Falling Membership - 2011 Annual Report

[perdidochas]

I pretty much agree with Barry Eagledad on the attrition rate. Of the 22 (yes, 22) Tiger cubs I had in my den 6 yrs ago, only 3 of them (1 being my son, the other being the son of the den leader who led them from Wolf-Webelos I) crossed over as Webelos. Admittedly, those 22 were on roll, and about 6 of them I only saw once or twice. I did get another of the 22 to join Boy Scouts having dropped off during his Wolf year. There were also other boys who joined in between, one of whom crossed over.

 

I've notice the big problem is that, at least in my troop, the only boys left with my first Webelos dens are sons of Scout leaders (committee members). We have to do something to make Scouts more attractive. Our troop's main reason for the low retention rate is that we tend to do the same old campouts year after year. We attend two camporees a year, as well as two council level OA sponsored campouts a year. That is almost half of our campouts. I'm personally camporeed out. One a year is plenty, IMHO. In addition, our boys would be hard pressed to get the camping merit badge, not due to 9a, but due to 9b. My oldest has been in the troop for two years+. He has done none of them, and he has only missed a few campouts (two of them being council campouts, and none of them qualifying for 9b).

 

9b. On any of these camping experiences, you must do TWO of the following, only with proper preparation and under qualified supervision:

 

Hike up a mountain, gaining at least 1,000 vertical feet.

Backpack, snowshoe, or cross-country ski for at least 4 miles.

Take a bike trip of at least 15 miles or at least four hours.

Take a nonmotorized trip on the water of at least four hours or 5 miles.

Plan and carry out an overnight snow camping experience.

Rappel down a rappel route of 30 feet or more.

 

[SeattlePioneer]

>

 

 

All too often the Webelos years are done poorly by adult leaders. They are often done as a third and fourth year of Cub Scouts, but boys have done that and outgrown it.

 

They need a program of den camping and outings done in conjunction with Scout Troops. If they get that, they will usually stay. If they don't, they will often quit.

 

Too often Cubmasters and Webelos Den Leaders don't understand that.

[Eagledad]

>>They need a program of den camping and outings done in conjunction with Scout Troops. If they get that, they will usually stay. If they don't, they will often quit.

 

Too often Cubmasters and Webelos Den Leaders don't understand that.

[cubtrails]

Sports

Video games

Laziness

 

Being LDS, we kinda have built-in recruiting, yet I've noticed a decline in interest among many youth. Some of it is definitely sports, but many kids also live a very coddled lifestyle, so the idea of "roughing it" just doesn't sound enticing on the weekends.

 

When I was younger, my alternative to camping on the weekends was doing yardwork for several hours. If I had the option to play Mike Tyson's Punch-out all day instead, I might have wanted to stay home too.

[Lisabob]

While I agree that there is an issue with burn-out and that the program itself can be an issue, I also think we need to consider the nature of elementary-aged youth programs and the take-all-comers recruiting appeal of most cub packs.

 

Many families join cub scouting as a "try it out" activity for a year or two. Many of these families just don't commit to any one activity for an extended period of time. They do soccer this year, scouting next year, youth group the year after, lego league the year after that.... By design, they're serial participants in many different youth offerings so that their kid gets a "well rounded" exposure. They want their kids to be generalists, not specialists. And boy scouting in particular, is for specialists.

 

Then many other families don't have it together enough to stick with it. We got a LOT of messed up people in cub scouting. Parents who were, themselves, still more like children (it is sort of shocking, now, to spend time around the oldest boys in my son's troop and realize that some Cub parents are only a few years older than them!). Parents with addiction problems. Parents with a lot of social and economic strain in their lives. Parents who were in process of losing custody of their children. Parents who had gone/were going through nasty divorces, and couldn't work cub scouting smoothly into their joint custody agreements. Parents of kids with serious behavioral disorders who hope cub scouts is going to work miracles for them.

 

All of these folks signed up their kids for a year as Tigers or Wolves with good intentions, but quickly faded out of the picture because they simply could not (did not) get there for pack and den meetings. The commitment and structure was too much. These folks almost never were still around as Bear and Webelos participants.

 

I'm not denying that there are program issues that result in drop-off at both ends of cub scouting (new recruits, esp. Tigers, often leave if the initial experience isn't good, and Webelos get burned out or find other, more challenging youth programs instead).

 

But I do think that cub scouting fishes with a large net. It shouldn't surprise us, then when a lot of the fish slip through the holes on us. If we were more selective about who and how we recruit (fishing with a smaller, more tightly woven net), we might see a higher retention rate, but the overall population we serve might also diminish. This is just the nature of open-access elementary age youth programs.

