Membership up in Utah

[Pack18Alex]

What's wrong with collapsing councils? Corporate downsizing of the middle management layers happens everywhere. If the local Council can't justify itself to cover the salaries of their personnel, why not merge up the councils? Other than possibly needing to run two Scout Stores, I can't see any reason that we shouldn't reduce the council headcount by 75%. We can communicate over vast differences with email and cell phones now, no need for antiquated middle layers.

[RememberSchiff]

What's wrong with collapsing councils? Corporate downsizing of the middle management layers happens everywhere.

 

Two reasons come quickly to mind: the loss of local control/influence and the selling of camps. If you want to just merge or eliminate Councils, okay but leave the camps under local control.

 

Merging and downsizing have done much harm to the American worker and his/her family and with less competition, consumers have seen higher prices and reduced quality and service. Some companies are now just names, does Maytag make Maytags? On the bright side CEO's are doing quite well.

 

My $0.01

[TAHAWK]

BSA is unique in the Scouting world for the size of the paid workforce. It has several times the number of paid staff per numbers of youth in units than has Scouts Canada, for example. Over 90% of the budget goes for salaries.

 

If the money is no longer there for paid personnel to "control" the volunteers and to collect money for salaries, another model - the World model - may be necessary.

 

The question is, are the volunteers up to doing what has always been, on paper, their job - operating couincil and district Scouting.

 

The council, as a legal entity does not depend for its existence on paid personnel.

[Peregrinator]

Scouts Canada has one paid employee for every 332 members (296 employees, 98,142 members). I don't know what the ratio is in the BSA, but in order to achieve a ratio similar that of Scouts Canada, the BSA would have to have over 10,000 paid employees.

 

http://www.scoutscan.com/issues/membershipstats.html