Membership Continues Decline

[Huzzar]

IMO, this is a warning sign to BSA should they decide to admit gay leaders. That's where the rubber hits the road when you ask parents to let their sons to go off into the woods with men that are sexually attracted to males.

Your choice. Other parents will make theirs if gay leaders are admitted.

[acco40]

Here is a personal example. When my oldest (now 23 years old) wanted to be a Cub Scout I signed him up. The next year, I was my second son's Tiger partner. The next year my wife signed me up to be a Wolf Den leader and for the next ten years I was some combination of Den Leader, Assistant Scoutmaster, Scoutmaster and Unit Commissioner (never less than two positions!). During that time the council changed structure twice - merging with with the council next to in geographically and a few year later forming a state wide council. Camps have closed (mothballed) to save operating and maintenance costs. I'm going to an Eagle (and Silver Award) Recognition dinner next week that will be held at a large convention center. When my boys earned Eagle, they attended the same dinner but then it was for a much smaller geographic area but attendance was almost the same ≈500 or so Scouts. It is much less personal now and I'm afraid the BSA program will continue to shrink. However, I don't think it has anything to do with God, Gays or Girls. I just think in this day and age the thought of "going camping" and "the outdoors" is so foreign to so many folks they don't see the benefit. I look back fondly during the time I was a Scout Leader and am contemplating jumping back into it after I retire in the next few years.

[Horizon]

You guys are so funny. The Girl Scouts and Campfire Kids took a huge hit that they have yet to recover from when they allowed gays. The Canadian Scouts are somewhere around 35 percent of what they were when they allowed gays. But the BSA's cause for the membership drop after the admission of gays is "program"? LOL

Read the article - we have been dropping for years. We hit 6% this year, higher than the 4% drop last year. Trying to pin this on the gay issue ignores all of the other factors we deal with already.

 

Allowing some gay scouts adds to some of that drop, but we were already dropping.

[walk in the woods]

I think it's a combination of things. I've seen a number of parents pull kids because of membership. It's certainly part of the equation. Right or wrong, I think it will get worse when the restrictions on adults are lifted. acco40, I think there are plenty of kids who like camping and the outdoors. That said, in my corner of rural America by the time they are Boy Scout age they've spent many hours with Dad hunting, fishing, canoeing and camping. They've driven ATVs and jet skis and snowmobiles. They "own" their own firearms. Boy Scout aged boys in my area that are interested in the outdoors aren't willing to wait until they are 15 years old to do the things they've been doing with Dad for years. The boys and girls I work with think things like the laser tag ban are the stupidest rules known to man. My autistic son learned to mow the lawn at 11, not 14. Boys who are 14/15 years old drive quarter-million dollar farm equipment every spring and fall but they can't drive a lawn tractor on summer camp staff or work days because they aren't 18. Ultimately we are selling buggy whips to the ipod generation and even those interested in buggy whips aren't interested in the restrictions we put on them.

[Peregrinator]

Per, I had friends in the Canadian scouts at the time, it was a direct relationship. And there have been many articles since about it as well. 65% loss! The Canadian Scouts of today is nothing like it was in 1995. It's more of a YMCA type of program now. It lost it's soul. I can't say the BSA has or is going to fall that much. I'm pleasently surprised it's only 6%. But I have experience with collecting national membership data and it takes at least 18 months to get an accurate count on a single scout because it takes at least a year to take him off the council roster, and he may had signed up for that year several months before. Plus, there is not a National deadline for membership signup, each council has their own timeline and process for registration. If you have every followed BSA data, you know that it takes about five years to identify a trend with membership data. Barry

Per, I had friends in the Canadian scouts at the time, it was a direct relationship.

 

I didn't say it wasn't a direct relationship, I said it wasn't the sole reason for the decline. Yes, I have friends who were leaders in Scouts Canada at the time of the membership policy change (1998) and who left not because girls, homosexuals, etc. were allowed but because units were not permitted to opt out. That is, units were forcibly integrated.

 

That the new membership policy was not the sole reason for the decline can be seen by the fact that membership had already declined over 20% from 1990 by the time the new policy was put in place (1998).

 

Now if membership had continued to decline at the same rate, then we would expect to see a total membership of about 135,400 in 2014. Instead, total membership stands at 98,142 as of 2013. So, again, the new membership policy accelerated the decline that was already taking place. I suspect that the new co-ed policy has more to do with it than the policy on homosexuals, as Beavers and Cubs have experienced the worst decline and one would expect that they would be least affected by gays in their midst.

[Scouter99]

Maybe when our professional millionaires run out of ideas to turn the Boy Scout program into an "inclusive" indoor program, we might consider the June 15, 1916 Scoutcraft program mandated by an Act of Congress in return for our monopoly on Scouting.

