youth. However, it geographically spans across each half of 3 states! We no longer go to our Council Summer Camp because of programming and distance for our Troop. My oldest did NYLT last year and is looking to staff it next year. The in-Council NYLT which I would have preferred was 5hrs driving away which makes it an overnight drop-off and pickup whereas are neighboring Council courses where 45 minutes from our Troop location and so is there summer camp. If we're all realistic, you would not need any Council for membership administration OR online training. Both could easily be handled by a national office with a little more investment into technology. What we are loosing with this economy of scale is the in-person volunteer networking that keeps this organization going. I have not been to a single Council event this year even though I am actively volunteering on multiple levels because I could just not get it together having to drive multiple hours to a Council event and back. That's where we lose with all these mergers.

@Cburkhardtwhat do you actually pay with the $400 that you calculate? We finally got to stop comparing ourselves to band, sports and everything else and always advertising what a bargain Scouting is because this is only partially true and highly depends on how you look at. Between National, Council and Troop dues, our Scouts spend $230 for Youth and $90 for adults respectively. Monthly campouts with our Troop probably average about $35 a month * 10 months which is another $350. So, that's $570 a year for the "right to participate" and some monthly outings and couple patches throughout the year. This is twice of what our High School charges for their varsity sports team to participate the season (I purposely do not account for gear since I do not do that for Scouts either in this scenario). Now that's just the "common" stuff the unit does. Add $550 for our Council Summer Camp (In-council discount, short travel distance, etc.) which brings us to $1'120 for an average 1st or 2nd year Scout for a year of Scouting. Now let's look at the "must do for the full Scouting experience stuff" for our older Scouts: $1'800 for 12 days at Philmont; $2'500-3'000 to travel to Sea Base or Northern Tier or $3'500 for the Council contingent to go the Jambo. Not even looking at the cost to go to World Jambo. $3'000 is more than what I personally account for a cool family holiday and is way on par with what a sports season cost. Then we need adults on top of all of this which is time spent volunteering, time needed to take off jobs (holidays or unpaid) and cost spent because even though adult attendance is mandatory for YPT and minimum crew requirements, they still pay most if not all of the cost incurred. Looking at my own family and many families in our units that are very active and keep the Troop rolling, there are many where Scouting becomes a $10'000 annual cost factor for a family with older Scouts. So the often sung statement that Scouting is a bargain, or as our Council used to advertise it "the cost of one cup of coffee from a major coffee chain a month" is really only partially true. And yes, everything else is also getting more expensive but I know many that are starting the weigh the cost / benefits and the scales are not tipping in favor of the program.

@Jenni some Councils may allow forming a provisional unit when you do not have the full number of 5 Youth but can show them that you will most likely reach the goal within a year. By the letters of YPT (and yes they have been enforced more strictly recently) a single Youth could not participate because of the buddy requirement. Also, bear in mind that as a linked Troop, each unit still has to provide 2-deep leadership at each event, meeting, outing, etc. If she's the only one what is your realistic outlook on finding more girls? Do you have enough prospects that it would even make sense to form a unit long-term? Maybe as a temporary solution you could meet with another girl unit to satisfy the buddy requirement while you are recruiting enough girls to make your new unit work?