Scout units should never have bylaws

Dec 4, 2021

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in administration, the right way to do it

(Editorial comment: Sacred cows are tasty. Apparently bylaws are sacred cows. Many comments are reacting to sentiments not expressed in this article. To be clear: It is good to document practices. It’s not good to turn them into formal bylaws.)

While formal policy’s certainty may be appealing, it is a bad idea for Scout units. (Note: I use “bylaws” and “policy” interchangeably. I mean 1. a set of written rules that are 2. formally adopted by the adults of a Scout unit that 3. seek to generally regulate a Scout unit.)

Bylaws turn the unit committee into a legislative body. This distracts from the committee’s role as a working group.

Bylaws encourage rule-worshipping and administration. They discourage creativity and leadership.

Let me re-emphasize something: BYLAWS ARE ANTI-LEADERSHIP! They are about rules and processes, the domain of administration. Steering a unit towards a compliance regime is steering it away from leadership-mentoring opportunities.

Bylaws demean volunteers and youth leaders, saying they should not be trusted.

Bylaws will eat you up. “But I just want one policy!” Once you let the genie out of the bottle, getting to “extensive policy” is fast: due to the golden-hammer effect, more problems will be “solved” by more policy.

Conscientious units don’t need bylaws. BSA already has plenty of rules and regulations. Gray areas can be managed through the lens of the Scout Oath and Law. In rare cases where these aren’t enough, documenting one’s practices are sufficient. In extremes, the chartered organization might weigh in.

Some mistakenly think Scout units need bylaws because all organizations need them. No, because Scout units are not organizations. They are a part of their chartered organization.

Finally, BSA recommends against bylaws. In the Cub Scout Leader Book, 2018 edition, page 94: “Creating a set of bylaws or operating procedures is not necessary; all packs operate by the guidelines described in this manual.”

Bylaws for Scout units are counterproductive. They create costs, they don’t solve problems better than documented practices, and they have substantial risks.

Alternatives to bylaws

OK, no bylaws or policy. What else can you do? Three things:

Use the Scout Oath and Law. Those are the best lens for working through challenges.

Use what BSA already provides. Don’t reinvent the wheel. BSA already has a bloated corpus of rules and recommendations. The last thing any volunteer needs is more rules.

Document your practices. You do not need legislation to document practices. For example, if your unit’s practice is that campout registration deadlines are the Sunday before the campout, then the camp chair might write this down in a shared document.

Comments

18 responses to “Scout units should never have bylaws”

Robert Wilcox

December 4, 2021

Tend to disagree. There are too many gray areas and some need filling in, in order to create consistency…

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1. Aren Cambre
  
  December 4, 2021
  
  I agree that there are gray areas. I’ve shared techniques for working through them. Practices created by the owner of the concern are sufficient when informal techniques don’t work.
  
  Reply
  1. Robert Wilcox
    
    December 4, 2021
    
    Your suggestions of a practice is a policy though. It’s a great example, but your example lacks consequences. It only says you must cancel. What happens if they cancel after the deadline(which happens)? This is largely problematic when money has been spent. Who must bear the expense now, the unit or the individual? All of which needs to be spelled out in a policy or practice as you call it.
    But wait, you still don’t believe me. Let’s do it your way. Leader A puts the expense on the unit. Leader B puts the expense on the individual. The scouts talk and now one parent is upset because they had to pay.
    That created a mess. Everyone agreed that we wanted to avoid this again. So how do you solve it? A policy or practice or bylaw. They really are the solution and not the problem.
    
    But you know everything seems to be a result of some bad situation. I’m guessing that was your motivation when you wrote this article. So do tell, what prompted you to be so polarized against unit bylaws, policies, or practices? I’ll agree you don’t want to have too many policies, but you need some. Especially since the bsa leaves alot in the gray.
    
    I think lot of scouters are having a problem with your statement of “never” have bylaws. I don’t think you’re going to be right with a never statement, as you found out on fb.
    
    Reply
    1. Aren Cambre
      
      December 5, 2021
      
      This is not hard at all. Just adopt a practice of refunding all refundable expenses in the event of a cancellation. That’s easy. I’ve had cancellations in both my gigantic old Cub Scout pack (137 kids) and in my crew. We simply refund what we can, but we don’t refund for expenses we cannot recoup. I’ve not once had a problem with that.
      
