National Annual Reports

[yknot]

1 hour ago, PACAN said:

The overall numbers are interesting but a 23% drop in 3 months is concerning.

Peeling back the numbers would tell a story:

How many new scouts joined Packs at recharter?

What is the breakdown by category?   Is the number of AOL scouts dropping which is bad news for the troops in 2024?

How many AOL scouts crossed over and are in the Troop's number?

How many scouts aged out of SBSA?

How many aged out of Crews?  

How many of these are Scout reach or whatever they are called?

How many units dropped as that number is almost as significant as the youth number?

Keep in mind that's not a 23% drop in three months, that's just the reconciliation of memberships that were still on the books on Dec. 31 2022 but were not on the books one day later on Jan. 1 2023. The January '23 membership announcement was strategically timed to be able to tout the higher combined figure, which was the same strategy used the year prior. I always prefer to look at the March numbers. So I'm not concerned about that. What I am concerned about, though, is that we have been officially post pandemic in a relatively normal world now for at least about a year and those numbers are not going up. Whatever post pandemic membership recoup there was, was gained late 2021 and earlier in 2022. At one point, the actual membership was at about 650,000, so there was a one time bump back up to about 800,000, That, however, seems to have plateaued over the past year despite very aggressive recruitment in many areas. The cub scout numbers are showing a small bump, which one assumes might translate into a scout bump, but one of the concerns there is that there is significant girl cub scout membership. Right now, girls have far more limited crossover opportunities to troops and many in those cohorts will be lost unless something changes. 

[dk516]

1 hour ago, yknot said:

I am concerned about, though, is that we have been officially post pandemic in a relatively normal world now for at least about a year and those numbers are not going up. Whatever post pandemic membership recoup there was, was gained late 2021 and earlier in 2022.

Our council and district have seen the same thing. It seems that initial gain did not translate into a sustained membership increase. We've seen a roughly 20% drop in membership year to year. Our current Council has now been merged 3 times and probably more than quadrupled in geographic size with some areas seeing large population growth and the result was an 80% decline over the past 5 years in Youth membership.

1 hour ago, yknot said:

Right now, girls have far more limited crossover opportunities to troops and many in those cohorts will be lost unless something changes. 

Our district actually sees the opposite. The Packs are the units not being able to attract the girls but we have several very active and regarded Scouts BSA Girls Troops in the area that all have to recruit from outside Scouts to retain membership since the Packs have only a few girls cross over each year. We were told that the rule of thumb should be that for every one Scouts BSA troop, there should be two Packs having Cub Scouts crossing over in order to sustain membership and loss between Cubs and Scouts. Our District right now shows two Troops for every one Pack.

[Eagle94-A1]

2 hours ago, dk516 said:

We were told that the rule of thumb should be that for every one Scouts BSA troop, there should be two Packs having Cub Scouts crossing over in order to sustain membership and loss between Cubs and Scouts. Our District right now shows two Troops for every one Pack.

We are in the same boat, have 3 Packs and 7 in my old district's territory. And 1 is  a female troop. In the 7 counties of the current district, that is the only female troop in existence.

Edited May 2, 2023 by Eagle94-A1

[RememberSchiff]

IMHO. at just two pages, the Report to the Nation is brief to a fault.

No financial information or list by name of National Board and Committee members as in years past.

No mention of Youth Protection.

No mention of BSA professionals.

No mention of leaving bankruptcy (seems a significant "proceedings" to report)

No mention of upcoming National Annual Meeting (also required by Charter)

No photos.

Of the "more than 28,384 participants went on treks at the BSA’s four national high-adventure bases: Philmont Scout Ranch, the Summit Bechtel Reserve, Sea Base, and Northern Tier", Even if all participants were Scouts this seems a small percentage.

My $0.01,

 

 

 

[qwazse]

‘schiff’s $.01 is pure copper, so worth more than most of ours …

I’m not too bothered by brevity. I didn’t previous recent reports that killed ink with large fonts and half-page images.

The other obfuscation is not splitting by sex. We don’t know if nationally we lost boys, girls or both.

The H/A stat is cherry picked.

[mrjohns2]

1 hour ago, RememberSchiff said:

Even if all participants were Scouts this seems a small percentage

This is often the problem with national. The focus is on eagles and national high adventure bases. Such a tiny percentage of Scouts fit into those categories. But that is where the glossy brochure is at. 

[Eagle1993]

7 hours ago, mrjohns2 said:

It is a complicated analysis that could show different stories depending on how one slices it. I think e do of 2022 compared to end of 2021 is an important measure as is April 23 compared to April 22. Comparing April 23 to end of year 22 is interesting, and important, but bakes in some ebs and flows. 

One concern has to be that the >10% increase in Cub Scouts shrunk to 6.5% by April.  Either we are losing scouts at a faster pace or recruiting isn't going as well Jan-April in 2023 as it did in 2022. 

 

In order to keep up the 10% annual increase in Cub scouts we will have to recruit 228K more Cub Scouts on top of the 410K we currently have ... They recruited 196K last year during the same time period so while a steep target not impossible.

