Membership Decline Reasons

[BadenP]

Brent,

That is great, your district sounds like it is thriving. Of course I suspect you southern boys know how to tweak the program just so to get those results, lol. I agree with you that WoodBadge can't be blamed entirely for the downfall of scouting, sorry Kudu, there is a lot of useful information, but I still liked the old WB course better.

 

I still say that is our current techno driven society with its blackberrys, Wii Fii, bluetooth, jawbone, etc. that has taken people even further away from a connection with the outdoors and a appreciation of nature, along with kids and adults texting, tweeting, et. al over 6 hours every day. Where will it end? Technology is great, just as long as it does not disrupt the very fabric of what life is all about.

[silasm]

Thanks Eagle92 and Kudu for the links. From the video, National wants to recruit 100,000 new Scouts who a) don't want to camp and b) are going to be accompanied by their families on their activities. In other word, 100,000 new Scouts who don't want to be Scouts.

 

Which is fine by me, I guess, as long as they don't mess with MY program.

[LIBob]

Alright Kudu, now I am feeling a little bit like an idiot again.

 

As near as I can figure (recall that I was a super-active scout 25 years ago an an now just returning) you are saying well okay ou are not really saying this cause the following makes no sense:

 

- 25 years ago scouting was okay

- then "they" (BSA) developed something called woodbadge.

- woodbadge directly caused a 20% drop in the number of cub scouts . . but caused the number of boy scouts to remain in the same range it always has.

- the fact that scouting in Canada the UK etc. has dropped off precipitously means nothing. there is no societal change. Woodbadge changed all of scouting . . . but not boy scouting . . . in a way that led directly to a serious deficit in mom's of 7-year-olds who want to enroll their sons.

 

ya see. You are obviously a respected member of this forum, but the stuff you seem to be saying does not compute with me. It's like you are saying Woodbadge is a 'cod" for 'forget camping, BSA is ow a non-camping pro-diversity group" or some weird stuff like that.

 

I just don't get it.

Imagine I'm the kind of idiot who just returned to scouting after 25 years and explain it to me real slow k?

[packsaddle]

Hey!!! I just figured out the perfect solution. It's...oops, my Droid just finished downloading a movie I've been dying to watch, I'll get back to ya.....

[sherminator505]

Tease!

[jhankins]

Just FYI, the numbers came out recently to local councils of who has the most available kids to reach -- this is huge!

 

 

NYC - 754,005

Houston - 577,667

Washington DC - 544,025

Phoenix - 506,436

LA - 498,169

Riverside/SB Counties, CA - 474,496

 

Now take into consideration how many of those kids probably aren't from double income families, english speaking homes, etc... and you can see why there are African-American and hispanic outreach programs.

 

 

[AvidSM]

Since at least 2006, the BSA has known that in order to grow it has to reach out to families of mixed and other cultures. By reaching out, I mean making contact with the community leaders, using words that resonate with them and by highlighting the parts of the program they would see as beneficial to their youth's development.

 

I don't see the BSA making any major changes to the program as it is today. I see Councils hiring a more diverse professional staff - Hispanics, Asians and African Americans - who can go out and make contact with these community leaders. This has already happened in my Council.

 

 

[Basementdweller]

After reading all these pages of ranting and finger pointing I just gotta ask.

 

What doe this have to do with your program or recruiting numbers?????

 

NOTHING

 

If you recruit poorly who is to blame???? Economy? Society? Bad boy talk? bad word of mouth? I don't know.

 

 

I believe if my Pack, den and Troop Program is decent quality the boys will come and stay, irregardless of what national does.(This message has been edited by Basementdweller)

[Eagle92]

Avid,

I must respectfully disagree as BSA is trying several approaches. Most widely known is the Soccer and Scouting program that was big in the Western Region. Don't know how successful that was, but it was suppose to blend Soccer and Cub Scouts.

 

Also Baltimore Area Council is sampling an alternative, "Action Uniform" that when announced sounded as if it was a possible replacement to the field uniform and was geared towards those populations not familiar with Scouting.

[jhankins]

Soccer and Scouting did okay, but the problem is it was mostly funded by grants and donations from the hispanic community (in the three councils I've had ties with). All 3 of them haven't filled the position or job title in the past two years, and the programs have mostly died.

[NJCubScouter]

We have a soccer-and-Scouting program near us but my understanding is that it has not produced any Cub Scouts (past the end of the soccer program.) Apparently the kids want to play soccer, but they are not being "lured" into the full Cub Scouting program. Likewise, the parents want to watch their kids play soccer, and maybe they want to coach soccer, but they do not want to become Den Leaders or otherwise get involved in Cub Scouting.

