An Analogy - Is BSA a Sinking Ship?

[Bob White]

Ed

 

There were an estimated 100,000 cases of child sexual abuse reported in 2004, and who knows how many unreported.

 

You do not possible have enough knowledge of these cases to even know how many included ministers and priests, let alone have enough knowledge to make such a reckless statement that the majority of those were Catholic.

 

That was incredibly irresponsible and narrow minded.(This message has been edited by Bob White)

[evmori]

OK. Maybe I should have said "Almost all of the news reports about ministers who were abusing kids were Catholic priests." Sorry.

 

The analogy is still flawed since going to school is required as is church for Catholics. Scouting is voluntary. Sorta like joining the football team or the chess club. Scouting is an extra curricular activity.

 

Now, where are those refuting facts!

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

 

 

[Hunt]

There is no question that the Catholic Church has taken a horrific PR hit from the sex scandals. Whether that has affected their membership and attendance numbers I don't know, but I do know that it has seriously and negatively affected the attitude of non-Catholics toward the church, fairly or unfairly.

 

BSA differs from the Catholic Church in at least one important respect--we have to recruit a new crop of members every single year, and a lot of those recruits come from people with no Scouting background. We really can't afford a PR hit of the magnitude of the one the Catholic Church has faced--and I don't think we'll have one based on molestation, because there just haven't been that many reported cases. I am a little concerned that we may be taking a "safety" PR hit with the news reports about Jamboree and other incidents.

[packsaddle]

Returning to an earlier question, at our annual organizational meeting one of the open committee slots was for the FOS committee chair (this is usually a committee of 1). The scoutmaster noted that FOS contributions from troop families tripled after we STOPPED allowing the DE to visit and speak.

However, this year, in this troop that is growing rapidly and populated with dedicated families, no one was willing to take the FOS chair. The reason, as discussed by the parents at the meeting, was that on the basis of what they heard about the various recent scandals, especially Atlanta, they are willing to support the troop but little or nothing beyond that.

 

Market forces seem to be working their magic.

[Bob White]

Packsaddle, It's unfortunate that there was no one in your unit knowledgeable enough about scouting to explain the structure of the scouting community and how a healthy council helps to not only provide a better service and program support to the scouts in the unit today but also in the future. Perhaps if the council had the funds it needed, to do the work it wanted to do for the scouts and units, then the parents and the leaders would have a better opinion of the value of FOS. I cannot fathom how folks allow a problem in another community to motivate them to punish their own. They will have the council they earned rather than the won they wanted.

 

Ed, What do you want me to refute, that the BSA national office is not a boat? Ok then The BSA national office is definitely not a boat. I have been the the BSA national office on two occassions and both times I went it was an office building. I am pretty sure it still is.

 

What facts did jkhny offer to refute? None! He concocted a fairy tale and bent his story to fit his uninformed view. How does one refute a fairy tale? And how can anyone give it any credence at all?

 

 

 

(This message has been edited by Bob White)

[evmori]

The boat was a metaphor, Bob. I was talking about

 

posted by jkhny

The effect on us all, tho, is that as the National office goes along on it's way, what it does, does have an effect on us. As they marginalize Scouting, funding is affected, participation is affected, and we all have a stake in that."

 

Answered by Bob

There is no proof of that.

 

and

 

posted by jkhny

In most Councils it is, but in a significant number (10-20%) it is not."

 

answered by Bob

Which specific 32 to 64 councils do you refer to and how did you come by that figure? (GOTA no doubt?). Again you have no data to support anything you state.

 

Since you don't agree with those statements, where is your proof they are not accurate? And going to church is still required if you are Catholic, isn't it? Heck, when I was a kid I had to go twice a week!

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

 

 

[FScouter]

"The reason, as discussed by the parents at the meeting, was that on the basis of what they heard about the various recent scandals, especially Atlanta, they are willing to support the troop but little or nothing beyond that."

 

Some people find it difficult to say "NO". "Would you serve as our FOS chair?" "Would you help us with a contribution to the FOS campaign?" Maybe the standard negative answers, reasons, and excuses seem overworked and lame. Now we have a NEW reason to say "no".

 

I strongly believe that people that believe in Scouting will help with their time and money. Those that decline will look for any excuse they can find that seems reasonably defensible. "Atlanta" is just the excuse du jour. They would not have contributed anyway.

[Bob White]

So if he did not make it up, then where did jkhny get the 10%-20% figure from?

[Hunt]

"Some people find it difficult to say "NO". "Would you serve as our FOS chair?" "Would you help us with a contribution to the FOS campaign?" Maybe the standard negative answers, reasons, and excuses seem overworked and lame. Now we have a NEW reason to say "no".