 

http://inquiry.net/leadership/sitting_side_by_side_with_adults.htm

We can take every boy in the nation, Schiff, and people will still call us discriminatory because we don't take girls. Our policies aren't our critics' real problem, the problem is our industrial/modern ideals in a post-modern world. So, we can take homosexuals and then it's atheists, and then we can take atheists and it'll be girls, and then we can take girls in Cubs and Boy Scouts and it'll be something new after that over and over again until we strip out every aspect of our ideals that is a moral absolute, patriotic, competitive, etc.

[RememberSchiff]

Maybe when our professional millionaires run out of ideas to turn the Boy Scout program into an "inclusive" indoor program, we might consider the June 15, 1916 Scoutcraft program mandated by an Act of Congress in return for our monopoly on Scouting.

 

http://inquiry.net/leadership/sitting_side_by_side_with_adults.htm

I'm was talking about boys that we are not taking in and scouts we are not keeping due to policies. Critics, girls, and Cub Scouts are other matters.

 

Over the years I personally have turned away many great boys and their families over the membership form DRP (hated myself too) and seen almost as many older great scouts leave because they were not allowed to take charge (as in no adults) or even do the outdoor things they safely did with their families. This takes a toll on our youth membership numbers.

[perdidochas]

I think competing activities and demographics has more to do with it than The changes to the program in the 60s or allowing gays. Youth sport participation numbers are falling too.

 

If not sports (as youth sport participation numbers are falling), what are the competing activities? Personally, I think it's that Scouting isnt competing successfully with video games and Facebook/Instagram/etc. The other is that while the number of kids playing a sport may be going down, the level of their playing the sport has gone up--it's not uncommon around here for boys to play baseball in both the fall and spring. I wonder how their participation in baseball is measured?

 

We need to get rid of silly rules in G2SS, and embrace the outdoors as much as possible. I don't think the new crop of digital subject area merit badges are going to help.

Well, if youth sports and Scouts are both having losses, where are the youth going?

 

We had the problem with attendance at campouts. We fixed it mainly by just changing up the locations of campouts. We were camping in the same few spots over and over (Scout camp and a local base mainly). Now that we've branched out more, we are having more attendance and higher membership.

[perdidochas]

Do we have the break-down by program yet?

 

Charters are coming in late, so I wouldn't be surprised if the stats get an adjustment by the May meeting.

 

Smell the roses, people. I'm sure mine isn't the only unit whose membership would be 10% larger if the price of admission increased at no more than the pace of inflation.

Actually, we are doing a poor job at attracting crossovers, initially. We are getting a lot of scouts a year or so into the program. We've also gotten a few scouts a few month after their crossover into other troops. The other troops didn't give them anything program wise. We did.

[perdidochas]

I think it's a combination of things. I've seen a number of parents pull kids because of membership. It's certainly part of the equation. Right or wrong, I think it will get worse when the restrictions on adults are lifted. acco40, I think there are plenty of kids who like camping and the outdoors. That said, in my corner of rural America by the time they are Boy Scout age they've spent many hours with Dad hunting, fishing, canoeing and camping. They've driven ATVs and jet skis and snowmobiles. They "own" their own firearms. Boy Scout aged boys in my area that are interested in the outdoors aren't willing to wait until they are 15 years old to do the things they've been doing with Dad for years. The boys and girls I work with think things like the laser tag ban are the stupidest rules known to man. My autistic son learned to mow the lawn at 11, not 14. Boys who are 14/15 years old drive quarter-million dollar farm equipment every spring and fall but they can't drive a lawn tractor on summer camp staff or work days because they aren't 18. Ultimately we are selling buggy whips to the ipod generation and even those interested in buggy whips aren't interested in the restrictions we put on them.

I do agree that the restrictions in things like laser tag/paintball, etc. aren't helping things. However, fundamentally, boys like to camp, make fires and play with knives. At least in my neck of the woods, those are allowed.

[Rick_in_CA]

I think a big part of the decline in participation in Boy Scouts and other activities is the increased opportunity costs of participation.

 

Kids today are chauffeured everywhere, they don’t travel on their own. Look at any elementary school today, where are the bicycle racks? When I was a kid, my school had huge bicycle racks that held hundreds of bicycles everyday. Why? Because we rode our bikes or walked to school. That very same elementary school no-longer has those racks because the kids are driven to and from school by their parents. The line of urban assault vehicles (SUVs) waiting to pick up their kids at the end of the day stretches for blocks. Same thing for little league, boy scouts, etc. - we usually got there under our own power (unless it was across town). I am amazed at how much time parents today spend shuttling their kids around. In our cub pack we have lost several boys over transportation issues.

 

Many extracurricular activities today require complete commitment. Want to be a cheerleader at your high school? You have to attend a summer camp just to be allowed to try out. Want to play soccer? Be prepared for a year round activity. It used to be if you wanted to do multiple activities, it wasn’t that hard. Now many groups expect you to pick just one and spend all you time with them.