[BadenP]

The reasons soccer and scouting failed was from inception it was poorly thought out, no long term direction or goals for the program, and it was aimed specifically at Hispanic families most of which scouting has never sucessfully recruited, so it failed miserably. The main reason was National NEVER bothered to ask Hispanic families what would it take to attract them into scouting.

[Eagle92]

BP and anyone else who may know,

 

If scouting is not known among Hispanics, then why are there scout associations all over Central and South America? Also Didn't Chile hold a WSJ? I think scouting works across the cultural divide, as evidenced by Scouting being a world wide movement.

 

In addiiton to BP's questiuon that we should ask what the Hispanic community wants, why don't we also look at some of the things done in Hispanic countries.

 

I'm willing to bet it's based upon BP and GBB.

[Kudu]

LIBob writes:

 

As near as I can figure (recall that I was a super-active scout 25 years ago and now just returning) you are saying...

 

LIBob,

 

This is what I am saying:

 

To understand the damage Wood Badge does to the Boy Scout division, you must look at the drop in membership after 1972 when Leadership Development was introduced as a "Method of Scouting." The following account is typical:

 

The 1970s decade was a dark time for the Boy Scouts of America. The period from 1972-80 was a national disaster, when BSA membership declined nationwide by 34% (a loss of 2.2 million members)! Although many changes in our society had an adverse impact on all youth programs, much of the cause for the drastic BSA membership decline was due to the radically changed Scout program of the period...

 

BSA membership peaked at 6.5 million in 1972, and reached bottom in 1980 with 4.3 million.

 

http://www.troop97.net/t97hist.htm

 

Membership began to rise again after 1980 when the 100% pure Wood Badge Boy Scout program of 1972 was replaced with a compromise in which Scoutcraft was reintroduced, but only as Advancement Requirements, NOT as Patrol-based leadership skills.

 

In other words: Yes, we now require a minimum of 20 nights of Webelos-III car-camping, BUT any indoor cupcake can still earn Eagle without ever walking into the woods with a pack on his back.

 

The 2010 movement to offer an anti-camping soccer program to Hispanics in the Boy Scout division is similar to the 1972 movement to offer an anti-Scoutcraft program to urban youth. Check out page 282 of the 1972 Scout Handbook in which clothes moths, mice, rats, cock-roaches, house flies, etc. were added to "signs of wildlife" so that an "inner-city" Boy Scout could get that requirement checked off without ever leaving his ghetto apartment! Presumably if we are able to recruit 100,000 Hispanic boys per year with the Boy Scout soccer program, similar "culture-sensitivity" accommodations will be in our future.

 

LIBob writes:

 

- the fact that scouting in Canada the UK etc. has dropped off precipitously means nothing.

 

That is true because a similar modernization movement occurred in the former British Empire in 1966. See:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chief_Scouts'_Advance_Party_Report

 

As the article notes, the politically-correct modernization of Scouting in the UK gave rise to the conservative Baden-Powell Scouts' Association (BPSA) and other "Traditional Scouting" associations.

 

As you may know, I was responsible for translating the province-based "Policy, Organization, and Rules" (PO&R) of the Canadian BPSA (based on the 1965 program) into a state-based American version. When the BPSA-UK decided to go with a national model based in Texas (BPSA-USA), I then worked on translating Baden-Powell's "Progressive Training in Scoutcraft" (what Americans call "advancement') into their American program. The BPSA-USA printed a very nice handbook to explain Baden-Powell's program to an American audience, but delayed its publication and the program launch for many years while it waited for a decision on Wrenn v. Boy Scouts of America. See:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youthscouts

 

Now a third wave of Baden-Powell Scouting has emerged. They base their program not on my generation's circa 1965 PO&R, but on Baden-Powell's final version of his Boy Scout program, the 1938 PO&R, See:

 

http://inquiry.net/traditional/por/index.htm

 

I wish them luck, but I believe that the Wrenn v. Boy Scouts of America ruling will continue to prevent Baden-Powell Scouting from gaining any momentum in the United States. The ruling is consistent with previous interpretations of the BSA's Congressional Charter, but sadly there is no corresponding controlling authority to force the BSA to live up to its end of the bargain (the Charter was written to preserve the BSA's 1916 program for future generations, similar to the BPSA in Scoutcraft as an aim, using the methods [advancement requirements] that were in common use by Boy Scouts on June 15, 1916).

 

It has been implied that Canadians left Scouts Canada (SC) to join Baden-Powell Scouting because the SC liberalized its 3G policies ("Girls, Gays, & the Godless"). That is false. 3-G policies are against the law in Canada, so its effect on any migration from the SC's modernized Scouting program to the various BPSA programs is neutral.

