"Go the Distance"/Retention Scholarship Program 

 Completed

Everyone agrees that greater retention is critical to sustained membership growth. I would propose a national level scholarship account for every Scout where they earn money towards secondary education with each advancement. It would provide a tangible and economic reason for remaining in Scouting and incentivize parents to encourage their children to continue. The award would only be paid out in full for the Scouts who make it to Eagle, but the amount earned to date could be viewed at any time.

The tracking would be based around Scoutnet advancements and the program could be funded by current Eagle Scout Scholarship designated dollars and the additional revenue generated from retention increases. Local councils could add prizes or contributions around making it from Webelos to Scout or participating in product sales and Family Friends of Scouting every year.

The idea being that once you have a substantial amount in the account you do not want to forfeit it by quitting. If Eagle is too much to ask then you could get lesser payouts at the various advancement levels in Boy Scouts, but nothing if you do not cross over.

Alternatively you could ask families to opt into a fund at registration with an additional $1 or $2 and make similar contributions at rechartering each year. The fund would be self sufficient with the dollars forfeited by those dropping out providing a great return to those that make it to Eagle. Smaller payouts could occur at Life or other advancements if the program works. This would encourage some parents to put some skin in the game and the payouts could be really attractive given the current low % of kids that make it to Eagle.

I am sure that tracking and administering this type of program would be a challenge, but something that forces parents and kids to think twice before calling it quits could be a great addition.

Long-Term Retention Tracking Tools and Incentives 

 Completed

I recommend creation of better retention tracking tools in Scoutnet or MyBSA. For example, widgets or reports that showed our 2, 3, and 4-year retention of our programs (Cubs, Boy Scouts, etc.) and individual units within our service area would be very helpful.

Further, I recommend there be a creation, or better promotion if it already exists, of a local council award for long-term membership retention. This could be like the marketing awards, High Five Club, etc. - given out annually to those councils and districts with significant 2, 3, and 4-year retention rates. If we better emphasized keeping youth involved and engaged for three to four years we might have less burden on recruiting 15-25% of our annual membership to "+1" by December 31st.

Better retention tools in Scoutnet or MyBSA would more easily allow the professional staff to see which units have a high turnover rate. Further, this would allow us to see where more training and program support may be needed. In addition, creating recognition for those groups that did have strong retention might disincentivize councils and districts from relying on programs that created units with high turnover rates.

"Troop 123 meets here every Thursday, 7:00 PM" sign 

 In Progress

What ever happened to those signs that were proudly displayed in church social halls and school auditoriums for so many years? Is there value in bringing these back? Is this something the supply division can carry for sale to units and Chartered Partners?

Website Errors should not be such a BIG DEAL 

BSA must improve communication between departments! This is especially important with regards to volunteer/national office/website development communications. When massive website changes occur such as the change June 1st to user id’s, more should have been done to notify volunteers beforehand to prevent the overwhelming number of helpdesk requests for login assistance. The current MyScouting.org website is a complete contradiction to the Helpdesk mission statement “…delivering accurate and precise information in a timely manner…” The only portion of the statement that help desk associates consistently meet is the positive and professional attitude while servicing the enormous amount of incidents. These employees are amazing, working consistently with website, and server errors that prevent them from getting through these requests! Because of simple website errors and shortcomings, the number of service requests greatly outnumbers the responses provided by the helpdesk in any form of timely manner. I can only imagine the amount of money BSA could save by not having to hire as many Temp workers to tackle such an overwhelming number of requests!
Changes in technology should not be such an issue for a company with such a rich and long history. Mac OS computers and Firefox web browsers are targeted to the same audience as many of your MyScouting users. For a BSA website to be non compatible with IE 8, Firefox browsers or Mac computers is a disgrace and there is no excuse for it.
When basic links, such as “Reset Password” links fail to work, it can only look bad upon any company or organization. For many weeks, simply changing a username created an error message that told the user the change did not take place, however in actuality the change did occur, but that volunteer needed to call the help desk to find out. These simple errors and incompatibilities should be of the highest BSA priority in order to maintain the type of service that the millions of BSA volunteers have come to expect.

Retention /Direct leaders trained records for units 

 Completed

If it is not something that the average unit leader can access without someone manually calculating for them, then it should not be a centennial quality item. Either make it available to commissioners and units leaders through MyScouting or come up with alternative requirements.

New Members Roster by Month Entered 

 In Progress

In the Scoutnet Applet a roster that can be generated called "UCRS New Members Added Roster" to my understanding only shows the new members of a unit at recharter.If this is so could a similar roster be created to track or show new registrants/ transfers by month?

While doing Membership Inventories (MI's) with the units I serve I have identified youths who are not currently registered in the unit. The unit Leaders then have a week and a half to have the applications and money to the Council Service Center. If a unit is a large or "super" unit with more than fifty youth the task of looking for each identified non-registered youth is immense.

A roster that identifies the youth who register by month they registered, name, and if they are a transfer from another unit would help with effective MI's tracking.