 

I strongly believe that people that believe in Scouting will help with their time and money. Those that decline will look for any excuse they can find that seems reasonably defensible. "Atlanta" is just the excuse du jour. They would not have contributed anyway."

 

Maybe, but it's my understanding that financial scandals in some United Way organizations resulted in reduced contributions to all United Way organizations. Why would we expect Scouting to be any different? People hear that the bigwigs are playing around with the accounting, and they want to keep their contributions local. As Bob White endlessly reminds us, what most people see of Scouting is the local unit, and it is the quality of the local unit that counts most to most parents of Scouts--why would it surprise us if that's where they want their money to go if they mistrust the faceless bureaucrats at a higher level?

The fact is that bad acts and mismanagement by Scouting leaders reflects badly on all of us and harms all of us. While doing our best to provide a quality program in our local units may be the BEST thing we can do to protect the reputation of Scouting, I don't see why it has to be the ONLY thing we can do.

[packsaddle]

These were parents who were interested enough to attend the meeting and volunteer for other slots. Assuming that contributions were rather evenly distributed, they probably DID make a FOS contribution before. I think Hunt is correct, these families strongly support the troop. But events in the news may make them suspicious of levels above the troop. The troop is doing great but now we'll have to take extra time to "...explain the structure of the scouting community and how a healthy council helps to not only provide a better service and program support to the scouts in the unit today but also in the future."

 

The parents only 'see' the council when the council is asking for money. And then they see the headlines.

But the families still support the unit, more than ever. Here's the interesting part - in effect, the unit is operating like a 'private club' within the private club. Perhaps this is the ultimate local option, keeping the funding at home?

[madkins007]

Bob White said "Perhaps you have not had any unit leadership experience but I have never had a den, pack or troop meeting that depended on Corporate giving, the paid staff at any level of scouting, or affected by 'social approval'. (P) Nor was the recruitment in the units I served ever affected by anything other the quality of the program we delivered."

 

And "It's unfortunate that there was no one in your unit knowledgeable enough about scouting to explain the structure of the scouting community and how a healthy council helps to not only provide a better service and program support to the scouts in the unit today but also in the future. Perhaps if the council had the funds it needed, to do the work it wanted to do for the scouts and units..."

 

Does a healthy council not depend, in part, on a healthy program of corporate giving, solid staff recruitment, and the support of unit leaders as volunteers? And is that not exactly some of the stuff I suggested might be affected by some of the things happening today?

 

I'd also suggest that while our meetings do indeed not need any support from on high (and I am a BIG fan of the district leaving me alone and I'll leave it alone!)... things like summer camp sure do. Summer camp also has an effect on Scout retention.

 

I don't know about your troop recruitment, but ours was pretty much 99%+ from packs, so our troop health depends a lot on local packs offering a program that keeps kids excited. These youth and parents know the program well enough to ignore outside influences and news.

 

How are you doing on recruiting boys who have not been Webelos? We used to do well in this category- as units and as a program. Cubs have always been a better source, but 'walk-ins' used to happen as well, even a few years ago. Talking to others at RT, I doubt there were a dozen 'walk-ins' in the entire district last year.

 

Speaking of Cubs, how many districts or councils in the last few years have had the resources- paid or volunteer staff and money, to offer a killer Cub summer camp program? Ours tends to be bad enough that many packs do not re-register and some express doubt about Scout summer camp (even though that is well done here). Just not enough resources to do it right.

[madkins007]

re: FOS

 

Once, while I was cleaning up after chairing a Cub Leader training session at the council headquarters, the Assistant DE for our district (a great guy, by the way!) hit me up about why I did not invite the FOS people to the pack meeting.

 

I mentioned a few things going on- our unit had been shuffled between 3 districts for about 3 years (we were close to a dividing line that kept getting moved). That we had never seen a Commish at a meeting (we had a good friend commish who helped with rechartering, etc. when needed- but half the time, she was not even in our district!) That in the last few years, the invited speaker failed to show or even to call to apologize for not showing.

 

He hemmed and hawed, then offered to come himself. I politely thanked him and told him it was OK, we were doing pretty well with doantions. He disagreed, so I asked him The Big Question.

 

"What will you tell our pack's parents about why they should support FOS?"

 

He launched into the canned response.

 

- Helps Scouting of disadvantaged youth. [i knew from my job in the Scout office that this help was limited to a few troops in a targetted district- no packs. Further, the entire budget for it was less than my pack collected last year.]

- Camperships [Only available to Boy Scouts, and only in one district. In the last few years, only a few had been given out.]

