You Solve It -- A likely Bankruptcy Scenario

[InquisitiveScouter]

23 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

In my experience this is true of lots of things - not just Scouting.  There are people on my team at work who have a significantly larger impact that most others.  I think this is just part of life - we'll always have superstars and role players.

Ever hear of Price's Law??

https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/

50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.

Edited September 17, 2020 by InquisitiveScouter

[yknot]

1 hour ago, CynicalScouter said:

That's exactly right. Millennials are actually more likely to volunteer that other generations BUT a) they will only stay with something for a short time and b) they want it easy.

I saw a presentation where the speaker made this point.

Millennials are likely to donate/volunteer for one cause this year, another next year, and another the year after that. It is impossible to development a membership based on annual turnover like that.

 

I call it hands vs. heads. It is relatively easy to get Millennials to show up and help out as a pair of hands for something. What's hard to get is a commitment to take a more involved leadership position -- heads. They want someone else to do it for them. In their defense, family life has never been harder to juggle. In the 30 years I've been involved with youth organizations, the number of families with both parents working has increased to be almost all. The number of single parent families has increased. The digital revolution means that jobs never end. It is very difficult for managerial or key support people to disconnect for a weekend and sometimes even for night meetings. Summer camp staffing depends on where there is wifi so that volunteer parents can still plug in laptops and be engaged with work when they are supposed to be watching kids. It's tough and a new world.

That's all in their defense. What is sad and what I would say in criticism is that there is no connection to tradition or legacy. They don't have patience with it or interest in it. They are sick of hearing about everything from 9/11 to whatever your local annual community event is and why they should step up and run it. Somehow scouts has to try and navigate this. 

Edited September 17, 2020 by yknot

[walk in the woods]

Well, my post included a random image from my clipboard so I deleted it.  But the image from hell keeps reappearing from the dead!  And it appears I can't delete it from my profile, so behold, an image from a Code 42 install.

 

(From MattR: I set the image size to zero to get rid of it. This might be easier from a laptop.)

Edited September 17, 2020 by MattR
trying to delete

[ParkMan]

1 hour ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

Ever hear of Price's Law??

https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/

50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.

I hadn't seen that before, but that's exactly what I was thinking of conceptually.  Makes compete sense.

[BAJ]

3 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

When we had our kids in private school, this was the case.  The school said pay an additional fee now, and if you volunteer x number of hours, we will refund you.  And it wasn't pro-rated...reach x number of hours, or no refund...

I really like this idea.  But I would have that pool of funds focused on defraying costs of participation, rather than stipends.  The active volunteers could choose to apply them to their scout’s costs — or, if they had the means — to have them defray the costs of others.  Could be a model that both provided incentive for volunteering (a good outcome) and/or an alternative stream of support to allow scouts from more socio-economically challenged backgrounds to participate in what we have been observing is becoming an increasingly expensive activity.