How big is your troop?

[KenDavis500]

How many Scouts are registered with your troop? How many are active?

 

Do you have limits for the size?

[eagle90]

We have 62 registered scouts. I would say 60 of them are active. We are taking 53 to Summer Camp next month ( 2 more of our scouts are on staff). We don't have any size limits, as we have never been this big before!

 

Dale

[5yearscouter]

We have 70 scouts registered,

about 12 aren't coming right now,

another handful are hit and miss on attendance.

any given meeting usually has 50+ boys at it.

 

no limits, but I know the SPL without more training is at his limit for what he can seem to organize. PL's need to step up and patrols need to be worked on some more cause some are way too big, so kids get lost.

 

[jtswestark]

Registered 30. 27 are active, top heavy with Star and Lifes. One Eagle to date this year, three others turned in their paperwork, maybe one more after that yet this year. Will be a colorful fall!

Typically hit 75% attendance, which is great considering the enormous amounts of activities these guys take part in - band, football, baseball, academic challenge, honors classes, etc... and we camp 10 months out of the year.

Challenges continue to be recruiting by keeping the borg mega adult led troop up the road from absorbing all the Scouting in the area.

[resqman]

45-50 registered. 95%+ active. No limits.

[qwazse]

23 registered. Attendance has been around 15. 19 are at summer camp.

[Mrw1]

50 registered. About 3 are inactive and have said they will not be coming back. 4-5 will be aging out in the next few months. We do not see them much as they are mostly active with the Crew and not the Troop at this point.

 

We have a pretty good mix of ranks, with 3 EBORs in the scheduling stage and at least two morre expected later this year.

 

We have been averaging 45-55 scouts for about the last 6 years. And this even after one ASM left to form a new troop and took a handful with him.

[PaulSafety]

We are a newly chartered troop (7 months). We grew from five transfer scouts to 18 registered with about 15-16 at most troop meetings. We have no pack to draw crossover scouts from so we will be recruiting in schools, churches, etc.

[scoutmaster52]

29 on paper. 90% are active with another 5% being every other week scouts. no size limit, although this year we had to change meeting locations to fit the troop.

 

[Alabama Scouter]

39, one inactive and which I should take the time to purge, as he's not coming back. No limits, but the TC has discussed how to implement a cap. No good way has been figured out yet, and probably never will. 4 full patrols. We usually have 80% at meetings, except for band concert nights. We have 75% or greater at camping trips. We set the camping dates in August for the next 13 months, and we don't move dates. This helps families plan around troop dates.

[Oak Tree]

We're a little bit bigger than the above troops, but we don't have any limits either. We tried for a little while to slow our expansion, but it proved problematic to draw good lines around who could get it and who couldn't.

 

I've talked with the largest troop in the district, and they don't have any limits either, except that both of our troops will redirect entire Webelos dens that approach us and want to visit. We get enough from our sister packs.

[Chippewa29]

My troop now has about 43 Scouts, about 85-90% are active. In the last 2 1/2 years, we've grown from nine Scouts to our current size. We are obviously pretty bottom heavy right now. I've always felt that 40-something was the ideal troop size. While we don't officially have a cut off or limit, we feel that if the troop grows to over fifty Scouts and is going to stay that way, then we will split into two troops. We have a troop in our district that had 80-90 Scouts for years. They would generally have 40-45 on a campout and lose a majority of the new Scouts that joined each year. The SM realized he didn't know who all of the Scouts were in his troop, even after spending a week with them at summer camp. They made a conscious effort to reduce their recruiting (recruit from 3-4 packs instead of 10-12) and worked to find out who was really serious. After doing this for two years, the troop had shrunk to about 55 Scouts, but they were still getting 40-45 on campouts and they were retaining 75-80% off the New Scouts that joined.

 

While some troops may like being huge, my personal belief is that if the Scoutmaster doesn't know every Scout or isn't able to do every SM Conference himself, the troop is too big. Better to have smaller (

[Tampa Turtle]

I had to look it up. About 80+ on paper. Really about 50-60 actives with 40-50 showing up for campouts.

 

I would agree about the 40-50 size.

[BrentAllen]

We had two twins drop this week, bringing us down to 48 Scouts. The twins hadn't been on a trip this year, so this wasn't a big surprise. We had 44 attend Summer Camp.

 

We just switched to a new billing method, charging a fee to cover the monthly outings from August 1 to July 31, excluding Summer Camp and High Adventure. We are operating like a sports team, in that if you miss a trip you don't get a refund. We may lose a few more Scouts due to this change, but it is a risk I'm willing to take.

 

I, too, think around 40 Scouts is a good number. We haven't put a cap in place, though we have discussed it. Due to space, we are really limited to 6 patrols, which would put us just over 50 for patrols and Green Bar.

[UCEagle72]

Back in the ancient days of the early 80s ...

My first troop started at 7 and at the end of two years (when I was transferred away) we had 27. That seemed to be a good size.

 

Then in the early 90s ...

My second troop was 20 when I started, and 40-50 when I passed the baton three years later. I really felt that 50 was "pushing it" ... at least for me as a SM.

 

I was much more comfortable with a 25-30 member troop -- but we never had a specific size limit in place.