Scouting Maverick: Scout Better

Move Forward: Save Scouting

by Aren Cambre

This is a plan for saving BSA.

BSA faces a choice: change or die.

Without change, BSA will keep shrinking, zeroing out by 2034:

To grow, BSA must be what youth and families want. This means pivots to relevance, adventure, efficiency, and morality.

Apologies for the organization won’t save the movement. Bold, rapid change will.

Goal 1: Improve program structure & advancement

By modernizing program design, BSA reduces abuse risk, enhances adventure at all ages, improves advancement relevance, unleashes genuine leadership opportunity, and creates new opportunities for recruitment and retention.

Revise age cohorts

Align BSA programs to age cohorts that follow societal norms.1 Optimize programming for each cohort.

  • Cubs, grades K-2: Continue the current Cub Scout program with revisions to increase outdoor adventures.
  • Falcons, grades 3-5: A junior troop program oriented around outdoor adventure. It uses a simplified patrol method. Some responsibility placed on youth.
  • Scouts2, grades 6-8: Reflecting Scouts BSA’s strength as a middle-school program, enjoy improved program safety and appropriate peer relationships. Troops mainly become containers to support patrols and the Patrol Leader position are enhanced. Scoutcraft is the program emphasis.
  • Venturing, grades 9-12: No longer infantilized as babysitters in a middle-school program, high schoolers focus on peer interactions, genuine leadership, and age-appropriate activities.
  • Rovers, post-grade-12 through age 25: Treat young adults like adults! They can form their own adventures with the full benefit of the Scouting infrastructure. (They may also be adult leaders in other programs.)

Strengthen terminal ranks

Each programs celebrates a terminal rank: Wolf, Arrow of Light, First Class, Eagle, and Summit. All ranks will be re-evaluated with a goal of the rank distinguishing its recipients from peers and being a worthy terminal rank for the program. Also:

Program enhancements

  • Restore the patrol method. Bureaucracy is not leadership! Kick the Scouts BSA troop bureaucracy to the curb. Return to the patrol method, emphasizing patrols and leadership. Troops become a container to help patrols succeed. Retain one universal, titled position, the only one important to the patrol method: Patrol Leader, who reports to a Scoutmaster. Almost all other titled roles are abolished.
  • Create Guides as a new position of responsibility. As an option for interested older youth4, a Guide builds up youth in younger programs5, in a servant-leader, non-supervisory manner.
  • Eliminate redundant activities. Scouting must be distinct from ordinary life experiences. For example, delete all required-for-rank requirements that duplicate what youth already do in schools, families, or church.6
  • Advancement prescribes adventure. Instead of being a separate circus ring that competes with adventure, advancement is strengthened to become a set of recipes for adventures. Active participation results in completing most advancement.
  • Improved merit-badge system. Instead of being tailored to the ability of sixth-grade Scouts, merit badges will be split between Scouts and Venturing. Generally, Scoutcraft-oriented merit badges will stay with Scouts, revised to be markers on the Trail to First Class. This will replace most of the random, grab-bag mess of Trail to First Class rank requirements. Generally, vocation-exploration or adventure-centric merit badges will become part of the Venturing program, with revisions to assure they are appropriate accomplishments for high schoolers. Remaining merit badges will be aligned to the program whose advancement is relevant to the badge’s topic. Related, Venturing’s Ranger Award‘s “challenging electives” will be revised to relate to achievement of adventure-centric merit badges.
  • Foster leadership and ownership culture among adult leaders. Support creativity at the unit level while discouraging distractions, bloat, or obedience-cult mindsets (like unit bylaws).

Goal 2: Enhance program delivery

Structural adjustments

  • Shift to section/group model. Reduce administrative burdens and improve cultural continuity among associated units, transitioning them to sections of a group. Sections share adult leaders and one group committee. Multiple sections of the same program may be used when program-design improvements necessitates smaller sections.
  • Digitalize everything. First, we digitize and throw everything online: handbooks, merit-badge pamphlets, adult leader guides, all of it. Stop producing paper products! Next we digitalize, making our information corpus friendly for digital natives, with a related goal of eliminating use of print-first formats, like PDFs.
  • Optimize supplemental youth training. Freed of teaching how to navigate a youth bureaucracy, NYLT refocuses on advanced middle-school topics, such as mastery of the patrol method and beginning leadership concepts. NAYLE refocuses on advanced high-school training, focusing on supporting high-school-level leadership development. IOLS opens to Venturers and Rovers, for those who did not earn First Class. Order of the Arrow’s leadership training is transitioned to Venturing and reimagined to complement NAYLE.
  • Abolish the chartered-organization model. Units become council operations. Affiliation agreements with community organizations provide meeting space and storage.
  • Improve council quality. Only 15% of youth are in a healthy council. Unhealthy councils with a critical mass should be supported in improvement, the rest absorbed by adjacent councils or consolidated. This will be expedited by phasing out council bureaucracy-preservation fees (described more below).

Operational improvements

  • Freely license intellectual property. Units and councils and their commercial partners may freely use BSA intellectual property for unit-level purposes or for any authorized Scouting activity.
  • Reboot commissioner service. Liberated from today’s make-work regime, commissioners’ sole focus becomes enabling unit-level adventure. Any bureaucratic work is limited to removing barriers to adventure.
  • Embrace third-place ethic for all non-unit roles. All non-unit volunteers and professionals must provide tangible value to the base. Eliminate symbols of elitism associated with non-unit roles, such as gold epaulets or crests.
  • Improve the “Barriers to Abuse” (B2A). Streamline to focus exclusively on abuse prevention, removing complexity. This must become BSA’s highest-quality document, an example for the rest of the corpus.
  • Simplify documentation and rules. Eliminate duplication, complexity, and bloat. Target a Flesch–Kincaid Reading-Ease score of at least 70.
  • Repeal pointless bloat. If it adds burdens or removes adventure, and lacks a benefit that outweighs the cost, delete it! For example, repeal NCS rules for short-term council camp programs (e.g., camporees), repeal the September 2024 shooting-sports program changes, and repeal 2023’s arbitrary limit on pack-oriented Cub Scout camping nights.