 

In truth many American liberals are initially attracted to Baden-Powell Scouting because its membership polices are based on the anti-discrimination legislation enacted over all of the former British Empire. However, during the decade in which I explained the various B-P programs to UUA congregations, I found that the first thing many individual liberals want to do is to add Leadership Development, dumb down the Scoutcraft, and turn it into the BSA (minus the 3G policies, of course).

 

Most liberal congregations can not find even a few adults to staff an alternative Scouting Troop. I don't know why, but they simply do not see getting their knees dirty around a campfire once a month as having any bearing on teaching their values to their children.

 

If you examine the membership numbers of the Unitarians and the Universalists over the 20th century you will find that has always been true. The number of UUA congregations was always very low. Tellingly, UUA membership in the BSA reached its all-time high in 1973 when the BSA's progressive policies drove most boys away.

 

The truth is that nobody knows what effect membership policies have on membership numbers. We can debate this stuff forever and never really understand. Why is Scouting in Germany so overwhelmingly liberal, for instance?

 

LIBob, if you are sincere in your stated interest in understanding the popularity of Boy Scouting in the United States, then I suggest that you stop trying to understand the subject by debate.

 

Get out and compile your own "raw data"!

 

Simply take two Loperamide Hydrochloride tablets, and then go stand in front of an auditorium of sixth-grade boys who want nothing more than to hoot you off the stage, along with your Boy Scout uniform and everything that represents!

 

Does that sound appealing?

 

If so, here is the URL for my step-by-step how-to guide:

 

http://kudu.net/adult/recruiting.htm

 

You must demand absolute silence. Then wave a Boy Scout handbook in the air and tell them that it is the Boy Scout "book of rules." In my Troop, a Boy Scout must carry a knife. That's the rule. He must carry matches and use them to cook a meal over a fire. That's the rule. A Boy Scout must know how to deal with rattlesnakes and bears. That's the rule. A Boy Scout must know how to save the life of someone he loves. I show a national BSA certificate awarded to a Scout of mine who saved his dad's life.

 

When you are done with the rules, then tell them about the things they can do if they want to: shoot rifles and shotguns. Archery. Swimming and sailing. Horseback riding. Wilderness travel. Rock climbing. SCUBA is very popular in my current Troop now.

 

If you present Scouting as the kind of camping ADVENTURE that was popular on June 15, 1916, you will find that 70% of the audience will (in front of their peers) sign a list asking you to call their parents so that they can be BSA Boy Scouts.

 

Of that 70% of TAY (Total Available Youth), I usually recruit about 15 Scouts. 15 out of an audience of 53 (in 2007) works out to 28% of TAY (if my math is correct).

 

Mind you: This is always AFTER Webelos have already crossed over into Boy Scouts, so that 28% TAY comes AFTER the BSA has extracted every boy it can.

 

I have been told by former BSA employees that a DE is expected to deliver 2% TAY. If true, then a 20 minute presentation of Scoutcraft-based Patrol Adventure is 10 times more effective at recruiting Boy Scouts than the "proven" leadership formulas of BSA millionaires and all the efforts of Cub Scout volunteers.

 

By the way, this includes Hispanics and African-Americans in roughly the same percentage as in the whole audience. The assertion that we must get rid of Scoutcraft to "reach out" to racial minorities is racist dogma from the Wood Badge idiots who hate Scoutcraft. In fact when I recruited for one Troop back in the 1990s, we only had one little white cracker face in the crowd that regularly went lean-to camping in the snow.

 

So LIBob, if you really want to understand what "21st century youth" want, simply get out there and make an early 20th century pitch: Compile your own statistics!

 

Yours at 300 feet,

 

Kudu

[desertrat77]

Adventure is the key. I think that's how scouting survived the Great Depression, for example. Pocket knife, hatchet, matches, yucca pack, and two blankets pinned together for a makeshift sleeping bag, and the scout of yesteryear was having the time of his life.

 

Kids can play soccer anywhere, anytime. BSA national is wasting alot of time and energy thinking soccer is going to get kids to join scouting.

 

If you desire leadership and management training, you can get it from a variety of places, from executive courses offered at major universities, to the standard Management 101 three credit class at your local community college.

 

So why dilute the most truly unique selling point of the BSA--adventure--with a hodge podge of stuff that other organizations offer (and often do much better than BSA)?

 

Some downplay the importance of fieldcraft and the outdoors. Really, it was the common thread of success throughout the history of scouting. Even the funky 70s BSA revamp didn't snuff the flame of adventure out completely.

 

Frankly, we have many adults in scouting these days that aren't really interested in camping, hiking, boating, or anything else in the outdoors. Either they don't like the outdoors, or they aren't too comfortable with fieldcraft, or both. And this attitude perculates throughout the BSA, and ultimately affects the organization.

 

It's like the sales force at a car dealership not promoting the best car on the lot because it has a manual gear shift, and they aren't comfortable with that kind of transmission.