 

One thing I have observed that is probably related to the transportation thing, is that the circle of friends that kids have today tend to be much more geographically distributed. When I was a kid, I could walk or ride my bicycle to the house of virtually every one of my friends. We all lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools. Now with most of the children of my friends, that isn’t true. One of the reasons they have to be chauffeured to “play dates†instead of simply getting together with their friends under their own power.

[Sentinel947]

I think a big part of the decline in participation in Boy Scouts and other activities is the increased opportunity costs of participation.

 

Kids today are chauffeured everywhere, they don’t travel on their own. Look at any elementary school today, where are the bicycle racks? When I was a kid, my school had huge bicycle racks that held hundreds of bicycles everyday. Why? Because we rode our bikes or walked to school. That very same elementary school no-longer has those racks because the kids are driven to and from school by their parents. The line of urban assault vehicles (SUVs) waiting to pick up their kids at the end of the day stretches for blocks. Same thing for little league, boy scouts, etc. - we usually got there under our own power (unless it was across town). I am amazed at how much time parents today spend shuttling their kids around. In our cub pack we have lost several boys over transportation issues.

 

Many extracurricular activities today require complete commitment. Want to be a cheerleader at your high school? You have to attend a summer camp just to be allowed to try out. Want to play soccer? Be prepared for a year round activity. It used to be if you wanted to do multiple activities, it wasn’t that hard. Now many groups expect you to pick just one and spend all you time with them.

 

One thing I have observed that is probably related to the transportation thing, is that the circle of friends that kids have today tend to be much more geographically distributed. When I was a kid, I could walk or ride my bicycle to the house of virtually every one of my friends. We all lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools. Now with most of the children of my friends, that isn’t true. One of the reasons they have to be chauffeured to “play dates†instead of simply getting together with their friends under their own power.

You about summed up my childhood. (I graduated HS in 2012)

 

Everything you wrote applied to me. I think you've nailed it.

[EmberMike]

This is ridiculous. 4% drops for years and now we see a 6% drop and suddenly that's the number everyone is focusing on. Assuming we would have seen another 4% drop this year regardless of policy changes, really it's only fair to attribute maybe 2% to the policy, and even that is just a guess.

 

What I'll be anxious to see is what happens next year or over the next 2-3 years. We knew the policy change would result in some loss. That was a given. But after the exodus (if you can call it that when it really only resulted in a 2% loss), it will be interesting to see how things go as membership trends normalize around the existing policies. In other words, what will the numbers look like during a year where no membership policy change took place? Back to 4% losses? Less? I suspect so.

 

I wonder what folks will be saying a year or two from now if we see membership numbers increase.

[qwazse]

This is ridiculous. 4% drops for years and now we see a 6% drop and suddenly that's the number everyone is focusing on. Assuming we would have seen another 4% drop this year regardless of policy changes, really it's only fair to attribute maybe 2% to the policy, and even that is just a guess.

 

What I'll be anxious to see is what happens next year or over the next 2-3 years. We knew the policy change would result in some loss. That was a given. But after the exodus (if you can call it that when it really only resulted in a 2% loss), it will be interesting to see how things go as membership trends normalize around the existing policies. In other words, what will the numbers look like during a year where no membership policy change took place? Back to 4% losses? Less? I suspect so.

 

I wonder what folks will be saying a year or two from now if we see membership numbers increase.

Last year was only a 2% drop in youth membership (http://www.scouting.org/About/FactSheets/YearinReview.aspx), and mainly among cubs and venturers. Boy Scouts had only a .01% dip.

 

We've lost a Jambo contingent of youth. We don't know which ones. It will be interesting to see the breakdown.

[walk in the woods]

I think it's a combination of things. I've seen a number of parents pull kids because of membership. It's certainly part of the equation. Right or wrong, I think it will get worse when the restrictions on adults are lifted. acco40, I think there are plenty of kids who like camping and the outdoors. That said, in my corner of rural America by the time they are Boy Scout age they've spent many hours with Dad hunting, fishing, canoeing and camping. They've driven ATVs and jet skis and snowmobiles. They "own" their own firearms. Boy Scout aged boys in my area that are interested in the outdoors aren't willing to wait until they are 15 years old to do the things they've been doing with Dad for years. The boys and girls I work with think things like the laser tag ban are the stupidest rules known to man. My autistic son learned to mow the lawn at 11, not 14. Boys who are 14/15 years old drive quarter-million dollar farm equipment every spring and fall but they can't drive a lawn tractor on summer camp staff or work days because they aren't 18. Ultimately we are selling buggy whips to the ipod generation and even those interested in buggy whips aren't interested in the restrictions we put on them.

The boys in my neck of the woods like to camp, make fires and play with knives as well. They just don't care if the BSA is wrapped around it or not.