We Own Adventure

Scouting News for the DC Metro Area

Roy "Rick" Rogers

Council Commissioner Roy “Rick” Rogers grew up in Rochester, MN, joining Cub Scouts in 1979. In Boy Scouts, Rick enjoyed many adventures, including winter camping in blizzard conditions, attending the 1981 National Jamboree, being inducted into the Order of the Arrow, and attaining Eagle in 1983. Rick’s experiences in an IBM Explorer Post introduced him to one of the first Personal Computer prototypes and cemented a lifelong love of Information Technology. Today Rick serves as a Vice President with an IT focus on educational assessments at Westat. Rick returned to Scouting in 2009 to give back to the movement that had influenced him so positively, and has served in many roles including Unit Commissioner, Assistant Council Commissioner, District Chairman, Crew Advisor, and Wood Badge staff. He has attended high adventure in Philmont, Northern Tier, and Sea Base. The friendships Rick has made with both youth and adults in Scouting have provided him with many blessings, illustrating the parable: “Give, and it shall be given to you.”

Unit Contacts – Letting Units Know We Care

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For the first time in several years, our council is currently on track to achieve only a bronze level in the “Journey to Excellence” unit contact metric. The good news is that we have time to turn this around before year-end. As has happened in past years, I expect our commissioner staff to record a large number of simple and detailed contacts during the re-charter season.

As all the District Commissioners know, I value metrics to the extent that they help us spot areas for improvement. The important and meaningful goal is that all unit-level Scouters know that unit commissioners care about them, and that units have a connection to the resources, friendships, advice, and activities in the district. This is a noble goal. Recording unit visits is the way we expect unit commissioner to indicate that they are actually fulfilling this meaningful goal.

In 2018, the national “Journey to Excellence” team added a requirement to have one detailed assessment per unit to the unit contact metric. The important and meaningful goal is that unit-level leaders and unit commissioners have a discussion about where the unit stands and develop a few concrete plans on how to improve. This also is a noble goal. Recording detailed assessments does not take long, and is a simple natural by-product of an activity unit commissioners have been doing for decades. Yes, we are asking unit commissioners to do slightly more data entry, but the reason is that with this extra data entry we can easily see at a district level where units might need more service.

Allow me to use my home district, Francis Scott Key (FSK) District, as an example of how these metrics can be useful. Here is a chart (from the end of September) that uses the recorded unit contacts and detailed assessments to give a quick sketch of unit service in the FSK District.

From this chart, we can spot a few interesting things. The horizontal line shows how many contacts a unit should have received according to the Journey to Excellence standard, which is one contact per every two months (for a total of 6 per year). At this point in the year, each unit should have received five recorded contacts. You can see that 57 out of 79 units have received contacts this year. Unit commissioners may have contacted the 22 remaining units, but these contacts are unrecorded so do not show in the chart. We can see on the chart that 9 units have 4 contacts, so are just one short of the standard of 5.

The blue segments indicate simple contacts and the orange segments indicate detailed assessments. The very first unit in the chart, Crew 796, has received 5 simple contacts but no detailed assessments, so is excluded from the Journey to Excellent metrics. FSK District has 12 units like this, so when the unit commissioner performed a detailed assessment (perhaps when the unit commissioner reviews the year-end unit Journey to Excellence scorecard with the unit), these units will achieve the minimum standard required by Journey to Excellence (which is one detailed assessment per unit plus enough simple contacts).

What about the units with no or fewer than five contacts? I know that my good friend Bill Desmond, who is the District Commissioner for FSK, is working with resource constraints, like most commissioners. These units may be strong and in less need of unit contacts, or maybe they have been visited but the contacts have not been recorded, or maybe FSK is short on commissioners in those neighborhoods, or maybe the units have already folded and cannot be visited. The metrics are a quick view but the folks in our districts will have more detailed “localized” knowledge. These charts provide commissioners with the tools they can use to prioritize commissioner service, as we get closer to the year-end finish line, and I trust Bill Desmond and all of my District Commissioners to “do their best” in providing service to our units.

Assistant Council Commissioner Rick Manteuffel posts these reports to the commissioner folders each month. I ask all commissioners to use these reports as input in prioritizing commissioner service in our districts. This is not to buff our metrics, but rather to ensure our units are getting the commissioner service they need and deserve.

Autumn – A Time for Rejuvenation

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Typically, people take time to reflect and rejuvenate twice a year: on New Year’s Eve, and in the spring as the hellebores and crocuses start to bloom.

