Tag: Youth protection

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News & Notes – August 2022

Here are some  updates to be aware of this month:

Fee increase

Just like everything else, the registration fees charged by the Boy Scouts of America are going up once again. This has become an annual occurrence in recent years and shouldn’t be surprising, in that the cost of just about everything is going up. Here’s a summary of the new annual fees that will be charged by the National Council effective August 1, 2022:

  • $75 for youth members in Cub Scouting, ScoutsBSA, Venturing and Sea Scouting (up from $72)
  • $45 for Exploring participants (no change)
  • $45 for adult members (no change)
  • $100 annual charter fee, paid at rechartering (up from $75)
  • $15 for ScoutLife (up from $12)

The joining fee (for first-time youth members only) remains $25.

So, sharpen your pencils and re-calculate the fees you’ll be charging your new members this fall and at rechartering toward the end of this year. Continue reading “News & Notes – August 2022”

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News & Notes – June 2022

A few items to be aware of this month:

2022 Journey to Excellence scorecards

The Boy Scouts of America has released the latest update to the annual Journey to Excellence scorecards, which list the unit evaluation items that go into determining a unit’s JTE status at the end of the year. We’ve always encouraged unit leaders to use the scorecard a few times a year to see how they’re doing. Now is a good time to see how the first half of the year went and what might need to be improved upon going forward.

Here are the key differences: Continue reading “News & Notes – June 2022”

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News & Notes, November 2021

This month’s Scouting topics to be aware of:

Inviting new members to join your unit

It’s easy to invite new members to join. You can send them a link to follow, which will take them directly to register for your pack or troop. Just sign in to my.scouting.org, click Menu, then your unit number. Click Invitation Manager, then Copy URL. Paste this URL into your invitation email, and the prospective member will be taken to your registration page where the national (and, in most councils, local) registration fees will be collected. Note that starting in October, fees are also collected for the following year so you won’t need to collect again when you recharter.

And don’t forget to promptly follow up on leads that are generated from your “pin”. The unit Key 3 will get daily reminder e-mails when unanswered inquiries are pending. Continue reading “News & Notes, November 2021”

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Bullying prevention: it’s our job

We usually think of bullying as taking place between youth. Whether they lack the filter of age and experience or just don’t know that it’s wrong, young people – particularly teenagers – can be genuinely mean-spirited at times.

But it’s not just young people. One of my readers wrote to me a few weeks ago to relate a situation in his troop where the Scoutmaster was, in his description, verbally and mentally abusive to Scouts in the troop. He didn’t go into specific detail but from the circumstances surrounding the incidents, one could describe the behavior of the Scoutmaster as bullying.

After making progress toward greater awareness of bullying and its effects and consequences, it seems like the discourse is becoming less civilized. Continue reading “Bullying prevention: it’s our job”

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Dealing with the fee increase

Update: On October 23, the BSA announced the new fees, as you’ve probably heard:

  • Youth members in Cub Scouts, ScoutsBSA, Venturing and Sea Scouting, $60 per year
  • Youth members in Exploring, $36 per year
  • Adult members, $36 per year
  • Annual charter fee, $60 per unit (previously $40)

More information and links in this post on the Scouting Magazine blog.

We now rejoin this post, already in progress.

By now you’ve heard about the Boy Scouts of America’s plans to increase the annual registration fee for youth and adult participants. The fee, currently $33 per year, is charged of all registered youth members and adults (with a few exceptions, such as Merit Badge Counselors, parent partners and such). Many councils add a local insurance fee to this, but the $33 goes to National. We’ve been told that it will be going up effective with charters that renew starting this fall. We are in suspense about the amount of the fee increase; it hasn’t been announced at press time, but the BSA has informed us that the increase will be considered and acted upon by the National Executive Board and conveyed to us no later than October 23.

Naturally, this announcement has landed like a ton of bricks with nearly every unit. Continue reading “Dealing with the fee increase”