Falling Membership - 2011 Annual Report

[Cambridgeskip]

Thought I'd chime in as the point about a Chief Scout as per the UK was mentioned.....

 

The fact is that BSA is exactly where the UK Scout Association was back in the late 90's. We had a massive problem with falling membership and needed to turn it around. I don't know if the problems you have are exactly the same as ours were but what I can tell you is that the solutions to it ran to something far more fundamental than just appointing a chief scout. It was part of it but not all of it.

 

So what did we do?

 

Before I get started, a massive caveat. This is NOT some liberal Brit trying to lecture Americans on how I think it should be done. What follows is simply to demonstrate how wide ranging and fundamental some of our changes had to be to deal with our problems and that you too may have to change a lot and that there is not one single easy solution.

 

The first problem faced was losing scouts at around aged 14 when at the time the scout age range was 10.5-15.5. The second was losing Venture scouts at age 18 when Venture Scouting went from 15.5-21. And both were caused by different variations on the same theme. The theme was that youth culture had fundamentally changed since the age ranges had last changed in the 1960s and the scouting had failed to keep up with it.

 

First with scouts, this age range completely failed to reflect the natural peer groups of teenagers. In the 1960s most kids left school at 16 hence 15 year olds were more likely to hang around with those younger than them. By the 1990s most stayed at school to 18 rather than go straight out to work and 14 and 15 year olds were tending to hang around with those older than themselves. Scouts simply didn't appeal.

 

With Venture scouts it was similar. In 1960s very people went to university. By the 1990s nearly half the population were now doing so at age 18 so venture scouting was losing its older members. Fact was we were flogging a dead horse.

 

Basic solution was change the age ranges. scouts now runs to 14 and we now have Explorers for 14-18. Yes this has meant changes to the programme. There are limits to what you can ask of a 14 year old PL. They need more help, but it can still be done. Last weekend I had a patrol camp out, without leaders, lead by a 14 year old girl. It's tough getting them there. There are things we have gained and I'll come back to that further down.

 

Image, image, image. Scouting was not cool, in any way. Our image was old fashioned and easily mocked. I was a teenager at the time, I remember it well. This has been dealt with to a certain extent but there is a long way to go. This was dealt with partly by appointing a chief scout "figure head" (the first one was actually children;s tv presenter Peter Duncan, Bear Grylls took over from him). Second national HQ set up a full time professional PR and Coms team. They give a constant drip feed of good news stories to the press. They carefully manage the image presented. They try to ensure, whenever possible, that those speaking to the media are aged under 25. That is the official line. What is never written down but is quite obvious is that they are all quite good looking as well. It's a pretty cynical thing to do but it's a cynical world in which we live. They also changed the uniform. Not radically but they got rid of the hated berets and the terrible trousers. The brown nylon things are now replaced with dark blue combats. The whole centenary helped as well. The jamboree was very well run and presented and we got a bucket load of good news about it.

 

Lack of leaders. We did have a falling and ageing leader population. Solutions were multiple. First of all the image problems dealt with as above. Second creation of the "Young Leader" programme. From age 14 Explorer Scouts can chose to become effectively an apprentice leader with Beavers, Cubs, or Scouts. And it works! Many go on to sign up as proper leaders at aged 18. Secondly was creation of "Scout Network" for 18-25s. While this is theoretically a training section what it was created for was a social club for younger leaders. I remember being a 19 year old leader at a group where the next youngest leader was aged 40. It was socially quite isolating. I was lucky in that at university there was a Scout and Guide Club but a scout network would have been better (Network was actually modeled on the uni scout and guide club models)

 

Programme. This needed changes. Fundamentally it hasn't changed. Scouting is still about personal development through being outdoors. But the fact is that many kids didn't want the route of simply being turned into a PL to lead a green field camp or a hike in the woods. That element is still there. The patrol method is still there and still works very well. But along side that is the method of quite simply getting kids to do more fun stuff. Caneoing, sailing, climbing etc. Partly this was caused by the change in age ranges. Let me be clear. This was controversial. People said it would wreck scouting. But it didn't. We are retaining our 14 year olds and we are growing at every age group.

 

Is the girls, God and gays thing damaging BSA?