In our Scouting calendar, we have third turning point for reflection: autumn, as we start recruiting the next generation of youth into Scouting.

This year, as the leaves start to change, the days shorten, the youth in our communities go back to school, and as Lions and Tigers (including girls!) enter Scouting, we have additional reasons to pause for reflection.

First, this fall is an amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for all of us in Scouting to welcome both girls and boys into the program. As we successfully roll out Family Scouting in our communities, even more youth will have access to the character development and values-based leadership that Scouting promises. I ask that all Scouters, and especially commissioners, pause to reflect on how we can support Family Scouting.

  • Here are three questions for reflection:
  • How can we ensure new youth and adults who join Scouting feel welcome and supported?
  • How can we ensure new girl troops are started in a way that they will deliver a quality Scouting program in a sustainable way?
  • How can we ensure that a young kindergarten or first grade girl who wants to join Scouting has an opportunity to do so?

Our Roundtable Commissioners are starting a “Five Minutes for Families” initiative that encourages each District Roundtable to be discuss how to roll the Family Scouting effort out, what tools to use (such as New Member Coordinators), and how boys troops will need to work on recruiting.

Second, with our incoming new Scout Executive Craig Poland, we all have the opportunity to think about how we can improve as a council. Craig has a powerful passion for Scouting, and inherits an incredibly strong council from Les Baron. While we have strengths that we should strive to retain, we also have what I consider to be a sacred responsibility to continuously improve on behalf of the youth we serve. I ask all Scouters, and especially commissioners, to start thinking about ways we can improve so that we are prepared to work hand-in-hand with Craig and our professionals.

Here are questions for reflection:

  • Is there anything we should stop doing as a council because it just isn’t working?
  • What can we start doing to serve more youth, better?
  • What are we doing well as a council that we need to continue?

Please share your ideas through your District Commissioners, and then on to me.

Our council is truly great but we can never rest on our laurels because the youth and communities we serve change, the environment changes, and we must always look for ways to be better. As we reflect on this, I believe one powerful source of ideas is learning from other councils and youth organizations.

Third, as a movement we face significant challenges. We are living through a dramatic collapse of the American civic society, which, as the book Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnum documents, started in the 1990s and impacts all facets of civic society (including civic-minded groups like the Boy Scouts of America). Our movement has been one of the heroic survivors in the across-the-board societal collapse that has impacted local houses of worship, service and civic clubs, neighborhoods, hobby clubs, and local political involvement. People simply do not connect with each other in common public spaces the way they used to, and many of us mourn that loss.

During this collapse of American civic society, those of us who have remained committed to Scouting have served as shining lights on the hill by maintaining our civic mindedness.

  • Here are questions for reflection:
  • How can we remain relevant and teach the next generations of youth the value of civic society?
  • How can we involve more people in our communities with our project to improve American civic society?
  • How can we strengthen the bonds we share, and help others to understand how powerful personal bonds across groups serve Lord Baden-Powell’s vision for world peace?

We have powerful new technological tools available to us, such as Scoutbook and visual storytelling on YouTube and Instagram. Please think of ways we can leverage these tools to reinvent ourselves (while staying true to our mission), and how we can help restore our civic society in an increasingly diverse yet interconnected world. Our council membership and marketing committees are hard at work exploring these questions and are welcoming of feedback.

We live in a truly exciting season of rejuvenation. Let’s find ways we can improve so we can improve the lives of young boys and girls as individuals, and improve our civic society as a whole!

Remind Leaders to Complete YPT 2.0 Today

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Over the decades, the Boy Scouts of America has been a leader in developing training and policies designed to keep young people safe. Groundbreaking when they were developed, they soon became the standard used by other organizations for safeguarding youth. But when it comes to the safety of children, our goal is to continually improve. Sustained vigilance on youth protection is a central part of our culture.

Over the past two years, the BSA has worked with experts in the field of child abuse, child sexual abuse and maltreatment to develop new training and resources that will further strengthen our ability to protect youth. These changes include:

  • Fully updated and revised Youth Protection Training with the latest strategies for recognizing and preventing major forms of abuse.
  • Expanded youth protection content across all our communications channels will inform and engage our volunteers and parents.
  • Expanded ScoutsFirst Helpline to aid volunteers & families in addressing potentially dangerous situations.
  • The BSA also provides unlimited counseling and support for healing to anyone who has ever been abused in Scouting.
  • Youth protection training for youth members will be available in 2019.

