New Scouting Program: “Press Conference with New Interim Director”

Good afternoon. My name is Rob Green. I am from Spartanburg, South Carolina and I will be the interim Executive Director of a new national youth character development program for boys.

On Saturday, June 29, 2013 a landmark meeting occurred in Louisville, Kentucky. Nearly 50 leaders from around the country came together, each with a strong interest in forming a new scouting-like organization for young men. We had veteran scout leaders, representatives from major faith denominations, and national organizations concerned with youth and families. From that meeting, held less than two weeks ago, the new organization we are announcing today was formed.

Our vision is to be the premier national character development organization for young men which produces Godly and responsible husbands, fathers, and citizens.

The new program will be an exciting and motivating outdoor-based program focused on leadership and character development for boys, and founded on principles and values that reflect a Christian worldview.

It will be open to all boys irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin. Parents from all faiths are welcome to place their children in the program. While boys may come from every religious background, adult leaders in the program – from the National Board level to individual unit volunteers – will adhere to a standard statement of Christian faith and values.

The program and themes will teach practical life skills, an appreciation for the outdoors, service to others, leadership, and character development.

The new organization’s name is currently in development and undergoing an extensive process of legal research and trademark protection. The organizational structure and primary programs are also currently being developed.

Our mission is simple and clear: to guide generations of courageous young men to honor God, lead with integrity, serve others, and experience outdoor adventure.

Our initial national convention will be held in Nashville, Tennessee on Friday and Saturday, September 6 and 7, 2013.

At the convention the organization’s name, logo and branding information will be unveiled along with other program details.

In late November of this year the registration process for chartering new units will be announced along with a transition plan for scouting units interested in the new organization. We will be distinctly different from the Boy Scouts although there will be some similarities. For instance, rank advancements earned within the BSA will be transferable.

In addition, the organization’s membership policy will focus on sexual purity rather than sexual orientation. The policy will read, in part: “the proper context for sexual relations is only between a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage.”

There are several national and regional groups working together as a coalition together to form the new organization. They include:

• OnMyHonor.net
• Faith Based Boys
• TrailHead USA
• Frontier Service Corps

The program will also be modeled after that of the American Heritage Girls. It is our goal to work closely with them to provide Godly, character building programs for our country’s young men and women. American Heritage Girls has been in existence for 18 years and offers a wealth of experience and structure which will help our new national boys organization grow and flourish.

39 What happened from 72 to 80?

1972 – 1979 – At the end of the 1960s, BSA National saw the underserved communities, primarily in urban areas, and created a new "Urban Emphasis" program. The BSA's modernization was consistent with similar trends in Scouting all over the world starting in the 1960s. Much of these changes could be seen in the 8th edition of the Boy Scout Handbook used from 1972 - 79. The junior leader system, known as the “green bar patrol” was renamed the Leadership Corps. A significant uniform change in the Boy Scout program was made when BSA dropped the traditional garrison cap and adopted a red beret. The rank requirements were changed such that a scout could earn the First Class rank without ever going camping. A tidal wave of frustration arose among veteran scouters who accused the BSA of “taking the outing from Scouting.” The change was so drastic and unpopular that by 1976 long-time veteran, and retired, scouter, William “Green Bar Bill” Hillcourt, began writing the 9th edition of the Boy Scout Handbook to bring back the outdoor camping skills that were omitted in the 8th edition. The Leadership Corps also went back to the “green bar patrol” system, now referred to as the patrol leaders’ council. The Urban Emphasis program was the forerunner of the Scoutreach Division of BSA which was created in 1994 to provide service to rural and urban areas and to minority populations.

1973 – Total youth membership in all 3 BSA programs (Cub, Boy, Explorer) peaked at 4,852,827. It has been generally declining ever since. Other programs were added after 1973 = Tiger Cubs, Webelos, Varsity, Venture, and Learning for Life. It is difficult to find the membership data for the separate programs since 1975. BSA National tends to combine all 3 Cub programs together and Varsity with Boy Scouts. Then you have the confounding problem when BSA stopped reporting Exploring and Learning for Life membership numbers because they were separated out from the traditional programs in the late 1990s. So, the simplest graph to gain sense of BSA’s health would be to look at the youth membership numbers in troops.

http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/443_boy_scouts_and_girl_scouts_membership.html

Basically, youth membership, in troops only, declined 44% between 1970 and 1980.

I dont think a stranger should “lay down the law” ... we agree.
I am only noting that there are many parents (including single parents, given our modern society) that do look to scouting to help provide good guidance for the boys

Lord knows I realize the scouts can’t do everything.
I was only attempting to recognize that scouting does help with this for many, many boys, and indeed this is a key factor why many parents seek to enroll their boys in scouting these days.

I will quiet down, I never intended to raise an issue with anyone other than to say that parents should pull their kids OUT of the new scouts which appear to be both approving and possibly enabling bad choices of “lifestyles”

put the boys into a scout-type organization that at least tries to uphold proper values and that encourages the boys to try to learn a positive (traditional) “lifestyle”

if that is controversial, I withdraw the comment.
It was meant to be quite traditional and not upsetting to anybody who is likely to read it here.

