Non-Profit At What Cost ?

[Eamonn]

I happened to join Her That Must Be Obeyed on a trip to our favorite Italian Store. They sell the best Deli-meats and a good selection of seafood. - Sorry Ed I was just too lazy to make the trip t the Strip District and we now have a Parmanti Bros Restaurant in Greensburgh.

As I was going in the store, a very good friend was coming out.

I was hoping that I might just get away with wishing him a Merry Christmas(Yes we are both Christians!!) I was eager to go and drool over the capicola ham.

But he was upset and wanted to talk.

Our Council doesn't have a Ranger or anyone paid to take care of building or maintenance. This fellow is and is looked upon as being the Head Man in that area. He is up at camp almost every weekend and over the years had lead many if not most of the projects that have improved the camp. He is very bright, very well educated holds down a very responsible job, but his great love is the camp.

I have known him for over 25 years. We have met at camp a lot, gone out to eat several times and the love he has for the camp and the history of the camp shines through.

Our Council is having a very rough time in the financial department. It looks like we are going to end the year about $200,000 in the hole.

A task force has been meeting to see what can be done to cut costs and bring in more money. Their report is due at the Executive Board meeting to be held on Monday.

I haven't seen or tried to find out what is in the report, but in true Boy Scout tradition rumors and hearsay are rampant.

One big rumor is that we will sell off our other camp.

I have heard this and did a little checking around. The camp isn't used a lot,needs a lot of improvements, but made $500.00 last year. A few year back we had it timbered and the timber brought in about $150,000. Right now the $500.00 is mainly due to the fact that there are gas wells on the property.

The fellow I'm with is telling me that if "They" sell it, he is done!!

He goes on and on about financial mismanagement, and how "They" are not providing the services that our Scouts need.

After about 25 minutes of this we wish each other a Merry Christmas and he goes on his way. I join Her That Must Be Obeyed in the store.

While I wasn't upset at him or about what he had said, I was upset.

Upset because I think I'm one of the "They".

Upset because I'm no longer sure of what I have stood for over the years.

While I own up to not being a spring chicken, I'm not that old!! However it seems to me that not that very long ago Scouting wasn't as.... Shall we say Organized.

The camp we are maybe thinking of selling was the fruit of two donations. I'm sure when the land was offered we didn't stop to think about the long term financial implications! It was sometime in the 1960's.

I'm not sure when the word charity was replaced with Non-profit organization? I'm not even sure if they are the same thing?

I do know that the tiny District I serve has a DE that earns $32,000 a year plus benefits.

Trying to raise money takes up a great deal of his time and the time of a lot of volunteers.

Much as I hate to say it. We could do very well without him.

Sometime in the fall our FD was accused and arrested for sexually abusing a young girl. He was never seen again and we never replaced him. We at the volunteer level have not noticed any change in the level of service, now that we don't have a FD.

My friend outside the Deli had mentioned that he earned about $50,000 a year. He went on to say that our SE earns almost twice that. While $100,000 a year might not seem a lot in other parts of the country around here it is almost unheard of.

I suppose it's way to late to turn back the clock and return to a kinder, gentler time when we weren't as Organized.

But I do think we as volunteers have got to take a stand and make sure that the people who work as professionals are worth every last cent.

Eamonn.

[Oak Tree]

Eamonn,

 

I know what you mean. It's Friends of Scouting time again, and the parents in my pack are largely against spending any time at a pack meeting (or anywhere else, really) on this item. The Council says that it costs $120 for each boy in Scouting. Well, we have 70 boys in the pack, and I'm quite confident we aren't getting $8400 worth of service. Like you, I'm pretty sure we could run the pack just fine with no DE at all.

 

I don't have any idea about the council finances, but I suspect that some part of the average expense goes into the camps. And the pack doesn't really use the camps at all. Well, we camped there once, and found it below the standards of the state parks that we typically use. And those parks are pretty cheap, too.

 

I'm not sure what the best answer is. I'm sure that in our area it would be better just to charge what it actually costs, and not be hitting people up for donations all the time.

 

Oak Tree

[evmori]

Eamonn,

No problem! I go to the Strip for the PA Macaroni House anyway!

 

I have always thought of selling off assets as a last ditch effort before the cutting of salaries & elimination of jobs. And selling off camps that were the result of donations just seems like very poor management. We had a camping director who wanted to bulldoze a dining hall at on of the camps in our council. The volunteers got together, cleaned the place up & did a complete makeover of the dining hall & other buildings in the camp. Today, the dining hall is still there and fully functional! The camping director is gone. Rumor has it over money issues.

 

I know this might not be what you want to hear, Eamonn, but maybe it's time to put our two councils together! Not sure if that's the answer, though.

