Scouting Forward: A Plan to Lead Announced

[Jameson76]

16 minutes ago, yknot said:

I hear you but you are simply being a babe in the woods. No organization today can exist without liability insurance. You can't get liability insurance without infinite safety regulations, waivers, etc. Scouts, like many youth organizations, will never be able to operate the way it has been able to do in the past without significant tort reform.  Every youth organization has to be a safety organization today or the doors don't even open. I don't know why people even rail about this. Fight it politically, lobby for tort reform, but you can't fight it individually or you will just get sued. 

Not saying do not be safe, and risk management is important.  My point is that HEY, WE'RE SAFE is a very poor marketing slogan.  Yes we can be safe, but that cannot be the reason for the BSA

 

[David CO]

1 hour ago, yknot said:

No organization today can exist without liability insurance.

A lot of good is does them.  Pay the premiums for decades. Then the insurance companies refuse to pay out.    

[yknot]

58 minutes ago, David CO said:

A lot of good is does them.  Pay the premiums for decades. Then the insurance companies refuse to pay out.    

What is the alternative? Be on the hook yourself? 

[fred8033]

On 7/10/2020 at 11:28 AM, David CO said:

This part doesn't make any sense to me.  Why would we need a separate membership category?  Advancement is voluntary.  If a scout doesn't want to advance, he doesn't have to.  He doesn't need a special membership category.

I could see some value in that.  As a parent, I would have loved bringing my kids to a scout camp to fish, hike, etc.  The camps have great programs and resources.  

[David CO]

4 hours ago, fred8033 said:

I could see some value in that.  As a parent, I would have loved bringing my kids to a scout camp to fish, hike, etc.  The camps have great programs and resources.  

I think that may be exactly what the executives at BSA have in mind.  They want to turn their remaining boy scout camps into commercial camp grounds.  They'll sell the ones they can and commercialize the rest.

I'm not sure they are talking about adding new membership categories like exploring or venturing.  I think it might be membership categories like the ones commercial health clubs have.  Weekend memberships.  Monthly memberships.  Family memberships.

This is what happened to the YMCA.  They took an association of young Christian men, dropped its mission/purpose, and turned it into a commercial health club.  

Edited July 12, 2020 by David CO

[dkurtenbach]

10 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

Many leaders and professionals continue to over think the safe aspect and literally never leave the porch.  They feel very safe doing Scouting as a virtual idea.  Worst idea ever.  Scouting is getting out and trying to do things.  While trying you may in fact fail.  

This document wreaks of those who have NO CLUE how to run an actual unit or programs that youth want to join.  We need to be inspirational and aspirational, not an organization that is scared of it's own shadow.

True.

9 hours ago, yknot said:

No organization today can exist without liability insurance. You can't get liability insurance without infinite safety regulations, waivers, etc. . . . Every youth organization has to be a safety organization today or the doors don't even open.

Also true.

In our current society, we have to strike a balance between the real purposes of the program and enough self-protection to keep the program going.  BSA is in survival mode (maximum protection) now because it didn't do enough in the past to keep kids safe.  The balance has tipped in one direction now as a result of being tipped in the other direction in the past.  An added complication is that the law (the fulcrum, for purposes of this analogy) has moved in a direction unfavorable to BSA. 

But wait, there's more.

The pandemic has come out of nowhere and changed where that balance will be struck.  It has "lightened" the program by normalizing things like backyard "camping" and "earning" merit badges from the sofa.  Meaning that Scouting is far easier for Scouts and families to participate in (and far less resource intensive for units and for BSA). Just as with schools and businesses, there will be a strong push to keep many of the "virtual" options.  While the sexual abuse litigation and the bankruptcy are merely attacking BSA's finances, Covid-19 is attacking the heart of Scouting itself.

[Sentinel947]

2 hours ago, David CO said:

I think that may be exactly what the executives at BSA have in mind.  They want to turn their remaining boy scout camps into commercial camp grounds.  They'll sell the ones they can and commercialize the rest.

I'm not sure they are talking about adding new membership categories like exploring or venturing.  I think it might be membership categories like the ones commercial health clubs have.  Weekend memberships.  Monthly memberships.  Family memberships.

This is what happened to the YMCA.  They took an association of young Christian men, dropped its mission/purpose, and turned it into a commercial health club.  

I don't get how this is too much different. I can already rent campsites at my local scout camp for private use. I'm not sure how big the market is for a monthly membership to a campground. It's almost like a timeshare. 🤢. A gym membership is different, people will always pay monthly or annually for use of a gym facility. 

[John-in-KC]

I have the feeling this graphic is not for public dissemination. 

[CynicalScouter]

3 minutes ago, John-in-KC said:

I have the feeling this graphic is not for public dissemination. 

Probably isn't, but I found it online leaked by a high level National training staff person and thought I would share.

And the graphic itself was later confirmed as accurate in a letter sent out by the National Commodore for Sea Scouts who linked to the Reddit item.

How sad is it we are at the point that the only way to get information out of National is via leak?

Edited July 12, 2020 by CynicalScouter

[PACAN]

2 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

Probably isn't, but I found it online leaked by a high level National training staff person and thought I would share.