 

 

[Eagledad]

>>But I do think that cub scouting fishes with a large net. It shouldn't surprise us, then when a lot of the fish slip through the holes on us. If we were more selective about who and how we recruit (fishing with a smaller, more tightly woven net),

[SeattlePioneer]

Hello Eagledad,

 

 

>

 

 

Is that two den meetings, a pack meeting and a scheduled outing per month?

 

We had been doing two den meetings per month or a den meeting and a pack meeting per month, (plus an outing and parent meeting per month.) Next year we will be going to two den meetings, a pack meeting an outing and a parent meeting per month in order to provide more program continuity.

 

 

[JMHawkins]

 

 

Now, the question arises, why would Little League be in decline? Did it go through a period akin to "urban scouting" or otherwise stray from its roots? Hardly--baseball is still baseball.

 

Actually, baseball has changed, or at least what LL plays as it has. When I was a kid, LL was played in the summer, with 15 kids on multi-aged teams ages 9-12, with lots of practices that we (the kids) were genearlly responsible for getting ourselves to. Now, it's a late-winter/Spring sport with 11 man teams divided up into narrower age ranges, with a handful of practices before the season starts and then almost no pratices after the first game. And parents generally have to drive kids everywhere.

 

What are the implications? Lots of rainouts, lots of wet, sloppy fields that aren't fun to play baseball on to start with. The narrower age ranges have 9 year olds trying to pitch to each other, and very few 9 year olds can throw strikes, so the games degenerate into walk-a-thons. On top of that, they let kids steal, and the 9 year olds who are also catching usually can't throw from home to second base faster than a runner can run from 1st, and that's assuming they caught the ball in the first place. Smaller teams (so "everyone can play") means frequent situations where you don't have 9 kids - my son's team his last year had to sneak the coaches 7 year old onto the field several times to avoid a forfiet. And the lack of practices after the season starts means no chance to work on or improve skills as a team. Kids do all their learning and improvment at home or at some sports camp, not in LL.

 

Add it all up and it's not as fun for the kids, and not as useful for the parents (who now have to spend more time driving the kids there in addition). No wonder numbers are dropping - I'm surprised they're not dropping faster. We can complain about the specialization leagues, the travelling teams, but they're providing a program that's more fun than LL for the kids since they're actually providing the kids a chance to learn, improve, and test their skills. LL has degenrated into fresh air day care with matching shirts and trophies for everyone.

 

 

[Eagledad]

>>Is that two den meetings, a pack meeting and a scheduled outing per month?

[JMHawkins]

My point here was going along with dkurtenbach's statement: "I think that BSA suffers from putting out a product that is highly inconsistent from unit to unit. Of course, there is a fear that improving consistency from unit to unit would mean not only eliminating units that fall below a certain minimum standard, but reducing the quality of highly successful units to make the product more uniform."

 

Actually, most likely it would just eliminate the high-performing units and drop everyone to the lowest demoninator. The reason for the substandard programs is mostly because those programs don't have the great leaders needed to run a quality one. SeattlePioneer nailed that - plus he's right that just setting "higher standards" isn't going to magically make those leaders better. On the down side, attempting to enforce standards will likely drive some of the talented volunteer leaders out, who maybe figure if someone is going to tell them how to do the job, then maybe they ought to get paid for it. You can't get bossy with volunteers, or they'll un-volunteer.

 

Besides, let's take a moment and consider what sort of "higher standards" are likely to come out of Irving these days. Wattered down advancement, Webelos III programs, lack of real adventure, overly bureaucratic operations, all those are encouraged by the current material coming from National. If the same folks who created FCFY, NSPs, one-and-done advancement, and the current G2SS, attept to standardized the program, it's not going to be in the direciton of what fred8033 suggested:

 

Focus on what everyone expects. Getting outside. Camping. Hiking. Outdoor skills. Focus less on the advancement program. Focus more on what people innately understand about scouting.

 

I completely agree with fred here, this is what we ought to be doing. But unless there's a change of direction at National, I expect more focus on advancement from them, since that's been their direction.

 

 

 

 

[SeattlePioneer]

Hello Barry,

 

 

Personally, my aim is to begin integrating new parents into the pack program immediately! If you start right away, you establish that as a habit.

 

If you let those new parents off the hook, they establish that as a habit and become artful dodgers for their remaining tenure with the pack. That's my experience.

 

And I use the Tiger year as the foundation for the pack's future leadership. Because Tiger Cub parents work together, they get to know each other and the Cub Scout program. That builds habits and bonds that persist in future years.