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

A blessed Christmas to all

[SemperParatus]

I've said this before, and I am sure I will say it again...

 

The current Council-structure is archaic, producing substantial waste throughout the system. Council staffs of 25+ folks managing a budget of only a couple million dollars makes absolutely no sense in today's world of high tech web-based communications, marketing, reporting and financial management. Replicating this inefficiency several hundred times over throughout the system results in exponentially poor financial performance. The whole business side of the BSA house is screaming for consolidation of the Council structure into Regional Centers that offer 24/7 call center support for members, full on-line distribution channels for information and merchandise, and an overhead structure that makes far more sense. As the business aspect of scouting is transitioned to a more 'impersonal' (albeit more efficient, professional and less costly) structure, the program side would benefit from a greater percentage of available resources that could drive attractive program initiatives and property improvements that can actually fuel membership recruitment and retention, with the resultant increase in fees and ancillary revenues. The local support of units w/should continue to be carried on by the mass of dedicated volunteer scouters who have always been the bulwark of the program, and who can best provide the 'personal/high touch' service that unit leaders have come to expect and will need to grow their units.

 

Until such measures are taken, scout properties will continue to be put up for sale to finance a highly inefficient and archaic business model. Why not change the business model (just like practically every other successful business has done over the past ten years of the information age), rather than sell off appreciating hard assets to support a fiscally inefficient system.

 

Absent an unprecedented surge in new members, something will need to be done sooner or later. Selling camp properties does not fix the financial problems that council's face, it only provides temporary relief to prop up an organization with a highly inefficient cost-structure.

 

 

 

[Eamonn]

Semper,

I will take the time I don't have right now to read your posting and get back to you.

Ed

As you may know we have for a long time lived in the fear that one day we would be gobbled up by the Council that you are in.

Some people would rather die than see us become part of your Council. But over the past few months things have changed even the most vocal of the anti -GPC are now starting to say that maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Eamonn.

[Kahuna]

I continue to be amazed that camps cannot be made to be profitable, or at least no cost. I realize not every council is as lucky as Central Florida, where they can get "tourist" troops to come spend time while they visit Disney, but even there the South Florida Council camp just a short distance away was sold because it wasn't profitable.

 

I admit I have no idea of operating costs for camps these days and I'm sure they are astronomical compared to what they were in my days of camp management. I do know that volunteers are available to work on and at camps and I wonder how much effort is really made to utilize their skills.

[Prairie_Scouter]

I think a lot could be done to lower expenses just by taking advantage of the technology available today. I've seen parts of the BSA software, and it's pretty archaic looking, even tho it's only a few years old. Badly designed interface, poor response time, not a good example of technology. Now, that's only based on a couple of observations, but I'm told that that was pretty indicative. I've gone so far as to suggest to people at our council that BSA could start up an "open source" initiative to build a new system. You gotta figure that BSA has its share of geeks that could do that sort of thing . Anyway, no response, really, but the point is, technology can do a lot to help manage scarce resources better.

 

That includes our camping facilities. If a facility is falling into disuse, I'd have to ask "why?". Maybe answering that question would go a long way towards figuring out the solution.

[Backpacker]

Semper

 

I agree with you, but lets take it one step further do we need all the bureacracy at National? Why do we need a National Supply division when there are thousands of retail manufacturers out there who could produce superior uniforms and equipment at much more competitive prices, the supply division is also a dinosaur whose days are numbered.

 

Next why do we need a Chief Scout Exec. making over a half million dollars a year just to go to the jamborees and a few other events just to say say welcome? The National Office is in grave need of an overhaul, it contains many redundant positions as well as a large number of personnel who do very little at all to justify their large salaries. As a former Sr. DE I found it disturbing the lack of financial responsibility on both a council, regional and National level which is why I left the profession after four years of working my tail off and watching the FOS money being wasted away year after year. Acountability should begin at the top and filter on down to the councils, and we volunteers as contributors should demand both National and Council accountability every year and start with cutting the deadwood who can not justify their positions.

[Beavah]

Gotta agree with Semper and Backpacker on dis.

 

It's hard to locate a less efficient business model than the BSA's at present, or a NFP with a higher "overhead" than the BSA. I had to laugh at the DE who claimed that our council only had 15% overhead. The sad thing is he says it in public, which isn't so much funny as dishonest.

 

But my favorite is selling capital program assets to raise endowment to pay executive salaries. It's like some kinda nightmare case study in poor financial stewardship.

 

 

[John-in-KC]

I've seen several Council Annual Reports.

 

I'd LOVE TO SEE a fully audited Council Fiscal report, done to GAAP (or non-profit equivalent).

 

For that matter, I'd love to see the same for BSA National.

