Forever the fatalist. ?

[SR540Beaver]

Eamonn,

 

Why the decline? I hope it is because of the removal of ghost units and not the actual loss of kids. I just went out to the Venturing section of the BSA's website to their unit locator page. In my area, there were a lot of Crew chartered to things like the County Juvenile Detention Center, Foundation for the Disabled, Knowledge is Power Prep, Parents for PAWS, Positive Tomorrows, Service Learning Center-Campfire, Human Restorations, etc. One high school in the area had 9, count them, 9 Crews chartered to it while one church had 2 Crews. I'm willing to bet you that if I called the school and told them my son was a student and wanted to join a Venturing Crew, they would have no idea what I was talking about. This is just wrong. Someone is doing a sales job to justify numbers to keep a job. The DE's job should not be tied to membership and fundraising. He should serve as a service interface to the council in particular and the BSA in General. The council should have other people whose primary purpose is recruitment and fundraising. Until they quit basing jobs on numbers, we will see false numbers for ghost units that only get cleaned up when a scandal ensues.

[Eamonn]

Beav,

I don't know if the "Crews" that you found make up the 249,948 or not?

If they are in the count? Things are even worse than they look.

 

I have been in Scouting a very long time. I want nothing more than to see the organization I love grow and do well.

I do not claim to have all or even some of the answers to why things are not going as well as the should or could be.

Still I don't understand why it is when I point out that what we have in place right now is not growing and is not doing well.

I'm made to feel like I'm in some way being disloyal?

I'll gladly accept that maybe I'm an old goat who maybe isn't capable of thinking outside of the box. I'll own up to being a Scouter who is very much rooted in traditional Scouting and Scouting methods.

But I will not accept that anything I have done or haven't done has anything to do with the staggering decline in Venturing Membership.

I of course have ideas of what I think we could or might do, I don't know if they would work or not. I'm willing to listen to anyone who offers alternative ideas.

In the real world I spend a lot of time talking with people who have just found out that they are diabetic. Going over their diet and what they should and shouldn't eat.

At one time in the UK the treatment given to diabetic patients was whiskey! In 1903 an oatmeal diet was seen as the cure! Of course these failed.

The program we have in place for young adults is just not working.

To stand around and point fingers isn't going to make it work, to keep defending it, isn't going to fix it.

I would hope the people who were on the whiskey diet died happy. But that doesn't change the fact that the diet didn't work and they were dead. I'm happy that no one tried to fix the numbers about these failed diets. If they had? People would still be suffering.

Telling lies is never a good thing.

Pretending that the problem will go away or fix it self doesn't work.

It seems to me that we have a product that the end user just isn't interested in and doesn't work.

How do I know that?

The membership numbers are there.

If these numbers have been inflated? We really do have a bigger problem than we think.

Ea.

 

 

[RangerT]

Eamonn

First of all I just wanted to say that I for one do not consider you disloyal to scouting, quite the opposite in fact.

Since you used a statement I stated as the title of this thread I just wanted to say that it was meant only in humor, if you took it otherwise I deeply apologize. We are both close to the same age and have both been involved in all phases of scouting for a long time.

 

In spite of the stats, which are sad to read, there are a lot of very well run and solid crews out there attracting many teens to the program, I guess I am blessed that my area is doing better than most with Venturing.

It is still my belief that this program if done correctly can and does work, the problem is this program has been used and corrupted by professional scouters to boost numbers. The other problem is that CO's were selected without much forethought, and untrained advisors put in charge of the crews, so you get weak units that fold up in a year. I think National should poll those successful crews to see why they are doing so well and rewrite the program along those guidelines.

 

Look at sea scouts Eamonn, their numbers are also dropping as well and National combines them with Venturing ,two very different programs, yet even in Venturing advancement their is a sea scout bronze award and a quartermaster award, why, thats what Sea Scouts are for. Sometimes this all seems like there is no hope for those guys at National. Anyway I am very happy with how successful and large my crew has become over the last few years and I hope it continues to work as well. I have always felt that it takes all of us scouters to make scouting work, if we wait for National to get their act together all of our programs will be in real trouble.

