At least for Massanutten District. The night before last we held our November Roundtable and it was all about charter renewal. It was a good turnout and we had some good discussion. As we move forward towards 2023 we will be merging districts and my district will be no more.
There have been a lot of changes to Scouting in recent years. Most of them for the better. However, there have been many challenges and Scouting is on the decline. Membership is down, donations are harder to come by, volunteers are stretched thin. These aren't unique to Scouting. Many non-profits will tell you they are seeing similar patterns, and especially civic organizations. Elks, Moose, Masons, all of them are experiencing declining memberships and reduced income.
This isn't all just the pattern we have seen with these organizations, though. COVID and the recent bankruptcy/lawsuit with the BSA has played a major role. I grew up in the Massanutten District, and membership when I was a youth in the district is what our entire council has right now after the slide during the pandemic. But we are still here. We aren't giving up on this program because there is a value. I will be continuing on, right now it is likely that I will be the District Commissioner for the new district. I am looking forward to the challenge but also nervous about it. Hopefully it will turn out well.
I am keeping this post short as I don't have a ton of thoughts going on right now. I had intended to write more, but life happened and now it is almost 24 hours from when I started this post. So I will post what I have and move on to the next.
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