Two Chartered Organizations

[beaglelover]

So we are exploring the option of starting a pack, and as it turns out, we have 2 groups in town that are potentially interested in being the CO.  Both are civic organizations, both serve veterans, and both meet in the same building.  After researching, it appears to me that it is possible to have 2 COs, assuming this is the most recent registration manual http://www.scouting.org/filestore/mission/pdf/524-901_WB.pdf pg. 33.

 

 

Dual Chartered Organizations

A unit can be sponsored by more than one chartered organization. Two chartered organizations may want to organize a Scouting unit. Duplicate charters can be issued, if requested, so that each chartered organization has one for its own use.

 

Anybody ever encountered this before?  Does this mean you have 2 CORs, or find one COR that is in both organizations? (would mostly likely not be hard to do, a lot of membership cross-over).  Having both on board seems like it would help with the building scheduling part.  But I could potentially see issues as to who owns what if the pack ever folds or if there is a difference of opinion on who/how the pack should be run. Any experiences anybody wants to share.   

[qwazse]

That piece of fine print might have come in handy when our troops were merging. It's been generally a smooth process, but the young committee and SM were torn between CO's. We older scouters had our preference, but tried to stay out of it. That may have caused us to lose a couple of scouts.

[fred johnson]

Both are civic organizations, both serve veterans, and both meet in the same building.

Who owns the building? Who has the bigger purse?

[Stosh]

All's well until the two CO's decide to participate in a little political drama, then it will affect the unit and the unit's members.  Always try and keep the problems to a minimum!

[NJCubScouter]

You learn something new every day, I guess.  I did not know it was possible to have two CO's (or if I did know, I forgot - I say that in case someone finds a thread from 2004 or something in which the issue was discussed and I participated.  It has happened before.   )

 

My personal preference would be to avoid having two CO's unless there is a really compelling reason to have two - and I don't consider not wanting to tell Organization A that you have chosen Organization B to be a compelling reason.  If both have something really different and important to offer, and the only way you can obtain those benefits is to have two CO's, that might be a compelling reason.  Otherwise, what you are getting is the potential for more bureaucracy, maybe more paperwork (possibly having to run around getting two CR's to sign things), maybe some confusion, and as Stosh said, maybe issues in the future with politics between the two groups.

 

As for "who owns the building", fred johnson put a smiley in front of that, but I think it is an important consideration.  If nothing else, the CO needs to provide a place for you to meet, and hopefully some storage space as well.  All other things being equal, your access to those things is generally more secure if you are dealing directly with the owner of the building.  My son's Cub pack met in a public school, but (for reasons we all know and love) the school was not the CO, the PTO of the school was the CO.  The pack applied for use of the school facilities under the auspices of the PTO, but technically, the PTO didn't actually have any greater "say" in who uses the facilities than any other group. From a facilities standpoint we could have done without a CO... well, actually from every other standpoint as well, except that the BSA doesn't work that way.  This also reminds me of a nearby troop that (last I heard) was chartered to "Friends of Troop xx", met in a public school but had its storage space and parking space for its trailer at a church.  If it were my troop, I would be concerned that there were too many ways for this arrangement to "go wrong", but it wasn't my troop, and to my knowledge it is still working.