Is the BSA trying to "put itself to sleep"?

[1980Scouter]

My council just laid off or had leave 1/3 of their staff. Around 10 people.They sold a popular camp this year and are feeling the fallout from all that is going on in scouting and the country. The SE makes $165k and another employee over $100k. These salaries and number of employees are excessive. Scouting is not about 30 people working in an office building. There is a need for some employees but not near this many. They could have the best camps around if they put a fraction of these resources in to them. Actually the two camps left are nice but do need a lot of work. If scouting does not survive the next year so be it. Maybe a better new organization can emerge from this focused on core values.

[MattR]

Welcome to the forum, @1980Scouter. I'm sorry to hear your news. I suspect a lot of councils are in a similar situation.

 

[CynicalScouter]

9 hours ago, 1980Scouter said:

The SE makes $165k and another employee over $100k. These salaries and number of employees are excessive.

Welcome.

Without knowing what Council we are talking about, it is hard to say if $165k is or is not "excessive".

As I noted here, the non-profit standard is 1%-10% of all expenditures = CEO salary.

Thus if you Council's annual expenditures are $1.65 million or greater, then $165k for the a SE is within the realm of standard.

 

Edited December 20, 2020 by CynicalScouter

[Owls_are_cool]

I believe that YPT protects me as a volunteer, because it teaches me how to avoid contact with scouts that could result in a lawsuit, frivolous or not. Never be alone with a scout, two deep leadership, etc. It is a pain in the butt to follow all these rules, but that is better than shutting scouting down. 

Someone at the unit committee level has to manage training and this task has fallen on me as Scoutmaster the past two years. It becomes a nightmare, when Online YPT Training does not record completions and does not reflect completions in my.scouting.org leader reports. How many wasted hours of volunteers nation-wide must be expended, before someone is held accountable for software issues? 

It is shocking to me to learn the salaries of DEs. Salary levels should be based on supply and demand, not how many zeros are in their council budget. If this causes the cut of employees that actually do the work that benefits scouting and volunteers, then that is a problem. 

MBC lists: I like how scoutbook makes a council's list publicly available to all units. The problem is that the list is not updated constantly (as applications are approved). Anyway, that is how it appears to me, so I could be wrong. I think the application process should be done on scoutbook and approved by the council in scoutbook. Unit adult membership should not have to fill out another application just to be a MBC. Again wasting a volunteer's time and the time of those that have to mail completed apps to the council office, etc.  

[CynicalScouter]

12 minutes ago, Owls_are_cool said:

MBC lists: I like how scoutbook makes a council's list publicly available to all units. The problem is that the list is not updated constantly (as applications are approved). Anyway, that is how it appears to me, so I could be wrong. I think the application process should be done on scoutbook and approved by the council in scoutbook.

The plan is that by March 2021 Scoutbook will automatically update with whatever is approved by your Council (or within a few hours) in terms of applications.

The problem is that Scoutbook was designed to be a unit level tool. MBCs are technically district positions. That has required a good amount of overhauling. Where the MBC is in the same unit as the scout, that was easy. But of the MBC is from the troop next door (or with virtual merit badges) a state away, that was a problem.

The other problem was units were putting in MBCs and not sending applications/paperwork to Council OR keeping those items up to date. The power of units to add MBCs was taken away; from now on only the Council approved list will be in scoutbook.

This was the announcement and details

https://discussions.scouting.org/t/september-21-2020-scoutbook-updates-merit-badge-counselors/184960

 

Edited December 21, 2020 by CynicalScouter