Timbuktu

Were payments being processed between the February (brief) hold and today? Do we know roughly what %age have been processed in total?

Not remotely true.

I ain't touching that topic with a 10ft pole lol

Perhaps I didn't word that well. Yes, money going council's way absolutely supports Scouting. What I was trying to say was that when individual units aren't ferreting out potential sources of these funds, those funds never end up with the council OR the unit. They just get missed. Like stated in previous posts, I'm meeting both registered adult volunteers AND parents who work with these companies and they're not logging their hours.

The employees I’ve spoken with didn’t even know about the program. I wouldn’t have even known the council was aware had I not found a 2019 document buried on the website. Of the three big F1000 employers in our area, the caps are $500/yr, $10k/yr, and $15k/yr *just* for the volunteer hours. All three have some astronomical dollar-for-dollar cap that I can’t imagine anybody hitting unless they’re about to retire. One of our troops is a 501c3 and they use matching funds from the those three companies pretty consistently (apparently). Idk about the other troops that are registered. It sounds like the best way to leverage this sort of thing is to be chartered by an American Legion or some other secular nonprofit who’d be willing to earmark most of the donations to Scouting.

(1) Didn't know that; that's good information (2) ...but they're also not logging their hours even though our council is eligible.

That's exactly what I'm trying to game out ahead of time. Huge units have a benefit here even if they're anemic with popcorn (no SE is gonna pull the charter of a 40+ youth troop from a cornerstone CO unless it's horrendously egregious conduct)...but they could go tit-for-tat in other ways. The absurd thing here is that I've been asking registered volunteers about this program for months and NONE of them are logging their hours. Most of these individuals would account for a couple thousand dollars a pop, but since the council is trying to maintain a monopoly without promoting it, the money never comes Scouting's way. Units won't have the motivation to birddog these employees/volunteers if they're not going to benefit from the donation. And the council office doesn't even know these eligible employees are involved in Scouting. The only people who are logging their hours seem to be ones who are in units that are independent 501c3 orgs

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I'm not the first one to resurrect it after a few years! Compared with 20 years ago, it seems like a LOT more parents/adult volunteers are employed by Fortune 1000 companies who offer corporate giving options. For the big employers in our area, it usually involves two aspects: (1) Dollar-for-dollar matching (eg, if the employee donates $50 to a BSA council, then the company will also donate $50) (2) Volunteer hours. Eg, if an employee volunteers for 5 hours, then the company will donate $50 to a cause of the employee's choice (even if it's not to the specific entity where the volunteering took place) We're in a big council with several mega companies. Right now, a handful of troops appear on these websites because they're their own 501c3 (by whatever method; see above debates from several years ago) but most do not...even if their CO is a 501c3 church. Our council does NOT publicize this except it's buried on the website that if you log your volunteer hours, the council will give your unit a 10% credit at the trading post (eg, if one of your adult leaders logs 100hrs, the council would get $1,000 and then give your unit a $100 credit at the camp trading post). Seems skeevy to me, but I understand councils would want a monopoly on this and I understand a lot of COs/churches, even if they bother registering for these companies (the one used by Kohl's, Boeing, etc is "Benevity.org"), wouldn't necessarily use those funds specifically for their scouting program.

Oh man, no no no it wasn’t meant as a troll at all. By “putting on a happy face”, I meant I’ve been trying to hide how much angst the new legal uncertainty has caused. I’ve mostly lurked on this thread because I’m neither a lawyer nor a survivor, so this is where I go for more primary sources on what’s happening beyond the Reuters headlines. By “visiting troops”, I meant that I work as a unit commissioner. I’ve been involved in scouts since I was a Webelos I, I’m not just dropping into SCOUTER as a new parent oblivious to what’s happened. Again, apologies if my post was out of line for what’s expected here. Based on a lot of the recent posts, I thought my general despondency about the ongoing legal process (and how it’s seems to be delivering a miscarriage of justice to basically everybody except some of the legal firms) was a more commonly-held sentiment.

I’ve been putting on a happy face since I read the news on Friday. Visited two troops last night; one of them had a ~15yo SPL who led the entire meeting from flags to closing; not a peep from the adults. This stuff is far beyond our control. But the thing that will help us weather the storm is strong units that provide great scouting experiences to as many youth as possible. I just hope my kids and grandkids have that opportunity.

Is there any way to research when specific units ended up folding, what their stats were over the years (members, eagles, years of service), etc? Or do you have to put in the elbow grease at the relevant council office? I just found out that the oldest troop from my home town has completely vanished and even the internet isn’t churning up any info about what happened or when it folded. This one surprised me since they were incredibly strong throughout the 90s and 00s, but I guess most units are only a few recruiting cycles away from this sort of fate.

How’s their behavior on campouts?

What’s “SB”?

After a decade hiatus for education/career reasons, I’m getting reconnected with Scouting. And my oh my did I pick a decade to be unplugged from what was happening in Scouting. A huge “Thanks” to all of you and the reading/wisdom you’ve generated on this board the past several years. I’m going cross-eyed getting caught up on bankruptcies and mergers and LDS-exit and camp sales and CO liabilities….lots of food for thought. Despite all of the above, I’ve never been more convinced of the importance of Scouting in our society. Our hard work provides youth with the digital detox, the face-to-face socialization, and the practice of small-scale democracy that today’s young families are wanting. And it is completely capable of providing the fun that the youth are craving in this era of “school creep” that has resulted in every waking hour being earmarked for “building that college application file”. It’s up to us to deliver that experience and I’m confident we will. This will be a decade of an upswing in Scouting’s salience (or else I’ll die trying). I am reminded of the biblical story of Nehemiah: After deciding to tackle the impossible task of rebuilding the city’s walls, the solution was to empower each man to rebuild the wall in his own back yard. Scouting begins at the unit level, and strong units lead to strong districts, not the other way around. WWW!