16 July 2009
Calling All Unit Leaders?
Posted by admin under: policies .
At the national annual meeting for the Boy Scouts, Joe Landy spoke about the BSA innovation group which apparently has also been tasked with coming up with a national strategic plan to counteract the falling membership in the BSA. He describes the plan as a grass roots effort which apparently means that the people at the council were consulted. I find it strange that to the national organization getting input from the professionals at the council qualifies as “grass roots”. I’d go a few steps back and consult with unit leaders. In fact in this youtube video Joe has a slide at 5:10 that shows that unit volunteers were consulted in April of 2009. Now, I belong to 3 different units as a den leader, committee chair, and crew advisor and I can say that neither me nor any leaders I know were consulted on any kind of strategic plan. So, I’m wondering if the BSA is going to pull the same stunt that the GSUSA did which is to come up with a plan and then say that the volunteers are fully behind it because they were involved in drafting it.
So, my question is, did anybody consult you on the strategic plan for the BSA that we’re going to hear about next month?
- GSGLA First Annual Meeting
- GSUSA: Team Meeting
- Someone Thinks Obama Won’t Hire Boy Scouts
- BSA Field Testing Mandatory Training
- Rumblings from Settummanque about Girls in Cub Scouts
3 Comments so far...
LatterDay_Scout Says:
16 July 2009 at 10:30 am.
I couldn’t agree more.. all of my genuine frustrations with scouting stem from scout executives that are more concerned with the bottom line than with the scouts experience.. I realize scouting is a business.. but a poorly run business is going to fail no matter what.. and gouging scout families isn’t going to encourage participation..
Walter Underwood Says:
17 July 2009 at 4:26 pm.
I didn’t hear about any of this. And that is a seriously content-free presentation. It says, “we have a new plan, but we aren’t telling you what it is right now.”
For the record, if anyone had asked me about a new uniform, I would have said to make it nylon and cheaper (they did that), make the neckerchief big enough to use for a sling, switch to thin, flexible Jacquard patches for the lighter material (instead of the plastic-backed, armor-plated patches we have now), and encourage a minimal field uniform.
On our backpack last weekend, we found a lost dog and returned it to the owner. That would have meant a lot more if we’d all been in uniform.
Dan - ScoutingNews Says:
17 July 2009 at 6:13 pm.
I can’t check out the video (Gov’t Network restrictions), however I did find a gem about the strategic plan on the National website a few weeks ago.
http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Media/StrategicPlan.aspx
While I don’t know where they reached out to volunteers, the presentation talks through their current thoughts and organization and you can make contact with the person in charge of any area that you are interested to provide feedback. I think it was a step in the right direction, just a shame it was hidden so well.
