Pack Merger - How To? - Ideas? - Tips?

[curious_scouter]

Someone outlines the "official way" already I think.

I've always seen this go down much more casually.  When I was active on Pack committee we had 4 or 5 times that packs in the area "folded" and merged with us.

The money and gear belongs to the CO they were chartered with.  All but once, that was all just left behind. 

All a "merger" actually ended up being was families doing transfer applications to our unit.  Easy peezy.  No CO messiness.  But that meant leaving everything behind.

Only in one case did we receive any money and property and in that case I think it was more CO-to-CO as they are the real property owners.  It wasn't much.  A pinewood track, an old laptop.  That was CO giving stuff over to CO and then everyone did transfer apps. 

The old units simply didn't recharter.

One time a few years after one of these the pack we got "stuff" from was rechartered by the original CO and contacted us to see if they could pretty please have the pinewood track back and we were like "ABSOLUTLEY" lol.  We never needed two tracks and it was taking up so much room in our limited storage.  But it was a nice track and we were holding it until we heard of someone who needed one.  Worked out!

Anyway, I have seen this be just a mass migration event in which things kind of naturally sort themselves out on the "dissolution" end because the old unit simply does not recharter.  Unless there's a ton of money or property to deal with it should just be unit to unit transfer applications for the scouts really.

[rallybug]

On 3/6/2024 at 10:27 AM, InquisitiveScouter said:

.....

4.  THEN, contact your District Executive re same.  Expect some push back.  Council may not wish to "lose" units.  If you do not have the support of your CO's, then you will meet resistance.  

.....

This part I hate - the DE's job shouldn't be number of units, it should be number of Scouts! A few well-run units is much better for the youth than a multitude of badly-run/tiny/dying units. It's better to keep the Scouts than lose everything, surely!

[rallybug]

Duplicate post

Edited April 17, 2024 by rallybug
Duplicate post

[Gossmaaf]

Just to follow up to this, we ended up transferring the scouts over to our pack.  District eventually agreed (kind of) but we had full support of the District Executive and mixed (acceptance) support from others.  We lost a large majority of the scouts due to them hitting the limits of not being what they were looking for, but we kept about 7 of the 15 going.  We since piked up 2 more from that school, so there's signs of hope, and 2 transferred to Troops as they ended Cubs.  I think everyone waited too long debating vs just merging, but I also think it was too late by the time they even approached us with a Merger discussion. 

They have integrated into the pack well, and our pack is stronger together with them, but I still have their old colors and equipment in hopes of seeing them restart someday maybe.  our District Executive was truly amazing as discussions got serious and he was who pushed the rest the district to realize this was the best option for the scouts.  His only concern was the future of recruitment in that school, which we have demonstrated we will meet that expectation.

We have started holding half our events at the other school as well so to demonstrate an equal-school concept.  Their left-over funds have been transferred into the Pack and we will earmark that money for a "as needed for support or growth of that school".

Our District Executive has my respect for his commitment to doing what's in the interest of those scouts before even considering district or other.  He just took on that role shortly after the discussions started and he listened to all the parties involved before forming his opinion.  

Thank you everyone for what was very stressful, not much fun, and was hard to keep focused on the important things during those ~6 months of discussions.