[Kahuna]

I guess I must be just a little less than prescient. More than 30 years ago, I said what the BSA should do to raise money is sell custom designed uniforms based on donation level. If you gave a couple of thousand (in those days) you would get a dress uniform with gold braid and epaulets like Navy admirals used to wear. A little more and you could carry a dress sword.

 

I only missed it by a little. You can't buy a dress sword uniform but you can buy an award for yourself. James E. West, Baden-Powell Fellowships and other awards for dumping out some bucks and, best of all, making your council beneficiary of your life insurance.

 

I used to think I was safe by contributing only to capital campaigns that went to build camps. Then they sold one of "my" camps!

[scoutingagain]

Be carefull...! Some of you are beginning to sound like JKHNY. We havn't heard from him in a while. I wonder if THEY found out who he is?

 

Let's face it. If your a Scout Executive and you believe your job is to serve youth, after carefullly analyzing all the facts and financial data, you are likely to come to the conclusion the youth are better served by you keeping your job than the youth are keeping their camp.

 

SA

[Eamonn]

We had the meeting.

It seemed that half the board had no idea what the heck we were talking about. They had never been to the camp.

Everyone was in agreement that the last thing we should do is cut programs. I seen just about everyone nod their head when that was said.

When the camp came up I said how selling the only camp we have for winter camping is cutting programs there were some very puzzled looks. (Our Summer camp is in a state park and we can't get in from November till spring thaw)

There was a lot of talk about this budget and that budget and it went around and around.

I got a little shall we say unhappy? (I was ready for a pint!!)

It seemed very easy to me.

If we weren't going to cut programs or sell off any assets. We need to get hold of some money. If we are not going to face this same thing every year we need to bring in more money. In fact the money is there in the endowment fund and we have a big fund raising event every year that would make up the shortfall, only the money from it goes into the endowment fund.

When I asked if we could take the money from the endowment fund and stop putting the money from this big event into the endowment fund. I was informed that the trustees of the fund would have to OK it and they wouldn't be happy!!

But happy or not that is what we are going to do.

I see no reason to have an endowment fund if we don't have a Council!!

Still, my point in this thread isn't about selling camps.

I just think that we are getting so tied up in budgets and numbers that we seem to be forgetting that we are in the business of serving the kids in our communities.

I really think that we spend too much time and too much money building wonderful and fabulous ambulances at the bottom of the cliff but we fail to see that a guard rail at the top would do a better job. And cost a heck of a lot less.

I'm not in anyway carrying on any sort of vendetta, I just think that we all need to be aware of what is going on, we need to do all we can to make sure that our COR is attending the meetings and voicing his or her opinions about what is best for the youth in the organization that he or she represents.

We need to ensure that the squeaky wheel isn't getting all the grease. Not letting pet projects take away from the really important stuff.

Eamonn.

 

[scoutldr]

At our District meetings we have one, maybe two CORs show up out of about 70 units. That's on a good month. No amount of training, cajoling, or inviting seems to change that. On a REALLY good month, the District Chairman shows up and actually presides over the meeting instead of the DE (even though the DE plans the agenda and prints it out for him).

In my opinion, the answer is pretty simple. As I understand it, the professionals' jobs are to 1)get major donations from corporate and private sources (not the volunteers), 2)form new units, and 3) get more youth, in that order. If they are not producing and meeting goals set by the Council Executive Boards, they need to be replaced. Yes, the volunteers have a role...that is to deliver the program with the resources provided by the fruits of the professionals' labors. Too often, I see the pros getting down into the weeds with things like camporee planning, training, Roundtables, etc. As has been mentioned on this forum before, Executive Boards are hand picked by the SE, and they just rubber stamp what he wants, even if it includes selling off property to pay salaries or buy new office furniture. Perhaps Executive Boards should be nominated and elected by the Council membership at large, instead of just a majority vote of the few CORs who bother to show up for the annual meeting.

 

My perceptions...yours may differ.

[Eamonn]

I think and maybe I'm wrong that there was a time when the people who served on the Council Executive Board, were local guys who owned local businesses and knew all about Scouts, Scouting and what was going on in the area.

Sadly it seems that things have changed. Small businesses moved to the mall or just aren't there anymore.

Many of the people who now serve on boards or committees are building a resume. While many will donate at a high level they work for big corporations and they don't really have the authority to do very much.

We have several guys on our board who are there because they work for big multinational companies who have either chosen certain charities or have certain criteria for giving. Sadly many of these guys don't really know very much about Scouting and they don't seem to be doing much to find out anything.

SE's only get away with handpicking Boards if we let them.

It is wrong of us to moan and groan when the volunteers are the ones at fault.

Eamonn.