Boy Scouts of America is changing its name for the first time in its 114-year history in a bid to “drive inclusivity.”
The Texas-based organization will become Scouting America as it hopes to improve participation amid declining membership.
The historic change is the latest in a series designed to bring the troop into the 21st century, including admitting gay youth and welcoming girls across its ranks.
It comes as the organization is emerging from bankruptcy following a spate of sexual abuse allegations.
“Over the next 100 years we want any young person in America to feel very, very welcome to participate in our programs,” Roger Krone, who took over last fall as president and CEO, said in an interview before the announcement.
The Boy Scouts of America will change its name for the first time in its 114-year history in a bid to ‘drive inclusivity’
The name change announcement at its annual meeting in Florida came on the fifth anniversary of girls being welcomed into Scouting. Pictured: Roger Krone, president and CEO of Boy Scouts of America.
The Texas-based organization will become Scouting America in a move designed to address declining membership and a desire to focus on inclusion.
The announcement came at its annual meeting in Florida on the fifth anniversary of the organization’s welcome of girls to Cub Scouting.
The Boy Scouts of America began allowing gay youth to participate in 2013 and ended a blanket ban on gay adult leaders in 2015.
In 2017, he made the historic announcement that girls would be accepted as Cub Scouts beginning in 2018 and into the Boy Scouts flagship program, renamed Scouts BSA, in 2019.
There were nearly 1,000 young women in the inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts in 2021, including Selby Chipman.
The girls’ troop she was a founding member of in her hometown of Oak Ridge, North Carolina, has grown from five girls to nearly 50, and she believes the name change will encourage even more girls to realize they can join .
“The girls were like, ‘Can you join the Boy Scouts of America?'” said Chipman, now a 20-year-old college student and assistant scoutmaster for her troop.
Within days of the announcement that girls would be allowed, Bob Brady went to work.
The father of two girls and proud Eagle Scout, the New Jersey attorney enthusiastically formed an all-girls troop.
The name change announcement at its annual meeting in Florida came on the fifth anniversary of girls being welcomed into Scouting.
“Over the next 100 years we want any young person in America to feel very welcome to participate in our programs,” said Roger Krone.
At their first weekend meeting with other troops, the boys were happy that the girls were participating, but some adult leaders seemed concerned, he recalled.
Their worries seemed to fade away as soon as the girls led a traditional cheer around the campfire.
“You could see a change in the attitude of some of the skeptics who weren’t sure and realized, wait, these kids look exactly the same, they just have ponytails,” Brady said.
Her daughters are among the 13 girls in her troop and the 6,000 girls nationwide who have achieved the vaunted Eagle Scout rank.
Like other organizations, the scouts lost members during the pandemic, when participation was difficult.
After a peak in the last decade of more than 2 million members in 2018, the organization currently serves just over 1 million young people, including more than 176,000 girls and young women. Membership peaked in 1972 at nearly 5 million.
The Boy Scouts’ decision to accept girls into all its ranks strained ties with the Girl Scouts of the USA, which sued, saying it created confusion in the marketplace and harmed its recruiting efforts.
They reached a settlement agreement after a judge rejected those claims, saying both groups are free to use words like ‘explorers’ and ‘explorers.’
Cars drive past the Boys Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas, on February 12, 2020.
A woman leaves the Boy Scouts of America national headquarters building in Irving, Texas, on Nov. 1, 2019.
While camping remains an integral activity for the Boy Scouts, the organization today offers something for everyone, from great adventures to merit badges in robotics and digital technology.
“Anything kids want to do today, they can do it in a structured way within the scouting program,” Krone said.
The Boy Scouts’ $2.4 billion bankruptcy reorganization plan went into effect last year, allowing the organization to continue operating while compensating the more than 80,000 men who say they were abused. sexually as children while they were explorers.
Angelique Minett, the first female president of Scouts BSA, is excited about the future of scouting and the engagement of the group’s youth council on issues ranging from sustainability to the fit of some of the uniforms.
“When we think of scouts, we think of knots and camps, but those are a means to an end,” Minett said.
‘In reality, we are teaching children something much more important. We’re teaching them how to have courage, we’re teaching them life skills and we’re teaching them how to be good leaders.’
The organization will not officially become Scouting America until February 8, 2025, when it will turn 115 years old. But Krone said he hopes people will start using the name immediately.
“It sends this really strong message to everyone in America that you can come to this show, you can bring your authentic self, you can be who you are and you will be welcome here,” he said.