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.
Now that National will be billing all members individually on the anniversary of their membership, are there any plans to integrate payment status within Internet Recharter?
If members have not renewed their individual memberships by the date units submit Recharter, will they be dropped from the unit?
I know its a long shot asking here, but I’m trying to get any more information I can find on how to manage this headache. Our kids start school on August 1st and we start recruiting at the end of July. This is a significant issue and will have to be explained in detail at recruitment and orientation.
Hopefully someone here has some more info or ideas on how to handle this.
In addition to checking with your council, you can Google for info.
I have not seen an official announcement by BSA nor an official FAQ, but many councils have posted the same info. My conclusion is BSA has published stuff for councils to use.
The new Unit Renewal process for this new system will not be live until March 2024. For units that recharter before then, it will be as it is now, and the members expiration date will be the indication if they have paid or not.
(But, having done recharter in the past, when we had youth who were registered for 15 months in September, you knew who they were.)
Here is what the Annual Membership will look like in Recharter under the Unit View:
Thank you @RonaldBlaisdell! If the new individual membership system is not going live until March it seems the assumption here is that we should collect membership fees from members as usual for our December Recharter.
Does the stop on proration of new members start in March as well?
I’m no slouch on Google. I found the membership fee increase information, but have seen nothing about the practical implementation of the management of individual memberships. That’s my main concern for this post. “How with the my.scouting tools help units manage individual subscriptions.” Right now the only thing that was mentioned in the fee’s announcement is that leaders will be CC’d on nag emails from National for re-subscription. There’s got to be a better way!
I am particularly concerned that the new fee information that was sent to councils has not been posted anywhere on scouting.org or scoutingwire.org.
The Cost of Cub scouting page was updated yesterday, so that’s at least one area where the increase is mentioned, but nothing about the subscription is mentioned.
Let me correct myself, the fee increase starts August 1, not July 1, sorry for the misinformation.
So, starting in August, you collect for 1-year ($80) for all your new scouts and $60 for 1-year for your new volunteers (plus the $25 one-time joining fee if appropriate), and then in November/December, you will collect for the rest of your unit.
Eventually, this will be like many other organizations. I pay my dues to the American Legion in July, but the post itself does not report to the Department (state-level) until the end of the year. If my Post folds, I am still a member, just placed into the Department “holding” Post.
We will see the same thing in Councils. Youth & Adults who have paid their 1-year registration, will be placed into a Council “holding” unit if their pack/troop/crew/ship/post/club folds, or they can transfer to a new unit.
If I am reading the tea leaves correctly, then this decoupling of individual registration from the unit recharter will also allow for someone to eventually register for multiple years. (But that is just pure speculation on my part.)
That depends what you mean by “as usual”. There will be scouts who joined after Aug 1 that have a full 12 months from that date paid already. You will not need to collect anything from them because the new process to renew will presumably be ready by Aug 1, 2024.
Thats why membership status integration in Internet Recharter will be critical. Units will need to see membership start dates and payment status. It would be helpful to have a nag / resend function built in.
Maybe the answer is integrating membership management into MST roster view.
Anything but cc’ing leaders on nag emails and having us manage it manually.
The good news is that this change will not affect you until next year. Recharter this will charge you $0.00 for any Scout who joins on or after Aug. 1, just like it did last year for Scouts who joined in Oct. & Nov. Now, what happens to your ability to manage Scouts’ advancement, etc. next year if hey don’t pay the renewal, we will have to wait for National to get that info out to us.
This isn’t my understanding. My understanding is that as of Aug 1, all new scouts and leaders pay national directly and units do not collect from those individuals in order to pay. They pay dues and are active for 12 months from registration date.
Existing scouts pay units this year only in order to be rechartered. All of those scouts and leaders will be registered through 12/31/24, at which time they’ll have to pay national directly if they want to be members in good standing.
So this year will stink - collecting some amount from existing scouts and some other amount from new scouts (for unit dues) and tracking to make sure we’ve collected for the existing scouts/leaders only for recharter. Next year recharter will be relatively easy - all units will pay the unit fee and that’s it - all individuals pay national directly.
This adds a wrinkle of what about people who are registered but don’t pay unit dues? They will argue all day that they’re active members (true statement), and units will say they’re not active with the unit if they haven’t paid unit dues (also a true statement), and there’s no tool/function for anyone to know what’s correct. BSA needs to address this issue. Right now people register with a unit and they’re members of that unit until they stop paying dues. Moving forward, people will pay to register and be assigned to a unit and will continue to be assigned to that unit so long as they pay national dues, even if they don’t pay unit dues.
If my understanding is incorrect - it really would be great for national to clarify this issues for volunteer leadership.
My suggestion would be to push these questions up the chain via your council. You might be able to get them on board, particularly if you can get other unit leaders communicating with them about their concerns.
My questions to council have been unanswered for a month. Which is why national really needs to clarify all this.
I’m also a UC. No answers there either.
