Dear Circle Ten Council Executive Board,
Today, you learned you’ll soon search for a new Scout Executive (SE). I urge you to approach this with the best interests of our Scouts and the Scouting movement at heart. This means you should go outside of the national organization’s hand-picked pool of bureaucrats.
Robert Baden-Powell once exclaimed, “WE ARE A MOVEMENT, NOT AN ORGANISATION.”1 He went on with, “in working through love for the [youth], loyalty to the Movement, and comradeship one with another — that is, through the SPIRIT OF SCOUTING — we are on the right line.”2
I ask you to heed Baden-Powell’s wisdom while you select our next SE. Put the movement, the sprit of Scouting, and service to youth above all else. At every step in selecting a new Scout Executive, ask yourself, “How does my choice benefit our Scouts, our families, and our unit-level leaders?”
Choosing the right leader will require you to overcome constraints in BSA’s selection system. Per its rules, the national organization provides councils a hand-picked slate of SE candidates. This approach is more about control than serving the movement: it allows the national office to inject its problematic culture on our council, and it protects the careers of long-tenured bureaucrats in the commissioned-professional system.
History shows that you are unlikely to find a leader from such a limited pool. The commissioned-professional system has a track record of driving away strong leaders. This is evident in decades of internally sourced Chief Scout Executives (national CEOs) who have been proven ineffective or incompetent.
For the good of Circle Ten Council, you must break this pattern. I strongly encourage you to consider candidates outside of BSA’s curated pool. This is allowed!3 I encourage you to review this with other councils that bucked the system.
You may notice I have deliberately addressed you in the second person throughout this letter. This is intentional, because each of you—individually—shares responsibility for this decision. One of the most important duties of any board of directors is to select and oversee the organization’s chief executive. Not only is this common sense, but BSA’s own regulations underscore it.4
Your responsibility is both collective and individual. It falls to each executive board member, not just a select few, to be personally invested in the search for our next Scout Executive. Please stay informed and engaged at every step. Specifically, ask yourselves:
- Am I fully aware of how the selection process is being conducted?
- Do I know what the selection committee is doing at each stage?
- Do I know who the candidates are and what criteria are being used to evaluate them?
- Which finalist has the strongest track record of serving our Scouts, our families, and our unit-level leaders?
Each of you should be asking these questions—and insisting on clear answers.
In closing, I urge every member of the Executive Board to take this responsibility to heart. Do not simply defer to tradition or internal pressure. Make the choice that truly benefits those we serve. Above all, remember that your ultimate loyalty must be to the youth, families, and unit-level volunteers, and the spirit of the Scouting movement itself.
Sincerely,
Aren Cambre
- “B.-P.’s Outlook: The Hang of the Thing”, The Scouter, July 1921. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Rules and Regulations of the Boy Scouts of America, May 2024, p. 17. The second sentence of the Local Council Scout Executive and/or Chief Executive Officer section describes how a council may “hire a candidate who would not otherwise be eligible for the position”. In this case, “not otherwise be eligible” mainly means someone who is not a commissioned professional. ↩︎
- Ibid. Per the last sentence of the Local Council Scout Executive and/or Chief Executive Officer section, the “council Scout executive or chief executive officer shall serve at the pleasure of the local council’s executive board”. ↩︎
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