      Two reasons I am against bylaws:
      
      I am reflecting a major mistake I made as a youth. As SPL, I got my troop to draft an extensive set of rules. In retrospect, it was a stupid waste of time. Nothing we legislated needed to be formal rules. Every last bit of it spoke to things where either BSA already had sufficient guidance or where the Scout Oath and Law are sufficient.
      
      As an adult, I’ve been privy to a few situations where a unit discussed the possibility of bylaws. In all situations, it was either because the unit leaders were not acting in accordance to the Scout Oath and Law (bylaws will not fix that problem!) or the unit was frankly just adding needless complexity to something. In both cases, a different approach is needed, not bylaws.
      
      Reply
Mike Buhr

December 4, 2021

Tend to disagree also. A lot of COs have little to do with their units, so I do not see them as a part of them. Bylaws provide a structure for units as they see transitions over time. They were a key part of our Venture Crew as they were written and reviewed by the Crew annually. They were not driven by the committee. YMMV

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1. Aren Cambre
  
  December 4, 2021
  
  I am an advisor of a crew. The closest thing we have to bylaws is a statement about acceptable use of cell phones, adopted by the youth a few years ago. It’s been mostly forgotten because it’s just not an issue, and even if it was, I am confident we can deal with it.
  
  I cannot think of a single occasion, ever, where I would have been helped by a formal, unit-level policy.
  
  Reply
Joseph Barisonzi

December 4, 2021

I enjoyed reading your general prospective. I agree that focusing too heavily on riles and “laws” and not being guided by the Scout Oath and ..well, umm “law” is generally a great idea.

But to claim that no Scput unit anyway ever should ever have bylaws seems to be the type of thesis made for clickbait.
Units are organizations. Some more than others. They are a hybred between BSA and their Charter Organization. Your Venture Unit is different from mine, it operates differently because of the relationship we have with our Charter Organization.

You have ways to do thing. Call them policies. Call them practices. Call them rules. Call them Aren’s super-secret-but-assumed-way. It doesnt matter. You have ways of doing things.

Writing them down provides transparency and accountability. It provides new member an opportinity to see expectation. It provides members a way to hold leaders that go astray accountable.

When your unit has policies – for whatever reason- are distinct from or different from BSA’s guidelines documenting these is important.

Most of all in a youth led organization the very process of reviewing, renewing and recommitting to the policies and procedures is a valuable leadership development process.

In our Crew we dont call them bylaws. We call them procedures. They lay out the expectations we have for our officers. We have officers different from the standard crew so this is helpful. We lay out the election procedure with our term limits and overlaping goverence periods.

Since we have unique requirements from our Charter Organization our procedures layout procedures not included or addressed by BSA policy. (Or things that should be like social media usage.)

I appreciate that your Scout unit may not need “bylaws” – but to say that no units should ever document the policies or procedures seems to be either ignorant of the diversity of how units operate or perhaps intentionally provacative to gatner clicks.

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1. Aren Cambre
  
  December 5, 2021
  
  Writing them down provides transparency and accountability
  
  I agree 100%. Written practices are a great thing! We agree.
  
  Also, written practices are not bylaws or policies. The are informal.
  
  I think you and I are mostly on the same page, we’re just struggling with definitions on a few terms.
  
  Reply
Daryl

December 5, 2021

If you make it up as you go, one could be perceived as an exalted ruler amongst competing interests. Power struggles are counterproductive. A well-prepared byLaws will provide the framework in which a BSA program can be run successfully.

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1. Aren Cambre
  
  December 5, 2021
  
  Sorry, but that is a false dichotomy. There are more choices than making it up or legislated bylaws. I recommend neither of those. Please re-read my article and come back.
  
  Reply
Robert E Wilcox

December 6, 2021

We are on the same page. I think your past experiences at weighing too much in this. You have bylaws, policies, procedures, you’re just not wanting to call them that. Anything written down is a bylaw, policy, etc. These are good things, we just must ensure we don’t go overboard. Like all things in life, You must strike the right balance.

My spl fail was not communicating expectations with my senior scouts when it came to duties. I was pretty lonely that week at summer camp, but my SM was happy. Live and learn.

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1. Aren Cambre
  
  December 6, 2021
  
  Good that we’re mostly on the same page.
  
  A detail: Having gone through some corporate governance exercises, “policy” and “bylaws” are generally legislated or formally-approved-by-the-organization kinds of things, which are “thou shalts” enforceable by the unit itself and requiring formal deliberation to change.
  