- Uniform bank [see above]

- Summer camp [Our Cub camp was a joke, and he seemed to have forgotten that I served on staff of it. The Council hired away many of the staff our camp director hired (and then told the youth that they would inform her about this- and they did not. She started camp horrified to learn that over 4/5ths of her staff had been hired away! The ones who stayed did not get paid for months after the camp was over.) Horror stories about the buildings and improvement fund are also available)

- Training {He seems to have forgotten that I was the Cub Leader Training Chair, even though I was wearing a name tag saying that. We were required by Council to charge at least $5/head for training even when my staff donated almost ALL materials, we had to find a building to meet in, the council refused to buy new materials to replace outdated and worn out stuff, and to top it all off, the SE did not want us meeting in his building in the first place (we had been invited to do so by the shop manager and DE).

- Paid professional staff [Which begs the question 'what do they do to justify Cub parents donating money to them?']

- Uh... he kind of petered out at this point.

 

So, I turn to the assembly here in this Great Forum to answer The Big Question: Why SHOULD Cub parents support FOS?

 

 

(FYI- what I talked to the ADE about is NOT what I tell parents during FOS night! I may be cynical about the paid levels of Scouting, but I still managed to help raise with our 40 Cub families about 75% of what our troop raised with over 100- and our pack was in a lower income area than the troop was!)

 

 

[Hunt]

In thinking about this FOS question, I was thinking about the way my religious denomination collects donations. Almost all the donations are collected by the local church from its members, and a prescribed percentage (the "apportionment") is sent up the pipeline to the district and national church. While people may grumble about the apportionment, they see where most of the money goes. There are occasionally special appeals from the higher levels, but they are for specific things like tsunami relief, not general operations. Right now, BSA doesn't charge units very much--only the annual membership fee, which is pretty small. I don't know, maybe this model wouldn't work well for BSA, where units tend to earn money rather than raise money through donations.

[FScouter]

So, I turn to the assembly here in this Great Forum to answer The Big Question: Why SHOULD Cub parents support FOS?

 

Simple answer. FOS supports the district, council, and national levels of Scouting. If there is no funding, your unit will get no support. Without that support, your unit is DEAD.

 

Some of the things your unit would lose:

No one to collect your annual $10 registration fee (great! Saves us 10 bucks a head)

No summer camp since the insurance cant be paid and the facilities cant be maintained.

No updates to books and literature. (Use your old books from here on out. New boys can share)

No council office because the rent cant be paid and the staff wont work for free.

No new training materials (cant be bought at any price since they cant be printed and distributed)

No awards or patches (units can find a private company to make up what they want, minimum order 50)

No uniforms available unless you can somehow work out an arrangement with the manufacturer.

No DE to advise and help volunteers (maybe you never see him anyway)

No Boys Life magazine (how can it be published it if there is no national office?)

No Scout Shop (these shops dont run themselves)

No Scouter magazine (no longer needed since leaders are on their own now)

No one to answer the telephone at the council office (the office is shut down)

No BSA or council web sites (no money to pay for it)

No more Eagle rank (whos going to validate the application?)

No more popcorn sales (units will figure out their own thing)

[jkhny]

"Simple answer. FOS supports the district, council, and national levels of Scouting. If there is no funding, your unit will get no support. Without that support, your unit is DEAD. "

 

Really? I beg to differ.

 

I postulate that a group of dedicated volunteers can run a "Scout" Unit with NO direct support from Council or even BSA National save a few readily available Scout books. The uniforms and all else are really not integral to "the program." Scouting survived underground in Nazi occupied Europe and even in Soviet controlled Eastern Europe for years.

 

"Scouting" is a world-wide movement with common ideals and a basic program that can be replicated without the overhead entailed by a large organization.

 

Yes, you lose all the "support" - which is usually volunteer run - training, events and such. You lose the "paperwork". You lose access to BSA facilities - but if BSA feels that public facilities are just as good....why not your unit? You lose the legal and business niceties like insurance. BUT - "Scouting" HAS run before without any of this.

 

BSA seems to forget that they are "in business" to support the volunteers, not vice-versa.

 

As noted before - in our Council, "Camping and events" revenue covers "Camping and events costs". wash. Most of the Council remaining budget is salaries and overhead - for staff that does a poor job of recordkeeping and who most units see once a year to ask for money ("to pay THEIR salaries" is the standing comment).

 

Units can and do run fine fundraising for unit activities on their own or paying their own way.

 

In our Council, an accomplished Scoutmaster has said - out of paid staff earshot "We use Council for patches." with an unstated "PERIOD." not completely true but pragmatically so.