And the graphic itself was later confirmed as accurate in a letter sent out by the National Commodore for Sea Scouts who linked to the Reddit item.

How sad is it we are at the point that the only way to get information out of National is via leak?

Not to worry..National is going to hire another 6 figure exec as the national Chief Communications and Marketing Officer

[mashmaster]

OK, this morning I happened to talk to the National Sea Scout Commodore.  He has been asked to be on the two committees to interpret the results of the report and help in the planning for moving forward.

He says the acceptance is just an acceptance that BSA received the report, not an acceptance to follow the recommendations. He said the BSA top leadership is aware of the petitions going around and that they are a good thing to sign.

So it appears this is the recommendation from the Churchill group but not from BSA and there is a lot to still be discussed and decisions to be decided on.

[Sentinel947]

21 hours ago, yknot said:

Once again, another really media tone deaf choice by BSA. Do they not even watch CNN? Churchill was a great man, but his statues are being toppled because of his racist opinions. What was wrong with Eagle Project? Why are we always shooting ourselves in our media foot? 

 

It's mind boggling. Is this whole organization run by 70 or 80 year old men? 

I think Churchill is the name of the consulting company that made the report. 

[CynicalScouter]

Churchill was selected a year ago. According to the presentation at National Annual Meeting, it was chosen because Winston Churchill was a leader in a time of change.

The discussion of the name "Churchill" is at 49:00 in the General Session Video. They 6 committees are "Churchill groups" and their plans are "Churchill projects".

Edited July 12, 2020 by CynicalScouter

[Eagle94-A1]

48 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

OK, this morning I happened to talk to the National Sea Scout Commodore.  He has been asked to be on the two committees to interpret the results of the report and help in the planning for moving forward.

He says the acceptance is just an acceptance that BSA received the report, not an acceptance to follow the recommendations. He said the BSA top leadership is aware of the petitions going around and that they are a good thing to sign.

So it appears this is the recommendation from the Churchill group but not from BSA and there is a lot to still be discussed and decisions to be decided on.

With all do respect, the pros WILL ignore the desires of the youth and volunteers and do whatever they want.  They ignored the published results on instapalms, and they still have not published the results of the poll regarding membership changes.

[MattR]

While @John-in-KC is likely right that this document is some internal document, this thread also contains the monthly how-to-fix-scouting comments. I'm not trying to berate anyone as it is nice to see people that like scouting. And I'm just about to pile on.

Some observations:

I look at that original document and I don't see anything about helping units succeed at scouting. I went to the churchill website and on their testimonials page I didn't find the words 'non profit.' Maybe there's another document out there that talks about this but I'm not holding my breath.

@Jameson76 makes a good point: We should focus on the why of scouting. The document that started this thread is like fixing hail damage on the hood of a car when what is really needed is to take out the engine and put it into a newly rebuilt frame and chassis. The why is lost in a forest of hail dents. @David CO brought up the YMCA's approach of watering it all down to increase membership, which I agree is nothing I'm interested in. So, focus on the why.

@dkurtenbach said we should focus on the moms and dads to put on a better program. That would be fine if the moms and dads were as invested in scouting as we on this forum are. Rather, think about your neighbor with scout aged kids. What do those moms and dads want. Better yet, think of the moms and dads of kids in free school lunch programs. I add that last part because our economy is a dumpster fire right now, has excluded a lot of lower income kids from participating in scouts for a long time and a huge number of kids don't have parents with the time or resources to learn how to make a program work for their kids. My take away from all of this is the program needs to work comfortably with a lot fewer parents.

@Sentinel947 brought up the idea of using young adults as volunteers. This could help the lack of parent issue.

To me, the why is simple: For the youth, the why is learning skills to have fun in the outdoors. Those skills are things like staying comfortable in bad weather, swimming, cooking and the like. For the parents it's also learning skills to have fun in the outdoors, but the skills include things like character, getting along with others while solving problems, responsibility and all those things that aren't covered by requirements but that we harp on. One group that's forgotten is the older youth. Again, it's learning skills to have fun in the outdoors. But this time the skills include being responsible that the younger scouts have a good experience. This group is really important and they barely get mentioned in any training. This is the solution to the lack of parent problem. I'd say tell scouts, from the day they join, that they will eventually be running the program. Forget the idea of eagle by 13. I'm not sure how to change the requirements but ensure that, to get eagle, older scouts need to be responsible for the younger scouts enjoying the program. For those scouts that say they don't want to babysit, they either learn how to do it right or they don't get eagle. This will greatly increase the value of eagle and reduce the need for so many adults. At the same time, using the 18-25 year olds could make it that much better. Some of those 18-25 year olds will have more fun working with cubs than scouts, use them to reduce parent burnout in cubs. Make the constant growth from 11 years old to 25 be more visible. Maybe have leadership ranks, I don't know.

Next, think about the outdoors that's needed for scouts to have fun. The absolute best times scouts have is with what they find at hand: Mud, water, snow, rocks, sticks, .... Meanwhile, council camps are going out of their way to add more and more toys (dining halls, climbing walls, atvs, shooting ranges, etc) but that's just driving costs up. I'd say a lake front in the summer, a forest anytime and hiking trails are critical. It's more important to camp at new places than places with toys.