Hi,
I’m the STEM Committee Chair for the Capitol Area Counil.
Since NOVA got sunsetted, we created our own award called COSMIC with the Council’s official approval.
Now my questions is:
Can we have our award listed in Scoutbook like any Merit Badge with the requirements and everything?
We have, for now, 4 awards for both cubs and scout BSA with different sets of requirements.
@NicolasRietsch - only the awards listed at Awards Central will be in scoutbook not custom awards
Ok.
So is there a form/path/contact, something to request for an award to be added to Awards Central?
@NicolasRietsch - it is for national awards not local. So I doubt it would be added.
Based on prior posts, the SUAC has been told in the past that only national awards included on the Awards Central page will be added, as Stephen noted. Since the SUAC has been given specific policy direction on that, it’s not likely that they would be able to affect change on that.
If your council wants to push for this to be added, you likely need to push it up the chain to national via your council professional scouters (Scout Exec, etc) with an argument as to why national should support the local award in SB+. Like Stephen, I suspect that national is not going to look favorably on adding any local or even generic “custom” awards, and certainly not prior to maturing the fundamental development work on SB+.
This would take a while I think, is there any case of this happening? 
I wouldn’t know, since I’m just a unit ASM. The issue is that national sets the development priorities, and has told the SUAC local awards aren’t being considered. The only other route to get to national is via the council professional staff. So, since national has told SUAC “no”, the options are to agitate via the council professionals, or drop the feature request.
Ah, I thought so. So sadly we are at the whim of who ever runs Scoutbook in national. And with the slow progress it might be a while before we even have a way for our voices to be heard.
Thank you for your insight!
@scout - adding support for custom awards is something I hope never gets traction as it is just not worth development time, money or effort. It is a can of worms
Only National Awards are in Scoutbook and only those on Award Central. Even that was a little bit of a mess a few years ago. There will be no support for Council awards. The resources available are limited.
Not quite. You are at the whim of the Cub or Scout committees that make/approve awards that go on award central. Once on award central, then it would be “at the whim” of the Scoutbook backlog.
Years ago I was on my Council’s Stem committee. I had many contacts with Capital folks. You guys have a great program.
Could you just use the existing Nova/SN award labels in SB- and tell people which labels correspond to the new awards?
It looks like that might be you only option. I’m assuming that the Nova/SN stuff is still there.
@DavidSchilpp - the nova awards are no longer in scoutbook.
So much for my brilliant idea.
I don’t get access to SB as I’m just a UC.
But it’s good to know that.
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