Hi, I need national’s attention and time. I have had many discussions with our district up to the CEO. They are well aware of our situation and are saying the issue is nationals. I need someone at natioal level to fix our scoutbook. Our cubs have not recieved awards since October. Part of the issues with this is not national or district fault, but a problem with our old CO. The pack decided to leave the CO. The leadership of the connecting troop and our old CO have made things especially difficult starting a new unit in our village. The district has been supportive of us on many levels, on some not so much. I digress… The issue is we have had our paperwork and signed charter and money turned into district since mid Jan. We are still not official with scoutbook We are still not officially on districts page as a unit. All of our scouts have been in limbo without being able to even mark advancements from parents since November. We have a few crossing over on Tuesday… will these problems follow them to the new troop? I’ve been asked. I was allowed special permission from district to get them awards. and If I get all of the other cubs earnings I can get them in the near future. But we would love the scoutbook issue resolved soon so we don’t have to continue doing things in a round about way. We’d love to be able to communicate with our parents thru scoutbook emails. We need to be able to mark their advancements and have an official roster. I don’t believe this is too much of an ask for nationals to handle in a timely mannor. These things have become very frustrating. Please is anyone at national level listening… We need help from you despreratly…
Thank you to anyone that can actually help besides directing me to district. Our 40+ cubs would be very appreciative. And the leadership will be able to enjoy scouting again.
Do the Scouts appear on your roster at my.scouting.org? If not, then this is not a Scoutbook issue. The problem is your Council has not yet registered your Scouts.
If you provide a few BSA Member IDs (no names) we can check to see if the Scouts are registered.
I looked at your registration information and your unit registration expired 10/31/21. It appears your Council has not processed your new charter. Your Council will need to resolve this issue. They have contacts at the BSA National Office if they need assistance. There is no direct support from National for volunteers, everything must go through the Council.
I have 2 questions with that comment. 1. How does my registration expire when We paid our dues thru the end of Jan with our old CO? This has happened with my cub and the other cubs and leaders as well. I’m not sure their end date is exactly the same as mine, but I do know they have all ended early and are all in the same limbo state as my cub kid and myself.
2. My council is insisting that it is a national issue with the new software, and lack of workers on the national level. They have told me repeatedly that they have done everything on their end with submittals. I have been emailing calling and texting them all daily since the begining of Feb. Prior to that it was once maybe twice a week trying to get the proper information to set up the new unit.
I was the Cubmaster with our old unit. and am still the Cubmaster with our new unit. I have 40 families asking me what is going on and I don’t know what to tell them anymore. I have run out of options to help them.
I know my district and council are getting upset with my constant asks, but I don’t know how else to get thru that this is becomming a bigger issue than what this started as with our old CO.
Thank you for looking into it and letting me know what you could find out. I appreciate the help.
I do not have a roster at this time on scoutbook or scouting.org. I may be able to get couple of others in a bit. 136451701
Here is the registrations I see for you. As you can see, the unit registration ended 10/31/21 and your Council Member at Large registration 12/31/21.
It is the Council that processes recharters, not National. They need to contact National if they are having trouble. Council staff can open support tickets.
The Scout who’s MID you posted had his membership in Pack 3097 expire 1/31/22. There are no other registrations for him.
13079990, and 136130129, 137217124 are a few of others.
So I believe someone from our previous CO and connecting troop removed everyone from the group. That decided not to stick with the CO of hope umc. The previous ID member I gave you has had a 0% complete showing on his progress bar since november, not Jan. No one from our unit has been able to mark his scoutbook not even his den leader.
distict has reported that they have put in help tickets a few times. and Nationals is a week or two behind in help tickets. I feel we have been very patient trying to resolve the issues, But as you see I have been trying to put out fires for a while now, and when volunteering isn’t fun, people don’t tend to stick around with it.
13079990 has never been registered.
136130129 is a Scout with registration expired 1/31/22
137217124 is an adult leader with unit registration expired 10/31/21 and council registration expired 12/31/21.
BSA National does not monitor these forums, and as @edavignon noted, the council has the ability to reach out to them about issues the council can’t resolve (which it appears from your post that they have). The short form is that, unfortunately, until council manages to get the registrations sorted out, whatever the underlying cause is, there’s no way that the volunteers who help support Scoutbook can help you get advancement entered and approved.
Scoutbook relies on the national membership database to define who is and is not part of a unit. When a recharter is expired long enough (or a new charter is not yet approved), it is functionally the same as not being currently registered at all. Without a current charter, it’s as though the unit doesn’t exist at all (which technically it does not without a current BSA charter). Advancement previously entered in the national advancement database remains, but it is not visible in the user-facing tools like Scoutbook and Internet Advancement 2 (IA2) without a current registration.