Thanks for your input, I realize I do not have all the answers.

55 Thanks...sounds like they’re gonna experience another massive exodus. Out of Egypt.

Yes. The BSA National Executive Committee (i.e., the officers of the National Executive Board) released a summary of the surveys it conducted during MAR 2013. The summary of findings said a policy change would cost the Scouts a minimum of 100,000 to 350,000 (13.5%) members. “It is believed any gain in membership because of a change to the membership policy related to youth and adults would be in the range of 10,000 to 20,000 (<1%) youth.”

Actually, there is more to the disastrous 1970s story ...

1968 – BSA National launched BOYPOWER ’76 in anticipation of the U.S. Bi-centennial. It was an 8-year strategic plan aiming to boost membership and to raise U.S.$65 million. The BOYPOWER campaign failed due to membership padding scandals and was prematurely terminated in 1974. BSA had 4.6 million members (youth + adults across all program groups) in 1976, down 1.1 million (19.6%) from 1969.

Membership padding scandals for local BSA councils 1st became public in the 1920's. From its early days, most local BSA councils had always struggled to meet their operating budgets. Cash flow was always a problem. In the smaller and more rural councils, it was a common practice to take out short term loans just to make payroll in lean stretches. In the late 1950's, the council scout executive of the Greater Cleveland Council was fired over its membership padding. Membership padding was used to falsify grant applications to philanthropic foundations, United Way chapters, and government agencies in order to inflate the number of youth served.

The 1st major BSA membership scandal spotlighted by the national media occurred in 1974. The Chicago Tribune conducted a 4-month investigation into the Chicago Area Council's membership and published a 2-part series of its findings in JUN 1974. By the end of that year, many paid professionals had been fired from across the country, membership figures in at least 14 councils were revised after audits, federal money was returned, and the much vaunted 1968 initiative, Boypower '76, was terminated 2 years before its official deadline.

Boypower '76 was the brainchild of BSA Chief Scout Executive Alden G. Barber (who had coincidentally been the council scout executive in Chicago before advancing to the CSE job). It was an effort to increase declining BSA membership which occurred during the turbulent 1960's. The objectives of Boypower '76 was to raise U.S.$65 million and increase registered youth members by 2 million, so that BSA would have one-third of all eligible boys as registered scouts. To accomplish these targets by 1976, Barber revamped BSA's paid professional staff, so that it included more people with business and marketing backgrounds, rather than Scouting or youth-related experiences. Monthly, quarterly and annual goals were implemented and paid professionals were required to meet their goals in order to keep their job. With such pressure coming from BSA National and given the non-Scouting background of many paid professionals, the temptation to lie to keep a job was difficult to resist. As reported by many former paid professionals in the press, those who refused to lie about their numbers were fired.

In 1964, POTUS # LBJ declared a war on poverty in his State of the Union address. By 1966, Congress approved the Model Cities program. Building upon long-established public housing and urban renewal efforts, Model Cities attempted to integrate physical redevelopment of inner city neighborhoods with a wide range of social services and job opportunities. It went into effect in 1968. The Chicago Area Council took advantage of this social program and obtained over U.S.$341,000 from the federal government for a period of 4 years to provide Scouting to over 40,000 inner-city minority boys.

Paid professionals admitted that they fraudulently registered thousands of nonexistent boys to not only meet their goals, but to obtain the federal funds. By OCT 1974, the Chicago Area Council had entered into an agreement with the federal government to repay those federal funds. During its investigation, the Tribune located a 1968 audit, conducted by Storrs Smith, the council scout executive who replaced Barber, which revealed that instead of the 75,000 registered youth the council claimed, there were actually less than 40,000 registered youth. This audit report was suppressed by both the council and BSA National. National relived Smith as council Scout executive and placed him in National's Finance Service.

Another report never released to the public was conducted by the Institute of Public Affairs in 1971 on Scouting in the NY area. This report concluded that the pressure paid professionals felt from BSA National to meet their goals resulted in a "numbers game and a possible cause of paper (also derisively referred to by volunteers as “phantom or ghost”) troops." So when the Tribune printed its story, BSA National had known for some time of the problems. Even Barber went on record describing his paid professional staff, "Some of our people cheat – quite frankly."

By 1976, Barber had been forced to retire (some sources said that the National President demanded it – the only such case of the 12 CSEs, to date, through 2012) and the public had firm assurances from BSA National that such fraudulent activities, which the Tribune reported, would never happen again. BSA National would put into practice procedures to not only make it more difficult to register phantom youth, but checks on registration rolls to alert BSA of any future misdeeds. All such checks and balances were to be done by BSA paid professionals. No independent organizations would oversee, much less conduct, such audits. Unfortunately, it didn't work as was later revealed during the 1990s-2000s.

During the 1980's, BSA developed the Sustaining Membership Enrollment (SME) program to raise funds. It was a direct, annual solicitation of volunteer members for donations. As with Boypower '76, BSA's paid professionals were assigned goals. Stewart Mayers of Athens, GA, who worked as a paid scouting professional in AR and OK during the 1980's said, "The annual fund-raising drive … was openly referred to by Scouting professionals as Save My Employment." SME was later renamed “Friends of Scouting (FoS).

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