 

Hard for me to say as I don't speak the great American public. But I don't think it helps. I think BSA makes a rod for its own back with the whole CO way of being organised. If you scrapped that system you would be far more free to make your own rules. You know my view on the gay issue, I won't rehash what I've said on other threads. Suffice to say we have some fantastic gay leaders and some fantastic girl scouts.

 

Finally, UK SA has just released this video trying to appeal to inner city and kids and their parents. It deliberately avoids using the scout brand too overtly (although it is there). What do you think of it?

 

 

 

[Engineer61]

My thought is that there isn't anything that BSA can do to reverse the tide...

 

The world has changed ... while the BSA is tied to the thoughts of an insignificant British Lord from 1910.

 

There is far more negative than positive PR out there on the BSA...

 

Look at where BSA is:

 

... pretty much a white, christian-only club, just on the basis of the CO's.

 

... no gays.

 

... no atheists.

 

... no females.

 

... perceived as a safe haven for pedophiles...BSA doesn't turn incidents over to the Police for investigation...that dates back all the way to Powell himself.

 

... nationally publicized accidents and deaths on an annual basis, with the BSA claiming no responsibility for anything (method or otherwise).

 

... perceptions of Eagle means you get better colleges/jobs now invalidated in the private sector.

 

 

I don't know how you'd fix all that.

 

 

[Lisabob]

Eng, I'm not disputing your general point, but...um...

 

....waves arms....

 

(there are plenty of females in scouting!)

 

 

 

 

[Oak Tree]

The decline has been going on since the 1960's

 

While there is some broad truth to that, we can be a little more precise.

 

Membership peaked in 1972. It declined from 1972 through 1980, and then it remained stable and/or gradually increased up until around 1999. From 1999 through 2011 there has again been a marked decline.

 

Cub Scouts, in particular, dropped from 2,166,289 in 1999 to 1,583,166 in 2011. That's an average annual decline of 2.58%, for a total decline of 27%.

 

Boy Scouts have done relatively better, and in fact, have increased in the past two years. The overall drop is 1,023,691 to 909,576, for an average annual loss of 0.98%.

[Tacoma Scouter]

The solution will not be fixed at a national level ever. We have to fix this at the district and council level. In my district the units with a program grow, other units not so much.

 

We have to have challanging programs, young men and women who are challenged develope that swagger and beome the populer crowd. Every region has the ability develop a program, with camporees, camping, or technology challanges that can and will reverse this trend.

 

Councel level executive boards need to hold the pro-staff feet to fire, redefine the expectations, say Program, Membership, Money vs. the current Money, money, Money...the focus has to be quality.

 

A quality program will grow,

parents and scouts know what they want and will vote with their feet. we can attract scouts, but we need to meet the expectations to keep them.

 

Now what to do about National, the only thing we can do is start a grass roots campain, we demand accountabilty and quality. Instead of preaching to choir get to round table and any where else scouters meet and share the ideas of quality scouting. will this generate results overnight, no but soon.

 

Communications, we have to write press release's and groom a relationship with local media. get the positive press our scouts and program desreves. unfortunataly most of us would rater give a FOS presention than talk to the media.

 

This is my $.02

 

I have never seen a national solution for a local problem ever,

 

 

 

 

[SeattlePioneer]

I think it's true that there is no attractive face for Scouting.

 

 

Suppose John Glenn had been the public face of Scouting in the 1970s, Or Jim Whittaker who was an Eagle Scout and the first American to summit Mt Everest.

 

Who would you suggest as the public face for Scouting today?

[Eagle92]

Mike Rowe

[Eagle732]

I second the motion to recruit Mike Rowe as a spokesman or honorary Chief Scout.

[dkurtenbach]

I think it does have to be fixed at the national level. Great unit programs attract youth, yes. But great unit programs are temporary and largely dependent on specific individuals and local conditions -- factors that cannot be readily duplicated in other units.

 

No youth joins Scouts to have his character built. As long as National persists in making intangibles like character and leadership the _public_ message and identity of Scouting, we make lots of conservative adults happy but it doesn't help with membership. WE HAVE TO KEEP THOSE PURPOSES, but stop trying to market them to the general public.

