When I became a Scoutmaster and helped build a troop from scratch, that "fellowship outing" was THE driving force. I didn't want boys to just talk about camping or have to wait months to get to go on one overnight campout. I wanted to provide a very similar opportunity to what I had growing up - a monthly campout with their gang that was going to be fun and adventurous. In that endeavor, I had two HUGE advantages. First, the troop was absolutely blessed with three men that quickly became 100% consequential to the outcome of events: Joe Bowen, Cary Suggs, and Jeff Gaura (listed in the order they became members of the troop). All of these men brought unique aspects of man (not just male) leadership to the troop combined with two things: significant scouting experience and proven outdoorsmanship. Second, this troop was tucked neatly into the Piedmont of North Carolina about 20 miles from the South Carolina border. For the troop, that meant easy access to Nantahala, Pisgah, Shining Rock, Croatan, Uwharrie, the Smokies, the Appalachian Trail, the Wateree, the New, the Neuse, the French Broad, and the Santee. All that was just sitting there, waiting for us.
And we went. And we went. And we went.
When we went everywhere our imagination had led us, we looked farther, to Canada, to BWCA, to Philmont, and we went there, too. And in all that outing, I utterly relied on those three men to provide certain things: spiritual insight, motivation for physical improvement, guidance, logistical skill, cooking skill (!), good ol' manpower, and what one of my restaurant managers called "jovial conviviality" (Go look that one up. That manager knew what he was talking about when he put those two words together.) They were (and are) my peers, the Scouts of my Patrol, not just other adult leaders of the troop. In a very real sense, they put me back in a clump of Scouts that Rockwell saw exiting those doors to go outside, exactly what I was looking to recreate for other boys, except now we were older. So, we adulted when necessary and scouted when we were able. And it was good.
Somewhere along the way, I built a parallel Scouting adventure by volunteering beyond the troop level. I became a Wood Badger, a Staffer, and held a handful of administrative and training positions at district, council and area levels. This put me in close contact with the business of Scouting and to be quite honest, the business doesn't have any "jovial conviviality". The business, like all business, is configured to stay in the black. As a business guy, I consciously overlooked the fact that, for a 501c3, staying in the black isn't supposed to be mission critical. As a business, a council is difficult but not impossible to keep afloat. It has 3 main objectives: membership (registration fees go to national), money (this goes to the council and national takes a cut), and manpower (the payroll is not big enough to accomplish these purposes. Volunteers are necessary). Oh, I realize that is not exactly what the publications say, but that is the reality. An erstwhile, entry level district executive is going to be tasked with one (or all) of those three things every single day: go find new donor dollars, go find new members, go find volunteer adults who will help you do those things. The bottom echelon of professional Scouting is a meat grinder of unrelenting pressure and very low pay considering the effort required. It is inextricably linked to those three metrics and thus, turnover is extremely high. In my area, it is unusual for us to retain a district executive for more than a few months. I never blamed any of them for leaving. I doubt I could do what they did for that amount of money either. As a volunteer, when you limit success to these 3 metrics, the atmosphere becomes suffocating and you learn to function in an anaerobic environment.....until you realize that you cant hold your breath forever.
On top of that, there is this enormous downward pressure from the national office that usually arrives in two forms: bureaucratic restrictions and organizational upheaval. The bureaucracy is annoying but it is also consistent and costly. For example, the national office mandated September 1st, 2015 that 15 passenger vans manufactured prior to 2005 cannot be used for scouting functions. Why? The PR and legal exposure + insurance cost for those vans is simply too high for the national office. Never mind that hundreds of churches provide these vans to their troops at no cost to the kids. Never mind that using one vehicle instead of four lower capacity vehicles has a host of environmental benefits and cost savings for the kids. Never mind that many troops cannot generate that number of drivers and vehicles for a monthly campout. Never mind that reasonable people of average driving ability own, drive, and insure these vehicles every day. For Scouts, it is now verboten. So, how do I, as a trainer of Scoutmasters, tell adults that what they do as normal, reasonable people suddenly becomes abnormal and unreasonable when they put on a khaki shirt? How do I convince a Scoutmaster that this is a rule worth following? Or that the organization is trying to help him serve those youth? These bureaucratic thumps on the head trickle down regularly. It puts the org in an extremely bad light internally.