Goal 3: Remove barriers and expand inclusion

  • Abolish coed ban. Local units may choose coed vs. single-gender.
  • Abolish gendered rules. Local units will manage all gender-related decisions in ways that are responsive to local norms.7
  • Abolish the Declaration of Religious Principle. Remove bans on atheists and agnostics. Delegate all religious components to families and their churches.
  • Slash membership costs. Over three years, cut national annual membership fees by 50% and phase out all council bureaucracy-preservation fees.
  • Rationalize uniforms. Improve affordability and quality through simplification of uniforms and insignia. Only produce or sell clothing or gear that is essential to coherent uniforming.8
  • Shift to a culture of honoring any time in Scouting. Shift alumni focus from ranks earned to overall Scouting experiences. This is part of why NESA must be abolished (more below).
  • Cancel SA (Scouting America) DBA. SA means sexual assault. Instead, use the BSA initialism for the corporate brand, a la YMCA and NAACP.

Goal 4: Eliminate waste and inefficiency

Leave behind parts without value

Bureaucratic streamlining

  • Audit runaway bureaucratic processes. Some parts of BSA are self-perpetuating bureaucracy, disconnected from creating value or serving the base. Selected examples include the bureaucracies behind the National Camp Standards, Guide to Advancement, and Guide to Safe Scouting. All runaway bureaucracies will be rebooted with durable mandate to serve the base. Their interim mission will be to delete all bloat and simplify what remains.
  • Eliminate most national-level marketing. Focus only on what supports unit-level recruiting or national PR.
  • End use of pilot programs. BSA uses pilot to stall, to provide make-work for bureaucrats, or to obscure nefarious goals. Thanks to decades of program neglect, we will spend the next few years just catching up with our own society and international peers; pilots are not needed to overcome that. No longer able to hide behind pilots, low-performing professionals and volunteers will be encouraged to find different ways to serve the movement. This may be considered after five years.
  • Abolish redundant roles. Eliminate all non-unit roles–volunteer or professional–that do not provide tangible value to the base.
  • Create culture of accountability. Major missteps of professionals or volunteers must start to have consequences.

Financial & structural changes

  • Sell Summit Bechtel Reserve. Losing $10 million to $20 million per year, drowning in $180 million of debt, and created to perpetuate an immoral, bigoted policy, SBR has no hope of ever becoming a fiscally sound asset. Redirect saved funds to reducing youth-membership fees.
  • Sell Irving headquarters. Transition to a virtual, distributed national organization.
  • Ground national employees and volunteers with the base. Overcome current culture of elitism and disconnection from the base. All national employees and volunteers must engage in at least 40 hours of direct, unit-level, non-lead9 service annually.
  • Reassess donor funds. Collaborate with donors to optimize restricted funds to movement growth.
  • Reorient national program committees. Mandate transparency and service to the base, elimination of make-work.
  • Require local representation on boards of directors. To assure the movement is included in all levels of Scouting governance, unit-level10 adult volunteers who are active in their units will hold the majority of seats on the National Executive Board and on every council’s boards of directors. Two youth representatives will also sit on every board.
  • Streamline all processes. Minimize administrative burdens on members and units, starting with member registration and renewal and unit recharter.
  • Prioritize information technology. Redirect resources freed by above reforms to IT to expedite development of modern, flexible, and agile systems.

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Footnotes

  1. Allowances for early crossing-over to the next program need to be considered. This, for example, would enable fifth graders enough time in a troop to assure success at summer camp. ↩︎
  2. Due to a trademark settlement with GSUSA, it’s unclear if we can use this name for the middle-school program. However, if we abandon the SA trademark, Scouts BSA could make more sense as a program name. ↩︎
  3. This is how the UK Scouting Association’s King’s Scout award works. ↩︎
  4. This must never be construed as a workaround for Scoutmasters to pull high schoolers back into the troop to babysit. Guides are servant leaders. Outside of episodic assignments of the Scoutmaster, guides do not supervise. Also, this role must never be required. This is simply one of many roles of responsibiltiy available to high schoolers. ↩︎
  5. This does not substitute for age-appropriate programming. For example, it would be improper for a Venturing crew’s main program be that all members are Guides for a troop. ↩︎
  6. If we eliminated redundant activities from all four Citizenship in ____ merit badges, we could consolidate into a single Citizenship merit badge. ↩︎
  7. One might argue that national should have the privilege of creating gendered rules essential to abuse prevention. However, I am unclear of any theoretical national rule that wouldn’t simply be restating a universal cultural norm. ↩︎
  8. For example, stop selling Scouts BSA olive pants. Instead, partner with retailers that are already producing pants that look nearly identical from 20 feet away. Also, stop competing REI, Academy, Walmart, et al on commodity camping gear. ↩︎
  9. “Non-lead” means any unit role except for the key three. Exceptions can be granted where the person had a unit-level key-3 role before accepting a national appointment or where there is no other viable candidate for the role. ↩︎
  10. This needs to have a fairly strict eligibility standard, likely someone who has never previously participated outside the unit level. ↩︎