 

Eamonn, you are a true and loyal scouter and wish you much future success with your ship.

[emb021]

"I hope it is because of the removal of ghost units and not the actual loss of kids. I just went out to the Venturing section of the BSA's website to their unit locator page. In my area, there were a lot of Crew chartered to things like the County Juvenile Detention Center, Foundation for the Disabled, Knowledge is Power Prep, Parents for PAWS, Positive Tomorrows, Service Learning Center-Campfire, Human Restorations, etc. One high school in the area had 9, count them, 9 Crews chartered to it while one church had 2 Crews."

 

I had the same question and have never gotten an answer.

 

To me, ghost units are fake units with fake names to inflate numbers. What you take about I call 'paper units', which are real groups with real kids, but which are registered as Venturing units for insurance &/or to use scout camps, but which otherwise make no use of the Venturing program. I bet those kids aren't even aware they are Venturers.

 

One of the councils I work with does that. They would crow about how great their Venturing numbers are. But when you really look at it, there were few 'real' Venturing crews. And no council support from Venturing. The council has no council/district Venturing events, few Venturing training, and they haven't had a Powder Horn since 2002 when they cohosted one. Several dedicated Venturing leaders have been working hard over the last could of years to change this.

 

[SR540Beaver]

emb021,

 

I would assume that Venturing is like a Troop in that you have to have a CO, X number of adults and X number of youth to obtain a charter and stay chartered in the future. To crow about their numbers, they have to have "actual" adults and youth registered to those units. Can a school with 9 Crews claim every kid in the school as members of 9 different Crews? Somewhere there has to be registration forms that added them to the CO's roster. There also have to be adult leaders and someone has to be getting the recharter signed and filed annually. How do you have youth on a roster without valid registration forms?

 

Inquiring minds want to know.

[CNYScouter]

Some of the Ship members have been joined a Shooting Venturing Crew to learn how to fire pistols.

Last year a rifle crew was formed and when a new law came into effect this summer, allowing 14 to 20 year olds to shoot pistol, a Pistol Shooting Crew was formed.

 

The rifle crew has as a CO that is a gun club with an outdoor range.

The pistol crew has a pistol club as a CO with an indoor range just down the road.

 

These two Crews have the same Advisors, CC and Committee members.

The DE just took the youth in the rifle crew and registered them in the Pistol Crew also.

These two crews meet together and the youth can fire either pistols or rifles, but they are listed as separate units.

 

We also had a DE resign last year doing this.

He would sign up 20 Cubs, 5 leaders and find 4 COs.

He could then create 4 Packs rotating the adults for the different Leadership positions in each Pack (CM, CC, DL and 2 MCs).

They would then just all meet together.

 

So it can be easily done with some creative number management.

 

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

SR540Beaver writes:

...

In my area, there were a lot of Crew chartered to things like the County Juvenile Detention Center, Foundation for the Disabled, Knowledge is Power Prep, Parents for PAWS, Positive Tomorrows, Service Learning Center-Campfire, Human Restorations, etc. One high school in the area had 9, count them, 9 Crews chartered to it while one church had 2 Crews. I'm willing to bet you that if I called the school and told them my son was a student and wanted to join a Venturing Crew, they would have no idea what I was talking about.

 

...

 

Plus, the Juvenile Detention Center and the high school (assuming it's a public school) aren't supposed to be chartering Crews anymore, according to what BSA national said back in 2005.

[Lisabob]

I know people play all kinds of games with numbers! Still I was told by our DE recently that boys who are cross-registered in two crews or a crew and a troop can only be counted for council and district membership purposes in one of those. If that's the case it diminishes the temptation to just sign up a kid for multiple units to inflate the totals.

 

 

[Oak Tree]

That's a sensible policy, and nice to hear. But even if double-registering doesn't boost the number of Scouts, it still can artificially boost the number of units.

 

What you really want to know is how many boys are active in the Scouting program. But that can be a tough thing to measure.

 

Oak Tree