  Practices documented by the concern’s owner are neither bylaws nor policy. They are much more flexible and provide discretion to the owner(s) of the concern they apply to. A good thing to have a documented practice for may be a financial-aid practice.
  
  It is my view that bylaws and policy never strike the right balance for Scout units. They are too formal, they poison the unit, and they are symptomatic of a need to improve the unit’s culture, mission, or leadership.
  
  Reply
Ernest Schmidt

June 24, 2022

By laws, I’ve had them in every Troop that I was a scout master of and that been all over the world as a military scouter. Matter of fact they came up when the troop was sued by a malcontent mother who wanted to do all the work for her home-schooled son to get his Eagle. BSA refused to help the troop or the committee because it was as they put it a “personal problem”. They gave the kid Eagle to shut the parents up. The scout law works well but see what happens when something goes wrong. I had a kid go wild and beat up his den leader and broke her back, Yes a homeschooled Big Kid who was in cub scouts. that was 5 years ago and the den Leader is still having problems. Do you think the BSA would help?? heck, they did not even pay her medical bills so she had to sue Council. But the mother of the child could have cared less. The council wanted us to give this kid another chance but thank god our By-laws were in place and she was asked to leave. By the way as the scoutmaster, I had to pay $1500.00 for a lawyer or lose my home to this great parent and then the Church that chartered the Pack and troop fired all of us but asked the problems causer to come back. Once they came back the troop failed everyone moved to other Troops, 65 years down the tubes. If you are smart you will have By-Laws make sure they are approved by your charter unit always have a back up do not depend on the BSA to save you because they will not.

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1. Aren Cambre
  
  June 24, 2022
  
  I observe that in your defense of bylaws, your two examples are where bylaws are wholly unnecessary.
  
  Reply
Ernest Schmidt

February 7, 2023

My unit Bylaws saved me when as a scoutmaster i was sued by the parents of a kid because the mom wanted to do his eagle scout work. When I needed help and my committee, National, and council were nowhere to be found and they refused to help us. cost me $1500.00 but could have been worst but my unit bylaws worked. Ive been scouting 33 years. If you ever run into a malcontent Parent your council will not back leadership even if your 100% right.

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1. Aren Cambre
  
  February 7, 2023
  
  Some context is needed, and it doesn’t help the bylaws case you’re making.
  
  This is probably a local civil court. The court and attorneys are simply looking for whatever is needed that is 1. acceptable to the court, 2. will help to create a judgment that meets a “more likely than not” threshold, and 3. all in the context of a plaintiff that is highly unlikely to appeal.
  
  What we know is that a bylaws document may have been introduced in the trial. I’d like to know more about the proceedings to know whether it was significant.
  
  But let’s suppose it was significant. All we know is one out of many possible helpful tools was used. What was not tested is how well other great tools may have worked. Examples include but are not limited to the reasonable-person standard or the Guide to Advancement.
  
  As the situation you describe appears to be about advancement, the governing document would possibly be the Guide to Advancement. Unit bylaws cannot alter that, but I doubt a local civil court and local lawyers are likely to know this. They almost surely have little idea of the Guide to Advancement or how the BSA works. To get the case handled in the most efficient way, they have an incentive to get the case decided on whatever information is most easily available to them. You only paid $1500 for everything, so it sounds like this was a low-effort trial, which supports my theory.
  
  I’ve rambled. All the above notwithstanding, I would never advise creating a harmful, loathsome document because of a possibility that it could be helpful in an extraordinarily low risk of low-stakes litigation.
  
  Reply
aberrantbotanista

April 17, 2023

Sea scout ranking requirements make reference to each ship’s bylaws and code of conduct (yes, BSA has a sea scouts program). However, the bylaws basically out to, we will follow the spirit of the oath and law in every activity we host or participate in as well as use BSA safety rules and guidelines when planning activities”. Then they lay out required attendence and financial obligations in order to be considered “an activemember” so they can achieve rank. By-laws don’t have to be complex or any more black and white.

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Matthew Price

May 23, 2023

Venturing Crews Scout Units
Scout Units Exploring Posts
Scout Units Sea Scout Ships

Our Crew does not have bylaws, but a document that they change regularly as time changes. Bylaws require a vote to change them and should not be abused.

How we operate in our professional organization is that we have bylaws (the BSA Bylaws) and then we have a policies and procedures document that we operate on, and generally make rules on.

One of our parental “rules” in the P&P is that parents may not do the work of the Scout, or the Scout will not be able to obtain the Merit badge or rank. Doink – chopper parent meltdown.

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