 

There are people who drop in and drop out just as fast. Your experience suggests they can be saved for the program, but the price seems very high.

 

This spring all the newly recruited families formed our Bobcat Den, which I led. The recruiting night was an egg drop where adults and boys packaged an egg and then dropped it off a balcony to see if it survived.

 

At our first Bobcat Den Meeting boys got a neckerchief and slide, and were considered to be "in uniform." We started going over Bobcat requirements and prepared for a fun hike and hot dog roast the following Saturday.

 

The next Monday was our montholy parent meeting, which functioned as a reception for those new parents who were invited and all of whom attended.

 

In early June we did a Pack overnight in which all the new Bobcats received their Bobcat badge and helped to form their new dens for the next year.

 

So our aim was to make a REAL EFFORT to educate parents on the Cub Scout program and to show them the value and worth of the pack program. That tends to cause most such parents to buy into the program and make a commitment to the program.

 

 

Well, we have different methods and different experiences and results. I suppose we are both entitled to use the methods that work for us.

 

 

Thanks for explaining your program in more detail.

[Eagledad]

Yes, it appears we have two successful opposing strategies. I dont know how opposing they really are, our primary objectives also were to bond the group and educate the parents to the program. I guess the major difference is that our program intentionally did it passively.

 

I guess it goes without saying that I appreciate and respect your efforts. Well done.

 

Barry

 

[kari_cardi]

I think every point listed here is a problem to some extent and could be improved, from what I have experienced in our district. I especially agree with Lisabob, as I usually do. Quality of the volunteer leaders is something that I haven't read, and I think it is very important. Lots of leaders are capable of presenting material from the handbook. Few do it in an exciting and boy-friendly way. Those who can engage and inspire scouts have the popular and successful units.

 

I'm working on pack and troop recruitment right now with my DE to make it more exciting and more representative of what scouting really is. I looked at beascout.org this am and saw the pictures of boys doing things we never do. And I asked myself, 'why?'

 

 

[dkurtenbach]

Sasha wrote: "I'm working on pack and troop recruitment right now with my DE to make it more exciting and more representative of what scouting really is. I looked at beascout.org this am and saw the pictures of boys doing things we never do. And I asked myself, 'why?'"

 

I think the notion of "what Scouting really is" (as opposed to "what Scouting should be") is debatable, but perhaps in another thread. Assuming that you are talking about more adventuresome outdoor activities, I would suggest:

 

1. The first priority for many troops is to have campouts where T-2-1 rank requirements can be completed. The best setting for many of those requirements is a car campout at a nearby campground.

 

2. As you noted, "Lots of leaders are capable of presenting material from the handbook. Few do it in an exciting and boy-friendly way." And doing things other than a car campout is beyond the skill, enthusiasm, and/or comfort zone of many adult leaders.

 

3. Much of the really adventurous stuff is either (a) complicated for the troop to arrange on its own, or (b) costly if the troop goes to an outfitter or commercial vendor.

 

4. It takes thought, research, and imagination to come up with more adventurous activities for the troop that are relatively simple and cheap and don't require a lot of skill or resources to accomplish. Getting something like that going -- including getting the support of Scouts and parents -- takes a lot of work up front that many folks simply won't or can't do.

 

Dan Kurtenbach

Fairfax, VA

(This message has been edited by dkurtenbach)

[shortridge]

Selling the program needs to be second only to having a good program in building up membership. I'm hardly a salesman, but my understanding is that you need to offer core, very simple message, repeat it, and convince people they need what you're selling. As a national organization, we do none of those.

 

There was recently a Scouting marketing campaign - it may be a regional one - based on "timeless values" and the points of the Scout Law. I happen to think that is an utter failure. Such efforts focus on selling the benefit to parents. When consumers are promised a benefit, they expect results, and fairly quickly (not to mention measureable). Scouting offers none of that. The process is messy, disorganized, relatively slow and difficult to measure. The need we pitch to parents is that their children will become responsible, wholesome citizens. Well, it's a pretty hard task to instantly transform your average 11-year-old hooligan into a responsible citizen. Plus there's nothing at all in that approach to attract the interest of the kids.

 

I look at the programs my daughter is involved in - dance classes and youth theatre - and think of how they pitched themselves. Rather than selling the benefits, these programs - growing very rapidly - sell the fun. Few children in them are going to end up professional dancers or actors, and that's freely acknowledged. Yet many end up continuing from a young age into their teenage years because dancing and acting are enjoyable. Parents - and kids - are sold on the immediate fun, not on the future benefit of what dance and theatre will do to build their character.

 

We should be selling the fun and adventure and excitement.