New Council Fee

[MattR]

This idea that we're breaking norms or rules by asking for something that will help us out sort of illustrates the problem. If the council's primary focus was on helping units put on a better program then the answer would not be, no, you can't do that. It would be let's figure out how to make this work. @ValleyBoy doesn't want to wait months to get paid back but the council wants to keep records. Okay, settle the accounts at the camporee and write down what was paid for, generate receipts for the accounting system that can be put in the following Monday. If they have enough cash they can finish it right there. If not, how about having the DE write a check on a council bank or just ensuring that it will take no more than a week to have a check sent out. None of this is complicated, it just takes a mind shift from being driven by rules and being driven by a desire to help units.

[ParkMan]

5 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

Except, and this is the key, there's no such thing as a "district surplus". Districts have no budgetary or financial authority.

What you want to achieve (districts financially independent of councils able to keep and spend their own money) would require the amendments to the Charter, Bylaws, Rules and Regulations I previously mentioned.

Rules and Regulations of the Boy Scouts of America

LOCAL COUNCILS control the raising.

LOCAL COUNCILS control the expenditures.

Not Districts which (as I noted) exist at the will and the whim of the Council.

What you want to do is amend this I guess to

or

I'm not actually sure what we're debating here.

I'm not suggesting that districts be financially separate entities.  I'm suggesting that the council budgets be more friendly to district operations.  Specially, in this case there is no reason that a council could not track a line item internally that grows and shrinks based on district expenditures.  If a district has a surplus at the end of a year that money amount could be placed as a line item in the next year's budget for a district to draw upon.

A district is effectively nothing more than a council operating committee that is responsible for a geographic area.  Just as the council program committee has a budget, so too does a district.  The difference is that districts have a bit more autonomy than many other council committees.  That autonomy is a two way street as districts are often less effective at navigating things like council budgeting processes. 

There is absolutely nothing in the council budgeting process that disfavors districts.  When I was reviewing our district budgets, there was absolutely nothing in our programming that the budgeting process structurally prevented us from doing.  Most of our volunteers just had never bothered to learn how to navigate it.  Further, there is a behavior that I have seen most of our district volunteers that they do not realize how much authority they really do have.  Our district camporee chair could have built a budget that allocated for acquisition of equipment and could have worked with the various folks in the council accounting structure to figure out how to amortize that over several years.  But, no one ever does that kind of stuff.

In the context of this discussion, my proposal is that council budget chairs do real outreach to district volunteers to make sure they understand the budgeting process.  That national create content on how councils should effectivly engage with districts in the budgeting process so that districts have the resources they need to demonstrate value to units & to individual Scouts.

[ParkMan]

1 hour ago, MattR said:

This idea that we're breaking norms or rules by asking for something that will help us out sort of illustrates the problem. If the council's primary focus was on helping units put on a better program then the answer would not be, no, you can't do that. It would be let's figure out how to make this work. @ValleyBoy doesn't want to wait months to get paid back but the council wants to keep records. Okay, settle the accounts at the camporee and write down what was paid for, generate receipts for the accounting system that can be put in the following Monday. If they have enough cash they can finish it right there. If not, how about having the DE write a check on a council bank or just ensuring that it will take no more than a week to have a check sent out. None of this is complicated, it just takes a mind shift from being driven by rules and being driven by a desire to help units.

You are absolutely correct that this requires a mind shift.  Too many volunteers above the district level are too beholden to what they think are the rules.  This is absolutely where a council could have a servant leadership mindset.  They could be looking for a way to help the volunteer resolve the problem - regardless of whether they know the rules.

95% of this discussion on the past few pages is doable today, under current BSA accounting rules and practices.  The reason this doesn't happen and doesn't work is that many volunteers are simply not aware of how the process really works.  As such, they simply do not know what questions to ask and where to advocate.