Non-Profit At What Cost ?

[Lisabob]

This is an interesting thread. Eamonn I feel your pain man. I grew up in a scouting family and one of my earliest memories is going to Camp Ti-Wa-Yee (sp?) with my dad (Eagle,SM, and camp director), grandfather (longtime SM who also carved the totem poles at the entry of the camp) and godfather (professional scouter) to say "goodbye" to a BSA camp that was being sold. I must have been 3 or 4. My parents met there (mom was camp director at a nearby GSUSA camp). I spent a good many summers at various scout camps with them and on my own too. So in general I'm opposed to selling camps and I certainly wouldn't advocate such action for any but the most dire purposes. This should be an absolute last resort.

 

That said: I don't think a salary of $32,000 for a DE is unreasonable (in fact I think it is pretty low and may go a ways toward explaining why districts have a hard time attracting great people, if that's the going wage), and if a district finds that hard to pay, then perhaps they need a long, hard look at their finances.

 

I don't know what my current DE makes, though I hope it is more than $32K. it would be difficult for us to operate without him. Although I get annoyed with his constant worrying about numbers sometimes and we don't always see eye to eye, I do know that he will personally ensure that various district programs run - successfully - even if that means he needs to do nearly everything by himself. And unfortunately there have been times where he has had to do just that, and he's done so pretty successfully. He's worth every penny he earns on those days.

 

I do know our council has 3 camps and only one gets a lot of use. Both of the others are remote from most of the council's population and one is quite rustic and in need of a lot of work. There is talk from time to time about selling the one and honestly I doubt many people in the council would even notice, sad though that is. If council folks are concerned that these other facilities aren't getting used enough to justify keeping them, then someone, somewhere, ought to start a PR campaign. Most people in our council probably don't even know they exist.

 

The "rumor mill" around here is that within 5 years at most our (fairly successful and rapidly growing) council will merge with another council that has not done so well of late. They also have 3 camps. No doubt some of the combined 6 properties will be sold off. What a shame. I wonder whether we'll see a corresponding reduction in the number of professional staff serving the new, merged council?

 

Lisa'bob

A good old bobwhite too!

[Eamonn]

Lisabob

I enjoyed reading your posting.

A lot of my problem is me.

I still want us to be more like a Rockwell painting than a spreadsheet.

I agree that if we pay peanuts that we are going to get monkeys.

The young Lad we now have in the District as DE wants to be a program guy. He wants to camp and hike and do all that sort of thing. Hey -That's fine we do that. But we do it as volunteers on our own time.

His predecessor who was DE for nine years came on board late in life. Before being employed by the Boy Scouts her only real exposure to Scouting was that her son is an Eagle Scout.

I was a key 3 member for most of the time she was with us. As a key 3 we looked at what her job really was and where her time would best be spent. At times I went to battle with her bosses because I seen what they were asking her to do as them taking her away from what we wanted her to do.

I seen my role as District Chairman as ensuring that what we the volunteers were supposed to do was being done.

Working with her, we seen the money raised from our community FOS Campaign soar. We started from the ground up several events that brought in thousands of dollars, without having to go to the unit volunteers.

I don't think we need pay a DE or any professional to do the job that a volunteer does for nothing!!

If no one is willing to do something, rather than farming it out to the DE we need to ask why?

Sadly it's almost a fact of life that Councils need the money that Popcorn and the family FOS Campaign brings in. But we can't keep brow beating the people who are giving so much time, energy and money to support the program at the grass roots.

At our board meeting on Monday everyone agreed that cutting programs was not the thing to do. We just don't seem able to agree what the programs are.

I read the vision statement and see words like fun, adventure and challenge. I see this as us providing the resources for our youth members to participate in real scouting type activities. Not re-new the lease on a SE's car.

But I see membership being about bring more kids into participate in the challenges, fun and excitement of Scouting, not just a Quality Council plaque or a way to take the next step up the promotion ladder.

I think I see the need for most of what we do. My big problem is at times I question the motivation of why.

I know that we have a lot of really good professionals who really care about the kids we serve, the families and communities that these kids come from. But even these caring people are having a tough time coming to grips with Scouting becoming more about numbers than Scouts.

Eamonn.

 

 

[jkhny]

BSA National has a HIGHLY paid cadre of "professionals" - Williams compensation package was over $900,000 in 2003 - cause for negative comment in the non-profit world. He is one of the HIGHEST paid non-profit CEO's in the country. This was expounded on previously. National has a slew of VERY well paid "professionals."

 

SE's tend to be FAR better paid than their GSA counterparts. Here the SE makes $60,000 more than the GSA head (same exact geographical area and GSA has twice the number of kids enrolled).

 

There's a whole cadre of "professionals" making obscenee and UNDESERVED salaries. Look at Holmes in Alabama - at over $240,000 a year - caught faking enrollments for the second time in 5 years.

 

THe standing joke here is that the ONLY thing "professionals" do in this Council is raise money to pay their own salaries.

 

Of note, Baden Powell had real doubts about having ANY paid professionals in Scouting. Look at your Council's 990 and see where most of the money goes.