But, being in a bad light is apparently something the national org no longer has any real objection to. The entire membership debacle of 2013 was a lesson in how not to treat your membership or deal with the media. First and foremost, the board of directors turned the entire discussion into a public debate about morality and completely rejected the somewhat pragmatic solution of granting units a local option on this topic. Adult and youth alike debated this topic literally everywhere, in camp, on the trail, and on social media, with everyone being forced to signal their allegiance to a side. It was the antithesis of scouting. It brought out the worst in everyone. I struggled with the effects of the discussion DAILY in my various positions. I struggled with a fervent desire to get along with people who held different views in the interest of the kids. So did a lot of people. By pushing this through as a public topic first and then putting it to an (engineered) vote second, the oratory battle was concluded with one side very clearly being vanquished in the public realm. It was soul crushing and needlessly so. There were thousands of wounded Scouts left on that battlefield, many of whom dragged themselves off the field never to be seen again. (I use the term "engineered" to describe the vote because the board deliberately diluted the voice from rank and file membership and charter orgs. Instead of a popular vote that included the charter orgs, a sort of electoral college was used but voting delegates were selected by just three people in each council (of which, a professional was always one) and they were not bound by anything other than their own conscience or agreement they made with the person who selected them. Delegates were allotted by council size. The larger the council, the more diluted the membership's voice. Even then, the will of the board of directors was carried out with just a 61.44% efficiency despite the fact that their own research was prophesying absolute carnage for the membership.
And the prophesy was correct for the most part. People left. Churches kicked their scouts to the curb, in at least one case, literally - just set all their camping gear right out on the curb as the media broke the story. Donations dropped. Morale? Please. Stalags had higher morale than we did. As an immediate consequence, the district executives, the entry level people, had the stress of their job increased by an order of magnitude. It was no longer difficult. It was impossible. Turnover went into overdrive. Minor league baseball teams had higher tenure than we did. NO new members or donors materialized after this giant virtue signaling exercise. It was a net loss for everyone except the very few people who tend to gain financially from virtue signaling. What was the organizational lesson learned?
For one, because of the short-sightedness of the actual resolution, the topic had to be resurrected in just two short years because resolution text itself created a conundrum. It required a homosexual who had been awarded the highest scout honor as a youth to be excommunicated upon turning 18 because they no longer met the stated, moral requirements for an adult leader. It was like exhuming John Brown's body and putting him on semi annual display. All the same arguments from all the same positions but now, with more casualties! We should have developed an Ambulance & Chaplain Corps to attend to the spiritually wounded on laying on the field.
What? How is it that an org could miss such a gaping conflict in their moral platform? I have no idea. It was pointed out repeatedly in 2013 and universally overlooked by the PTB. There was no public comment from them on that. I can only assume that it was because the morality of this entire charade was never really as important as they made it out to be. This was about the bottom line at the end of the day. So, the fix was easy and required no moral explanation. They simply bypassed the councils altogether and this time, achieved 80% efficiency in correcting their error. Didn't increase the money, manpower or membership but now they could go back to some of these very large corp donors and, at least, advertise some modicum of consistency in their position. "Bless me, my large donors, for I have sinned......"
Next, with no real grassroots impetus, the board "surveyed" their way into another massive moral change. I put surveyed in quotations because that is the new modus operandi. When members say "Where the heck did this idea come from?", the response is now "Well, the surveys told us the membership wanted this so we did it by fiat and besides, everyone else is doing it." No one really questions the fact that actually voting on these topics, as a process, has been dropped altogether. For example:
This particular act of the circus had an immediate impact for my troop. While I was able to manage the relationship fallout with our charter church on previous moral shifts, this one resulted in a no-notice, no-discussion removal from church property. The timing for us was bizarre as I am sure it was for many troops, because it was released on January 30th, just prior to Scout Sunday on February 5th. For the church, this meant hearing about the transgender decision FROM THE MEDIA on a Monday and then carrying out a planned celebration of scouts on Sunday. For that church, it was an untenable position and they elected to just surrender the boys to the world immediately. For the boys (you remember the chaps we purport to be helping), this meant internalizing the shame. Let me take this opportunity to reiterate what a poor decision I think that church made primarily because it destroyed the image the children had of themselves as MEMBERS OF A MINISTRY. I had the opportunity to go speak to the people who made the decision (done unilaterally without input from their membership) and told them what their decision did, since they chose not to face the boys they did it to. They elected to tell the adults.......with a text and a phone call. (If it sounds like I am hinting around that this was cowardly, let me not hint further. It was cowardly.) But, what did I expect? In the 6 years that church chartered the troop, there was nothing but talk of scouting the sexual frontier from headquarters. In their mind, THEY got the raw deal because the terms of the agreement were radically altered by highly paid forces, well beyond their reach.
So that was 2013, 2015, and 2017 respectively. There must be some 2 year requirement for virtue signaling, I don't know. There is a definite tempo to it though because, guess what we are doing in 2019 boys and girls? (No pun). That's right. In 2019, the board wants females registered as Boy Scouts even though as late as January of 2017, they were still telling the world that Cub and Boy Scouting was "specifically designed to meet the needs of boys". Again, my long time connections in the program (some of whom I am able to somehow maintain good relationships with despite our disagreements on some issues even though the board continually tries to fire bomb us) have said little to nothing about co-ed boy scouting. It has been a relative non topic around the fire and something the media has had no real interest in. So I asked myself "Where did this come from?"(.....stupidly, I might add because I know the company answer already: "The survey we crafted to produce a desired outcome told us you wanted it.")