In addition to updated training and resources, the BSA announced new policies to ensure compliance with mandatory training requirements. These policies have been in place in the NCAC for a number of years. These policies include:

  • As of January 1, 2018, no new leader can be registered without first completing youth protection training.
  • As of January 1, 2018, no council, regional or national leader will be allowed to renew their registration if they are not current on their youth protection training.
  • As of September 1, 2017, no unit may re-charter without all leaders being current on their youth protection training. Registrars no longer have the ability to approve charters without full compliance.

By October 1, 2018, all new and currently registered leaders will be required to complete the updated training. The enhanced and updated content will allow leaders and councils to comply with all current legal requirements. While this may be inconvenient for some, it reflects the BSA’s commitment to the safety of all youth.

For camps this summer across the BSA, adults accompanying units on activities who are present at the activity for 72 hours or more, must be registered and take Youth Protection Training. The 72 hours need not be consecutive. If your unit desires to set a stricter policy (e.g. ALL adults going to camp must be registered and have current YPT), that is certainly permitted.

To learn more, discover additional resources, or take the training now, please visit

www.Scouting.org/youthprotection.

Or stop by the Marriott Scout Service Center to use one of our training stations. Be on the lookout for additional live trainings this summer and fall.

Commissioner Service and Family Scouting

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Fellow commissioners, we have a unique opportunity to serve Scouting at a historic time of change!

I personally am thrilled that through Scouting we will be serving the whole family. Through visiting two of our council’s Vietnamese long-standing Family Scouting groups, I have seen a vision of the future, and it looks fantastic! At the Vietnamese Scouting groups, I saw boys, girls, and entire families (including grandparents) at a Scouting meeting where they shared fellowship, prepared young people to live by the Scout Oath and Law, and had separate but linked programs by age and gender where appropriate. I do not view family Scouting as accepting girls into Scouting – rather, I view it as serving the whole family.

The most recent issue of The Commissioner, the national newsletter for commissioners and professionals (http://bit.ly/2tUJ1VC), contains several excellent articles on commissioner service and Family Scouting.

While commissioners will continue to serve units and Scouters as we always have, we need to be ready to support growth in our movement. Specifically, this means:

Working closely with district membership teams to form sustainable new units based on the processes described in the Unit Performance Guide (http://bit.ly/2Nt5Zvm)

Working closely with district training teams and our roundtable commissioner staff to get our Scouters the training they need to succeed

Continuing our traditional role as “agents of change” by keeping up with the latest information available at www.Scouting.org/FamilyScouting and communicating that to our districts and units

Commissioners, as friends and mentors, will play a crucial role in family Scouting’s success. As the national newsletter notes, “If the trend holds true from what we have seen in the early adopter program, many of these new families will not have a background in Scouting, making the presence of the unit commissioners who will follow these units through their first two charter renewal cycles more important than ever.”

This is a time of change. We have the opportunity to make a real difference in Scouting by serving the whole family. We need to be ready and set to go!

Unit Performance Guide

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The Unit Performance Guide methodology is BSA’s approved strategy for starting and sustaining high quality units. Darlene Sprague, National Commissioner Service Resources Chair, describes the key principles:

  • Volunteer-driven, professionally guided. The district executive, new-unit commissioner, and new-unit organizer all work together in the new-unit organization process. Professionals and volunteers partnering together help ensure the proper development of high-quality units.
  • A new-unit commissioner is assigned at the very start of the new-unit organization process. Once the unit is organized, the commissioner serves the unit for three years to help it become a high-quality unit. There should be a 1:1 ratio—one new-unit commissioner for one new unit.
  • Organize every new unit with at least 10 youth. Starting with two dens or patrols or a crew of 10 helps ensure the unit has a good foundation to grow.
  • Recruit at least five adult unit volunteers. Properly selected quality volunteers are important to the successful operation and sustainability of the new unit. Preferably, one of the members should be a new member coordinator. This position can be instrumental in welcoming new families to the unit. Note: The chartered organization representative position should be a separate position and not a multiple position.
  • Develop the unit Key 3 concept. The unit leader, committee chair, and chartered organization representative meet monthly. The assigned new-unit commissioner serves as the advisor to this group.
  • Focus on organizing the whole Scouting family. The whole Scouting family normally includes a pack, a troop, and a crew chartered to the same organization. It can also include a Sea Scout ship.

As we implement Family Scouting and start new girl troops, following these principles will give new units the best chance to serve our families with the Scouting program they deserve in a sustainable manner.

To start sustainable new girl troops in February 2019, the Unit Performance Guide process should be going on now!