Folks with the council have some ability to work around these limitations as you’ve seen, but the typical scouter interfaces (Scoutbook and IA2) rely on the presence of a “current” registration to permit recording and approval of advancement.
Who has the ability to end a council registration early? I can see that the CO and accompanying troop 97 leadership had the ability to end my registration from the unit, and make up any date they choose. But I don’t understand the end date from council end as my dues were paid thru the end of Jan. and We all paid our dues with a cashed check the 2nd week of Jan.
From what I’m gathering from the information provided today it is not a national issue but a council/district prohibiting people from scouting issue. And this is where our problem lies. It’s very frustrating, especially since I’ve been under the impression council/districts #1 agenda is to keep people scouting no matter what unit they choose to be in.
It’s very disheartening that a program I have supported for years prior to being in this unit seems not to care about these 40+ cubs as they are my #1 concern in this whole mess and always have been.
13079990 is the number the leader has used to mark things in scoutbook for 4 years. This member also has another number that keeps track of training… 136130130
That may or may not be the case, but there simply isn’t enough information available to volunteers like us to determine what the underlying issue is. Is the “new” unit of cubs and leaders who left the previous chartering organization not yet approved? Is there some issue that the council has with the proposed chartering organization? Did something get mis-entered during the council part of the process and they now need national professional assistance to resolve it? Is there some software glitch in the new chartering/rechartering system that they can’t work around? Some other issue(s) that we don’t even know we’re possible? It’s all speculation on our side.
I understand that it’s frustrating to be trying to “do the right thing” for your scouts and hit roadblocks along the way. I think most of us have been there to one degree or another at one point in time. Unfortunately, particularly given the drastic reductions in staffing that the BSA has undergone recently, the wheels of BSa officialdom can turn agonizingly slowly.
Again, this comes back to the process of creating or renewing a charter. Until all of the paperwork is processed, the new charter doesn’t show up. If it’s within the “grace period” for an existing unit, then the system more-or-less continues to trundle along. However, if it’s a new unit (which is how a change in chartering organization is handled), then no “grace period” exists, and cashing the check is just one of the steps along the way.
We tried our best to get the new unit paperwork ready prior to “recharter time” at district. But there were many setbacks and hoops to jump thru because of the Old CO and Troop leadership that the pack was associated with.
Is there a way for any of you to reach out to nationals to speed this process along? Or get one of them to know there is even a problem? If my council did submit a help ticket and national still hasn’t even seen it yet… That is very horrible “customer” service and the BSA will surely be hurt by this more than just from our measely 40 families.
Maybe being marked “inactive” on scoutbook for two months ended my registration prior to the end of my actual paid registration? It seems weird especially since I’ve had cubs “stuck” on my roster until their membership dues expire even though they have quit scouting and are inactive in the program/scoutbook/unit.
I’m honestly debating about talking my troop kid into not continuing with this program and getting his eagle (something he’s been working on since he was a tiger). The longer I’m wading thru this mess with council and nationals the less I want to be a part of their program and feel the need to continue giving them $1000’s/yr.
We have had wondeful positive support from surrounding packs and troops in our area and they make me feel like it has been and will be worth all of this headache since november, But honestly the actual paid people in the BSA are mindboggling as to why they drag their feet, when they expect us volunteers to jump thru hoops to give cubs imidiate recognition for accomplishments and nationals can’t be bothered with us peon volunteers and communicate with people that can actually get the problems solved
The solution is at the council level. It is up to them to process your charter. That is the only way to get this resolved. If you have a new CO, it is to your council to process it.
We have 45 units in our district alone who are humming along with the IT systems. That is due to our council registrar and professional staff. It seems as though putting the blame on “national” may be misplaced.
Ok. Let’s take it from the top. Other than saying the fix is at home with your council, so I have one more piece of advice. As we say at work “What is your problem statement?” From your posts all I can get from them is “it doesn’t work”. For us to give you even the local direction you should take we need more.
If I read between the lines and see that your unit is without a charter for 4 months, I would define your problem statement as this “How do we charter our unit and Scouts with a new CO?” This isn’t an IT issue. Break out the new unit form fill it out and get it signed. Turn that in locally.
Am I reading this right? If not, that is ok, I’d then ask again “What is your problem statement?” It does not sound at all like the problem statement involves IT.
We have gone above and beyond to be on the up and up with proper paperwork and signatures with our new CO. All of our leadership including our new CO members are 100% trained We completed the 100% level of training and all “properly” signed documentation from our pack unit on January 14th. We turned in 41 scout and 13 leader paper applications along with our New unit charter paperwork and a check from our new CO for all the fee’s (as they wouldn’t take a personal check from any one of us). This check was cashed on the 18th of January. Our council rep didn’t sign the papers until 2/10. They had told me in January there was an issue with nationals because our previous pack had removed the members and we would owe another month of scouting costs for all members. So they decided it was best to wait until 02/01 to enter all of our information so they didn’t have to charge us more, knowing we had all previously paid thru the end of Jan. Our registration guy said he had entered everyone and the new unit ap into the system on the first of Feb. I don’t understand why our dated charter paper that council signed is 10 days after that date.
