Why Units AND Membership?

[OldGreyEagle]

I have often wondered about this and since we seem to have a number of Scouting professionals and/or former pros active right now, I have this question:

 

What is the reasoning for increasing both membership AND Units? I understand the membership part. I know if you are not increasing, you are shrinking and that's never good. I just don't understand the logic of having DE's have a goal of starting new units annually. Wouldnt it be better to have a goal of adding so many more members to the District whether in exisitng units or new ones? As discussed in many places, one bigger unit that can do more things based on size and resources and can provide a much better experience for the youth than multiple smaller units that struggle to get much participation.

[SemperParatus]

I'm no scouting professional, but I would think the impetus behind unit growth is to expand scouting's reach in an area through greater opportunities for affiliation with more institutional partners. While pure membership growth is enough of a belt to hold up the pants, growth in partnering relationships are the suspenders needed over the long haul to make sure we never, ever expose ourselves.

[OldGreyEagle]

Good point Semper, but why start a troop when the church across the street already has one and the elks down the street as well, thats what I am talking about. When the market seems full, one is always seemingly crammed in

[SemperParatus]

Couple of reasons I suppose...

 

1. There are potential scout recruits affiliated with the new CO (e.g., church members) that either do not know about the other units in the area or for one reason or another are adverse to joining the other units.

 

2. Offers some level of protection against a CO pulling the plug on a unit, leaving boys high and dry until a new CO can be identified.

 

3. One of the simplest ways to increase membership is to increase units. New units, while causing some shuffling of the deck in an area, does produce new members that have not been involved in scouting before.

 

4. There are many dynamics involved in determining whether a particular 'market is full', such as the overall community growth rate, percentage of scout age children involved in scouting, the quality of current programs, availability of committed leaders, etc. It may very well be that a small community can only support one local unit, while in larger, growing areas more units can mean more choices and more opportunities for more boys.

 

 

[SR540Beaver]

OGE,

 

Good question. I think it is much like the Southern Baptist (and probably many other denominations) approach. About the time you get your Sunday School class grown to a decent size and everyone feels comfortable with each other and the teacher, the Minister of Education comes along and announces that they are splitting the class in half. Kind of like cells dividing. The thought is that growth will become stagnant at a certain point and in order to keep growing, you must split into smaller groups and continue to grow. Churches do the same thing by starting "missions" near the new housing addition in town. They support it until it grows into a full fledged self supporting church of it's own where no church existed before. Look at it as survival of the species. You have to multiply to continue existing in a meaningful way.

 

The first troop we joined was one that had not really done much recruiting in a number of years and we slowly discovered that there desire was to be a social club for the older boys. We did the DE's job for him and started our own troop.

[Jeffrey H]

The leaders in my district do not like to merge units simply because they want to give the struggling unit every opportunity possible to rebuild. I can understand that position because Ive heard many success stories of dying units that came back to life. No district leader wants to be accused of being impatient and pulling the plug too early. All it takes is one person to step up who has a little bit of motivation. A little bit of motivation with a plan can go a long way.

[Fuzzy Bear]

The difference between unit count and individual membership count within a unit is that real growth can only be determined by the number of overall units in a District. Few individual units will sustain growth, moreover, will continually fluctuate. Several reasons are given for this cyclical pattern of loss and gain. We continually discuss these things in this Forum, such as: leaders cycle out, training cycles, boys move up and/or out, programs cycle, money cycles, resources cycle, Commissioner Service is always poor, etc. I believe that charting past growth cycles like this is an after the fact approach that sustains and creates these patterns. I would term it a type of false science that uses the easiest answer to fix a complex problem.

 

When dealing with people in a more controlled situation like Las Vegas, it works really well. They control as many atmospheric variables as possible to enhance a game that is already 51% in their favor, so easier answers can readily increase their take. Las Vegas is really only a desert where a fortune was and is being made from controlling the greed of others. If only Scouting were as easy, then we might all be going to Summer Camp from now on.

 

I have shared my answers on this subject elsewhere. FB

 

[Hunt]

I have to suspect that trying to preserve dying units may actually harm membership, because the few boys involved in those units are likely to drop out entirely, whereas they might stay in scouting if a merger with a more healthy unit could be engineered. I think BSA pros should be making this happen, rather than discouraging it.

[Jeffrey H]

I have to suspect that trying to preserve dying units may actually harm membership, because the few boys involved in those units are likely to drop out entirely, whereas they might stay in scouting if a merger with a more healthy unit could be engineered. I think BSA pros should be making this happen, rather than discouraging it.

 

Our Pack is currently providing leadership and activities to another Pack that is in serious decline because they have no Cubmaster.  Im convinced that if we did not step in to help that most of their Cubs would have dropped out for good.  Some of their boys came back into Cubs after we invited them to come back and be a part of an active and fun program.  That said, preserving a dying unit is only a temporary band-aid that should not continue for more than a year.

 

Unless they can get a Cubmaster before their next re-charter, their unit will merge into ours.  The merger will be simple the few boys they have will transfer to our Pack.  Our BSA pro (DE) will not like this, but so what?  He does not deliver our Packs program and work with our Cubs weekend and weekout.  We helped this dying Pack with recruitment at school night for scouting and all the DE did was show up at the end of it and ask us how many we recruited.

 

Sidenote:  Our DE could enhance his professional image for the BSA by showing up in full uniform.