The Boy Scouts In Crisis - A Historian's Perspective

[TAHAWK]

Activities building up over a period of weeks towards a "big" event was once taught as a key to successful patrol  program - but not for decades.

[David CO]

33 minutes ago, TAHAWK said:

Activities building up over a period of weeks towards a "big" event was once taught as a key to successful patrol  program - but not for decades.

That's true.  We used to say the journey was more important than the destination.  Learning skills and developing character was more important than the success of the project or event.  Not anymore.  

[Jameson76]

5 hours ago, MattR said:

The difference between 4H and scouting is the overhead in capital and labor. 4H has little and the BSA has an enormous amount. Properties and staffing are huge for a non profit. 4H sets up a stem program and it's a few documents of ideas for the youth. The bsa does it and it's millions of dollars poured into camps. Bechtel?

That said, camps used to be profit centers. It reminds me of college dorms. They used to be really cheap and students were okay with it. Now dorms are really nice and come with good food and activity centers. Well, now students are leaving colleges in droves. Community colleges are a much better deal. So, how does the BSA lower costs and still have fun stuff to do?  It's a fine line between too cheap and just right. Rather than pour money into toys I'd rather see a little money poured into teaching scouts how to create their own fun. 

Another thing 4H has is a definite project. Raise chickens or make a soap box car. I think the bsa could borrow that idea. Make fun MB's for a patrol to work on that takes around 3 months to complete. Something about working towards a final project rather than a patch sounds much more appealing to me.

Don't forget, we all fund 4-H, so it's not apples to apples on program costs.  Funding is through state budgets and taxes.  It is part of Cooperative Extension offices, likely at the County level in many states.  In Georgia it is run through the University System of Georgia

This is an advisement from 2019 on budget cuts - 

Those include a combined $4.7 million cut from the University of Georgia’s agricultural experiment stations, three research centers that teach farming techniques and management in Athens, Griffin and Tifton. The school’s cooperative extension service, which runs agricultural and 4-H programs, is penciled in for a cut of $4.4 million.

[MattR]

Good point. I looked this up and 4H came out of a 1914 law that set up the cooperative extension programs at land grant universities to help farmers. While the BSA got a charter, 4H got funding. Sounds like a better deal to me. They also have plenty of donors, though.

Either way, compare 4H's national budget with BSA's and they still run a tighter program. 4H has revenues much higher than expenses and all of their numbers are in the 10's of millions of dollars whereas BSA is losing money and they're in the 100's of millions range. Think of your favorite expense, the summit.

I've been to my local cooperative extension office and they're set up to help everyone. I don't know the relationship between 4H and the Dept of Agriculture, but it just seems to me that there's just enough oversight that when someone proposed this incredible fair ground in WV with zip lines and all sorts of fun for the entire family that kids from all over the country would pay thousands of dollars to go to, that the guy at the USDA would have said, umm, no, get back to basics. Oh, and fix your hiring practices, you're so inbred it's horrible.