Breaking News from the BSA

No.

Our Charter with Congress is expected to continue as the “Boy Scouts of America” and national and local councils will still be incorporated under the Boy Scouts of America moniker. 

The Boy Scouts of America is “doing business as” (DBA) Scouting America. (DBA stands for “doing business as”. A DBA name is also referred to as a “trade name” or  “assumed name”.)

So, the brand the world will see is “Scouting America”, but the business-side of the organization will continue to be the “Boy Scouts of America.”

For more than a century, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has offered the nation’s foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training, helping young people be “Prepared. For Life.®” Scouting America will build on more than 114 years of guiding America’s youth, and it represents the next chapter of Scouting.

• More than 130 million Americans have been through our programs since our founding in 1910, and currently more than 1 million youth, including both men and women, are served by 477,000 dedicated adult volunteers in local councils throughout the country.
• To date, 2,752,000 youth have earned Scouting’s highest rank of Eagle Scout. Historically, that represents about 2.5% of those involved with Scouting. The current rate of today’s youth earning Eagle Scout is 7% of those in the Scouts BSA program.

Timeline: the History of Girls and Women in the Boy Scouts of America

• 1910—Boy Scout troops are for boys only. Girls can join the new Camp Fire Girls (no connection to BSA, but with significant input from a number of leading BSA officials). All adult positions are open to men only, and camping is for boys & men only.
• 1911—The organization’s new handbook is called the Handbook for Boys (and later the Boy Scout Handbook). A new magazine aimed at Boy Scouts (and all boys) is called Boys Life. BSA buys the magazine in 1912.
• 1912—Sea Scouting begins, for boys only. Girls can now also join the new Girl Guides of America (renamed Girl Scouts of the US in 1913; no connection to Boy Scouts of America).
• 1930—Cubbing (later Cub Scouting) begins, for boys only. Dens are led by a Boy Scout ‘Den Chief’ with no direct adult involvement. The pack is led by a male Cubmaster.
• 1935—Senior Scouting begins, consisting of Sea Scouting and Explorer Scouting (later adding Air Scouting). All are restricted to male youth and adults.
• 1936—BSA adds the optional (and unregistered) position of Den Mother (from 1936 to 1967, Den Mother is the first and only position closed to men). The handbooks state that the Den Mother should be ready to help when needed “but she leaves the actual running of the Den to the Den Chief”. The “Den Chief” was actually a youth Boy Scout and this position was designed to give older Scouts the experience of leading and working with young Cub Scouts. (Even today, the BSA gives this leadership opportunity to Cub Scouts.)
• 1948—Den Mother becomes a registered position to lead Cub Scout Dens. By the mid 1950’s, the roles reverse and Den Mother becomes the actual den leader, assisted by the Boy Scout Den Chief.
• 1954—BSA moves the Webelos program (started in 1941) from a regular den to its own separate den for the final six months of a boy’s time in the pack. The Webelos leader is a man who prepares the boys for entry into a Boy Scout troop.
• 1967—Leadership of regular dens is opened to men, and the Den Mother position is renamed Den Leader.
• 1969—Explorer posts (later development of Explorer Scouting) are allowed to admit young women as non-registered “associate” members. BSA allows women to serve on the national Cub Scout Committee.
• 1971—Explorer posts become fully coed , the first section of the BSA open to female youth. The successor Venturing program, and Sea Scouting, are also fully coed. At the same time, adult leader positions in Exploring are opened to women.
• 1972—BSA opens troop committee positions to women.
• 1975—Camp Fire Girls renames itself Camp Fire as it opens its membership to boys for the first time.
• 1976—BSA opens the Cubmaster position to women.
• 1988—BSA opens the Webelos Den Leader position to women, along with all other Scouting positions in all Scouting programs, including allowing adult women associated with a Boy Scout troop to be elected to the Order of the Arrow honor camping society.
• 2018—Cub Scouting opens to girls as well as boys. Packs could now choose to be male youth only, female youth only, or mixed. In mixed packs (called ‘family’ packs), each den had to be single gender. All Cub Scout handbooks have been revised to use non-gender-specific terminology and to include photos of male & female Cub Scouts.
• 2019—BSA begins allowing troops for Scout-age girls (11-17).

As it has always been, Scouting America’s goal will be to continue providing young people fantastic experiences in both the outdoors and in their communities, where they can grow and learn with us in a safe environment.

• Scouting America will continue to prepare youth for lives of purpose and impact.
• Our mission remains the same. Prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.

Scouting has some of the most vigorous safety measures in place of any youth-serving organization. We aim to ensure families know their children will be safe, whether their child is attending a weekly Scout meeting, going on a weekend camping trip with the troop, or attending the National Jamboree with thousands of other Scouts. Underpinning our approach to safeguarding youth is a singular focus on PREVENTION – identifying and addressing small issues so that we never have to deal with big ones.

• Through decades of work with national experts, we’ve developed rigorous safety procedures and policies, and we provide extensive training resources and tools for leaders in our programs. The guidelines we provide our leaders include required youth protection training, criminal background checks, no one-on-one adult and youth interactions, two-deep leadership, mandatory reporting of suspected abuse to law enforcement, a volunteer screening database, and more.
• The work of continually assessing our approach to prevention and to safeguard youth will never be done. The BSA is constantly improving and refining its programs and training to empower leaders, parents, and youth to protect each other and themselves – inside and outside of Scouting. In 2023, the BSA hired a Chief Safeguarding Officer reporting directly to the CEO and established a youth protection committee made up of experts in child protection and survivors of abuse in Scouting.
• We’ll continue to work with external partners, law enforcement, academia and fellow youth serving organizations to ensure that all youth will have the opportunity to learn the values of Scouting in a safe environment.