Welcome! This forum has a treasure trove of great info – Scouters helping Scouters! Just a heads up, though - all content, information, and opinions shared on this forum are those of the author, not the BSA.
I have a merit badge counselor who has requested to work only with our Troop and has set her profile up that way in Scoutbook. I am the Troop committee chair of the troop she wants to work with and I can’t find her in the list of merit badge counselors. I have verified with the District Advancement Chair and DE that they can see the counselor in scoutbook, but I can’t find her. My wife (also an MBC) changed her own profile over to unit only, and her profile also disappeared from my MB Counselor list.
It makes sense that an MBC wouldn’t show up on the master MB list if they only want to work with one unit, but since I’m one of the unit leaders for the unit they want to work with I’d think I’d be able to find her.
I would expect the MBC to be visible to you, too. I can usually see counselors who have limited their visibility to our unit in Scoutbook. Fairly frequently I’ve forgotten to check the “any availability” box when searching, and missed MBCs that way.
ETA: That said, I am currently unable to locate a MBC that I believe is currently registered and approved, but has historically restricted their visibility to our unit. I’ll check with them to verify that they think they are still currently approved, as well as checking with council .
SUAC, in case it’s easy for you to check approval status, the counselor’s Scoutbook AdultUserID is 13432.
I have reported this to the developers. The workaround is for the MBC to set the listing preference to Council or Worldwide. I do not know how long it may take to get this issue fixed.
It is my wish that all MBCs will some day agree to work with any Scout that needs their help and not restrict themselves to a single unit or district.
I always ask MBC that I help get registered to set it to the district level and that any time they get too many requests, we can winnow it back from there.
I would also like our MBC’s to be willing to work with any scout but some councils size makes this difficult. My council covers such a large area that some districts are 2 hours away from each other. Most counselors choose to stay in their district because of this.
I have worked with Scouts across the country. With all of the video conferences tools now available, this is easy to do now.
My council can take several hours to drive across. All MBCs in our Council have to agree to work with any Scout in the Council provided they have time. The Council does not register MBCs who only want to work with Scouts from a unit or district.
