TAY %

[CNYScouter]

Its recruitment time and something I heard has me wondering.

 

I heard or read somewhere that the percentage of TAY (Total Available Youth) for Scouting is 12% on a national level.

 

I have no idea where this number came from or if it represents only Boy Scouts or the entire program.

 

I would have to think that Cubs have a higher percentage than Boy Scouts with Varsity and Venturing having a much smaller percentage.

 

Does anyone have these percentages?

 

I am curious to see how our District is doing against the National average.

 

[CNYScouter]

Sorry I put his under the wrong topic

[Eagle92]

Ask your DE as that is a figure they should know off the top of his head.

[CNYScouter]

My DE doesn't know and told me he doesn't have the time to put this together.

 

 

[Eagle92]

WHAT?!?!?!?!? Seriously, thsi was something my council harped on when I was a DE. In fact I had a map issued with all the schools, school stats, and county pop stats that I had to use.

[jhankins]

TAY stats are available on the MyBSA cover page. If your DE doesn't know where to get the info, he's not worth the FOS money you're paying him

[Eagle92]

J

I'll be honest we were not taught how to compute them as they were handed to us by the DFS and SE. The map, ok really two or three maps in my case, had all the info on them. Those were in my red book at all times once they were issued.

 

Forgot to add that the map also had churches, civic groups, and other potential COs as well as current units color coded on it as well. I don't know if national made those for the council, or if the council created them in house, but 90% of the info we needed for various reports were on it.

[jhankins]

The map idea is pretty cool. We don't have those in my council, so I assume that's either not being done or was a local council offering. It makes a lot of sense, though! I did my own maps with school districts, LDS stakes, churches and schools to help me figure out where to place new units.

 

TAY for districts and council is done for them, though, and placed inside MyBSA just as the Professional logs in, so the number is right in front of their faces. Not to mention, they also have to know that number for the district tracker and should be using it at every membership related Key 3 and district membership meeting.

[frank10]

"My DE doesn't know and told me he doesn't have the time to put this together."

 

Somehow I get the feeling his number is below 12%. Just a hunch.

 

[Kudu]

I have talked with a few former BSA employees but have never been able to pin down the National TAY % (Percentage of Total Available Youth), or even what their own District or Council goals were.

 

Maybe TAY is a mythical thing like accurate BSA membership numbers

 

I do know that AFTER the BSA had given Webelos to Scout Crossover their best shot in Western NY, I was able to register an additional 28% of the sixth-grade boys in our local school by presenting our program as the kind of old-school adventure that attracted boys to Scouting on June 15, 1916.

 

See:

 

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

 

The "potential" TAY was usually 70% (the number of non-Scouts who signed my list, in front of their peers, asking me to call their parents). For what it's worth I have the statistics of why that 70% dwindled down to 28%, if anyone wants me to dig them out (Excuses parents gave me over the phone--I don't think they mean anything).

 

I believe that the bottom line is that with the retirement of Green Bar Bill in 1965, the BSA made the conscious decision to switch our product from Scouting to "Leadership and Character" no matter what it cost in membership numbers.

 

Yours at 300 feet,

 

Kudu

(This message has been edited by Kudu)

[shortridge]

I don't know how it's calculated, but national TAY for 2014 is projected to be 30,208,084. That's inclusive of Tigers through Venturers, and it's up 2.4 percent from 2009.

 

Source: http://www.scouting.org/filestore/media/ES_Population_Estimates.pdf

 

The document also breaks it down by region. Lots of demographic data for the numbers-crunchers among us.

 

The national TAY numbers in a nutshell for 2014 (compared to 2009):

 

Tigers: 2.2 million, up 4.6 percent

Cubs: 4.4 million, up 4.7 percent

Webelos: 4.5 million, up 4.9 percent

Total Cub-Scout Age: 11.1 million, up 4.8 percent

 

Boy Scouts: 6.5 million, up 5.1 percent

Venturers: 12.4 million, down .9 percent

 

According to the 2008 annual report, there were 2.8 million registered traditional Scouts (Tigers through Venturers). Applying that figure to the 30-odd million TAY in 2014, I come up with the very, very rough figure that Scouting serves 9.4 percent of total available youth across the U.S. Less than one in 10.

[Nike]

Plug your zip code into factfinder.census.gov. Go to People, Sex & Age. In 2000, our old zip code in GA had approximately 1800 males aged 5-19, probably closer to 2200 by 2010. Some zip codes get updated more often through interim research.

 

You can also comb thorugh the publicly available testing data of your local schools. There should be a link at your school system website.

 

If your DE can't be bothered to do what I did in five minutes for one zip code, including checking other demographic sites, what else isn't he bothering with?

 

 

 

 

[Eagle92]

I know I should know this, but I don't as it's been a while, but 12% TAY keeps popping into my head. Don't remember if that was my overall goal or if that as the actual population we were serving. To be honest I just parroted the line because I was more concerned about other challenges than TAY: creating a district committee, commissioner corps, etc.