Edited May 2, 2023 by Eagle1993

[Jameson76]

4 hours ago, RememberSchiff said:

IMHO. at just two pages, the Report to the Nation is brief to a fault.

No financial information or list by name of National Board and Committee members as in years past.

No mention of Youth Protection.

No mention of BSA professionals.

No mention of leaving bankruptcy (seems a significant "proceedings" to report)

No mention of upcoming National Annual Meeting (also required by Charter)

No photos.

Of the "more than 28,384 participants went on treks at the BSA’s four national high-adventure bases: Philmont Scout Ranch, the Summit Bechtel Reserve, Sea Base, and Northern Tier", Even if all participants were Scouts this seems a small percentage.

My $0.01,

 

 

 

To add to some numbers observations

1 - In addition to local camps, more than 28,384 participants went on treks at the BSA’s four national high-adventure bases: Philmont Scout Ranch, the Summit Bechtel Reserve, Sea Base, and Northern Tier

Philmont (Pre-Pandemic) would handle 20,000 + in a year.  That would be mean less than 3,000 each for the other 3 bases, which is really low.  I guess the DisneyEsque Billion $ Bechtel Boondoggle is not packing in the Scouts

2 - In 2022, 35,533 young men and women earned the Eagle Scout rank, joining more than 2.7 million Americans before them.

That was running +/- 50,000 annually

3 - 248 councils and 1,042,028 participants

That averages only about 4,200 Youth members per council.  Assuming a Scout Executive for each council at is about $195K in expenses (salary / benefits travel), that is $48,360,000 or $46 per Scout just for Council Overhead SE management.  Definitely a lot of room for consolidation

[fred8033]

10 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

That averages only about 4,200 Youth members per council.  Assuming a Scout Executive for each council at is about $195K in expenses (salary / benefits travel), that is $48,360,000 or $46 per Scout just for Council Overhead SE management.  Definitely a lot of room for consolidation

Minimizing council administrative cost per scout is the biggest argument for merging councils.  If scout exec is $46 per scout, then double or triple that for all the council staff combined.  So, it would be $100 or more per scout for council administrative staff.  

Especially recognizing that camp staffing should be from a different bucket.  Scout shop is a different bucket.  

[PACAN]

Hence the BS FOS calculation of we need $100 to support one scout (some places it's twice that).

 

If the BSA recruited 196K cubs last year then where did they go in 3 months?     

 

Not to get myself in trouble but I notice that the overwhelming majority of the Eagle girls I see pictures of have full MB sashes.   In my 20 years of our troop I can only remember one boy who even had a sash 3/4 full as they were busy running their troop and going camping etc.   Always makes me wonder how integrated they were in troop operations.  Okay I'll shut up. 

 

 

 

[PACAN]

@Jameson76  about 1/3 of councils have less than 1500 scouts, many less than 1000.  Not sure how they survive to operate today.

[RememberSchiff]

This topic is for discussion of National Annual Reports - missing data that should be included, data analysis, format,  etc. 

Recent posts regarding coed troops and their liability risks have been moved to its own new topic.

RS

Edited May 7, 2023 by RememberSchiff
typo

[RememberSchiff]

13 hours ago, RememberSchiff said:

https://www.einpresswire.com/article/631676132/the-boy-scouts-of-america-prepares-to-welcome-over-15-000-scouts-and-scouters-to-its-20th-national-jamboree

"The 2023 National Jamboree will be BSA’s first National Jamboree where female Scouts are able to attend as members of Scouts BSA troops. Young women have attended previous Jamborees as part of Scouting’s Venturing and Exploring programs, or they may have attended the 2019 World Scout Jamboree; but this is a landmark event for Scouting, with women representing nearly 20% of the total 2023 Jamboree attendance."

“There are now more than 119,610 young women in Scouting, and 4,613 have attained the rank of Eagle Scout. This is a historic opportunity for BSA’s young women, regardless of their rank, to experience the fun, and adventure of a National Jamboree,” said Tom Pendleton, National Jamboree Director for the BSA.

Should demographic data (gender, race, religion,...) be included in the National Annual Report? Or is a scout is a scout, albeit in different age groups?

Edited May 6, 2023 by RememberSchiff

[qwazse]

On 5/5/2023 at 11:04 PM, RememberSchiff said:

Should demographic data (gender, race, religion,...) be included in the National Annual Report? Or is a scout is a scout, albeit in different age groups?

If your biggest brag over the last decade has been about opening more program to girls, yes enumerating by sex would be your national duty. This is a global concern and intrinsic to WOSM’s census( https://members.scout.org/membership-report-methodology)

If your elected representatives are claiming to address the needs of minorities and seeking programs that do that, you should report the information that you’ve collected on the matter.

There are reasonable constitutional concerns about reporting religion to elected officials. On the other hand, the changing landscape of support from faith-based nonprofits due to recent lifting of statues of limitations would be of immediate concern to legislators.

Financials should matter to elected officials, but congress does not seem to be all that bothered about dept.

[RememberSchiff]

Well said. Then are these raw membership numbers sufficient to determine if a demographic is under-served, disinterested, priced-out, ...?

Regarding financials, I would add "average yearly cost to scout" and "average program cost to family" to report.