 

Youth want fun and challenge. Parents want results they can see: performance (as in sports) and achievement (as in school grades and Scout ranks and awards). So, emphasize outdoor adventure activities where it is obvious that there is both fun and challenge, the activity is easily understandable, and parents can easily observe as spectators. Things like COPE, zip lines, mountain biking, climbing, pioneering, cooking. It doesn't all have to be spectator-friendly games and competitions, but we need a lot more of that.

 

Make it easier for youth and their parents to "try" Scouting without long-term commitments. Sports have seasons. Scouting needs something similar so that there are multiple times during the year when a youth (and parents) could join a unit without feeling like they are stepping into to the middle of something and without fear that it is too late to get integrated into the group or that they have a lot of catching up to do.

 

Eliminate complicated organizational and administative structures. Streamline organization and administration, with the organization of sports leagues as a model. Elminate barriers to continued membership like the Webelos-to-Scout transition and programs that overlap in age ranges.

 

The more understandable the activities and the easier it is to join and participate, the more accessible it will be to youth and parents.

 

Dan Kurtenbach

Fairfax, VA

 

 

 

[AvidSM]

"Cub Scouts, in particular, dropped from 2,166,289 in 1999 to 1,583,166 in 2011. That's an average annual decline of 2.58%, for a total decline of 27%.

 

Boy Scouts have done relatively better, and in fact, have increased in the past two years. The overall drop is 1,023,691 to 909,576, for an average annual loss of 0.98%."

 

This data tells me that it's the parents.

 

Older boys are more in charge of their own lives. They can influence their parents decisions and get them to drive them to the meetings. They are hooked into the various social networks and can find out on their own what the true value of scouting is. The traditional media no longer controls what they think and do. Say what you want about the internet, but its a whole new world where the truth can always be found for those who seek it. Scouting allows them to be in control, which is what they really want more than anything else.

 

The parents are in more control of their boys during their "cub years" and are not making cub scouting a priority in the lives of their sons. They do not see enough value in it - so they don't encourage their sons to join or to stay in the program long if they do join.

 

Why don't parents see value in the scouting program? Perhaps they were not scouts as a youth (boy or girl). Maybe its that other activities are seen as having more value, either to the youth or the adult. For example, the night that the scouts meet is the same night as some other (youth or adult) club or sporting team. So either the parent is not available to drive the boy to the meeting, or the boy is doing something else instead of scouting.

 

I have seen first hand how busy modern parents are: showing up to a unit meeting 20 to 30 minutes late; not being organized or focused on the task at hand; distracted by their smart phones or tablets. They say "I can't make it to you Roundtable meeting, can I Skype into it?"

 

No matter how much we improve the image of scouting, we cannot change the behavior of the modern parent.

 

 

[perdidochas]

I pretty much agree with Dan. We need to sell "outing" not the other intangibles. There is no way we can teach character or leadership if we don't have any boys joining.

[OldGreyEagle]

Before we start to sell the program, we are going to have to be sure we are offering the program the youth want. And if that means iPods on the trail, and video games in tents at night until the battery dies. It may have to be. We can't have units whose philosophy is the scoutmasters, who says, I did it this way 30 years ago and it was fun.

 

Pretty tall order

[Horizon]

A few years ago my older son called me.

"Scoutmaster dad, X & Y want to come on our ski trip and then our shooting campout."

Me, "You want me to open up two of our really fun trips? Tell them to join the Troop, and they can come. I am not taking someone shooting who is not a Scout."

 

Picked up those two, plus two more. These were 8th graders who had no interest in Scouting, whose parents did not care either. It was going shooting and going skiing that got their attention.

 

The Sea Scouts had a great "What did you do last weekend" thing going last year. Individual ships put them together with music, dropped the videos on YouTube. They sold the adventure of Sea Scouting.

[Basementdweller]

AvidSM

 

During the time frame you cite...a number of councils were caught with some very inaccurate membership, I believe a large portion of the cited drop is do to the correction of fraud

[Basementdweller]

AvidSM

 

During the time frame you cite...a number of councils were caught with some very inaccurate membership, I believe a large portion of the cited drop is do to the correction of fraud