Things are very weird. I will be honest our prior CO and a member of the Troop had the key 3 of our pack terminated on November 11th. The pack was not happy with what the CO was doing and believed they had broken the charter agreement. So the pack leadership, decided it was best for the cubs and families if they found a new CO. In October I checked our local legion to see if they would be open to the idea. This news got back to the CO within a week and the CO was very upset with me for doing so. To be honest I tried my best to talk the pack leaders out of wanting to leave the CO and asked several times for help from the CO the COR and the troop leader that terminated us because I have a scout in the troop and i knew this would cause issues with him as well. I did not want the nastyness that has become of this whole situation. There were letters, phone calls, conversations and emails sent around our area (we live in technically a village, not a city) to discourage people from chartering or supporting a new unit and allowing us to use their spaces for meetings. There were also several meetings from district to the old CO and connecting troop discussing to even allow the new unit from starting. The parents of the pack went to a meeting with the CO and troop leadership to discuss their grievences with the CO and the termination of their key 3. They all decided to leave the CO on their own accord because they agreed the CO had broken the agreement with the pack. None of them want anything to do with the troop or the CO from this point forward. They all asked me to help them figure out the best way to keep scouting for their cubs. After I gave them a run down of other area packs and when and where they meet. They just wanted a new pack and didn’t want to have to integrate 40 cubs into a unit or split them up into several units. So I did what I thought was best for the cubs and started a new unit thinking I had full support from district as I had their word in November and in December they gave me a bunch of paper applications and were helping me with the new unit paperwork. I found out in Jan after our papers were submitted that they still had reservations about the unit due to conversations with our CO and the troop leader. I held a meeting with the CEO of our district and he finally gave permission to myself and another leader that was terminated to continue volunteering.
I’m telling you this has been a whole can of worms and has really tainted the way I feel about our old troop leadership (whom I had felt were our scout family), council and the BSA national level… Our district says that they have done everything to help get our unit started. At this point the only hold up is national from what district tells me. I don’t know what to believe anymore.
At this point if the unit does not become active on scoutbook by Tuesday our crossover meeting. I do not know how much longer I can hold back the masses from protesting at our council and demanding answers. Our AOL parents and the troop they are moving to are asking where their membership status is. And I don’t know what to tell people anymore. I do not know what else I can do besides desperatly make a plea to national or someone above my district CEO to get this resolved.
I suggest contacting your Council’s Scout Executive as it does not sound like the District Executive is able to solve the problem. The Scout Exec should be able to get the issue to someone who can fix it.
Contact information for your Council can be found at Contact Us: Staff Directory | Erie Shores Council - Toledo, Ohio
I’ve already been incontact with everyone on the Erie Shores Council staff directory. I’ve spoken with them by phone call text msg or email on a dialy basis since th beginging of Feb to get this on the books. I need information to go to a higher source than our District CEO. I would like to talk to someone at natonals. The scoutbook issue needs to be resolved as soon as possible and frankly I’m tired of all the drama and nonsense.
You are referring to a district ceo which is confusing since no such position exists in most councils. The council scout Executive is the highest authority for you locally. Is that what you mean?
Aside from that, I understand scoutbook is the tool you care about, but the root cause is that the charter hasn’t been fully posted. Unfortunately, that is getting delayed somehow that we can’t ascertain here. Your council (likely the registrar) should be in contact with national to get this resolved if there’s an issue with the tools they have. Depending on who the issue needs to be escalated to, it could take a little while. Some people are swamped with lots of urgent issues this time of year.
When the COR had the pack leadership removed, were they replaced by anyone, or were positions left empty?
Yes i mean the CE the Council Executive officer CEO…
You are correct it isn’t posted and there lies the issue. The registrar blames national, and national blames our council. the issue needs to be escalated above my district personnel, as some in our unit believe they may be hindering the process to help protect our prior pack and it’s history.
The CO and others voluntold the troop leadership to take over the cub leadership positions as well. there isn’t one cub leader left on their roster. and I’m not sure there are even enough cubs to technically give them a recharter. but since they are a UMC charter they have some time to get cubs if they care to put as much effort into recruiting as they do in hindering people from scouting.
So, starting on 2/10, after the new charter was signed by council, the charter hasn’t been out into the system. Why? What are they saying the issue is? Finding that out will better help your problem statement. All of the rest of the story, while exhausting and irritating, doesn’t play into this problem statement.
Find out from the registrar what that issue is. Why can’t it be entered? Finding that out will be the next step.