But no, really. Where did this come from? Let's start with revenue from membership
From 1980-something through Y2K, it cost just $7 to register as a Scout for a year. In the year 2000, that math looked like this:
2000: $7 x 3,351,914 registered members = $23,463,398
But then, things rapidly shifted:
2002: $10 x 3,304,592 registered members = $33,045,920
2010: $15 x 2,739,692 registered members = $41,095,380
2014: $24 x 2,307,874 registered members = $55,388,976
2018: $33 x 1,800,000 ( THIS announced increase x a pessimistic swag on THIS trendline and THIS announced exodus of LDS scouts) = $59,400,000
Am I missing something or did a ~50% drop in membership in 18 years end up with a 150% increase in registration revenue? Even if we control for inflation, this is still a 100% increase, no?
And, I do believe my 2018 membership numbers are pessimistic because even with the expected fallout from this latest survey...errr, I mean...decision, the stated initiative is to capture revenue from "serving the entire family", mom, dad, son, daughter. Let's register everyone! In 2018, registering a family of four into a cub pack is a $132 proposition before unit dues, council fees, uniforms, books, and equipment. That math might produce $100 million in revenue if they capture even 1 adult registration for each scout. What is all of this money for? Remember, all of the registration fees head to national. Local costs are borne locally. As a business manager, I would ask why in the world prices are skyrocketing while sales are plummeting. Why would anyone expect these two lines NOT to diverge further? But..this isnt a business and there isnt supposed to be a profit, right?
What exactly is a 400% increase in registration fees getting us? Certainly not anything that benefits the boys in the unit. Over the same period, the only thing they have received a 400% increase in is bad PR. How many boys want to become scouts and wear a uniform of an outfit that is perennially conflicted about their identity? Boys just aren't that dumb.
And though it has escaped media attention thus far, the CEO claims to be basing "whole family service" on the behavior of asian and hispanic families who, his surveys say, don't like to drop their children off at events. I really don't know what to make of this. On the one hand, this seems like a really weird racial stereotype that just doesn't exist in my experience. I've never even heard of this before it came from HQ. The more I try to understand it, the more awkward it gets because, he says, lack of money is part of the equation. Well, I'm not a financial wizard but if lack of funds is part of the equation for underserved communities, WHY ARE WE RAISING THE REGISTRATION FEE AND TRYING TO GET MORE FAMILY MEMBERS TO PAY IT?
Further, the DNA of scouting is very much about removing adults from the process of the activity and letting the boys run the program. Baden Powell spoke about it repeatedly and we often spend significant amounts of time helping scoutmasters and adults GET OUT OF THE WAY through training. How exactly is the scoutmaster supposed to protect the purview of the boy leaders if he now has even more adults crowding into the meeting? Further, how does he respond to a parent who wants to run the show when the parent says "I paid my dues. I am a full member just like they are!" ??? Oh yeah, that's going to happen. Imagine if your child's youth football team wanted the parents to register as team members, yet had no job and no position for them. How hard would it be for the coach if the parents moved out of the stands and onto the sidelines because, after all, isn't the "whole family" on the team now? Look, parents support scouts in great ways, meaningful ways, critical ways! But, we dont need to charge them a registration fee and insert them into the program for them to provide that support. In my view, the only people that actually need to "register" are the uniformed, position patched, volunteers that are going to going to every meeting, every event, and have a definite articulated function within the program. Mom? Dad? Thank you for your support. Please keep your $33 and spend it on junior's next pair of boots. Parental involvement was one of the least broken parts of our program. This didnt need fixing.
Scouting, as a movement, needs to have an internal discussion with the board of directors and C-suite of the brand. We need to open the books and our minds and see more of their numbers because, for some reason, it smells like our other revenue streams have left us in the dust (despite the progressive shift to placate this new majority) and membership (what's left of us) are picking up the cost for a vastly more expensive national office. Vastly. Do we need a million dollar CEO anymore? Scouting is not a brand (which is probably the darkest part of James West's legacy). It's not a business. And, it is not synonymous with the letters B,S, and A. It's a movement for children and nothing about it should hinge on zeros with commas behind them or some contemporary dispute about morality.
Should girls and boys scout together? I'm willing to have that discussion with competent leadership around a fire of fellowship. I'm not going to have it morally dictated to me by folks that consider me a customer, not a peer.
Baden Powell is the undisputed Heracles of the scouting pantheon. But, Frederick Russell Burnham is, by extension, Zeus. He was the first scout, according to BP, and he is the source of all things spartan in Scouting. We would do well do heed his words now.
"It is imperative that a scout should know the history, tradition, religion, social customs, and superstitions of whatever country or people he is called on to work in or among."
Indeed, good sir. Indeed.
