Vision 2025 – On Membership 

By Steven Davis, Council President 

 As part of our semi-annual off-site retreat, the Council Executive Board met the first weekend in January to review our accomplishments of 2019 and to compare our progress and strategic planning against our Vision 2025 – the councils’ 5-year plan. 

 Vision 2025 focuses on our three key areas for growth and long-term measures of success as a council, namely: Membership, Money, and Manpower.  

 Regarding Money and Manpower, over the past several years and sustaining through various leadership changes in the board and professional staff, the Mount Baker Council has upheld significant financial and training standards that are models for the rest of the country.  As a result, we remain fiscally strong with an ongoing commitment to take on zero long-term debt. We keep a balanced budget and continue to fund our endowment to ensure our council is financially positioned to deliver our program for generations to come. Meanwhile, our training standards – annual youth protection training and maintaining 100% of leaders trained in their positions – are adopted standards that provide guidance to the council and ensures we’re delivering the best possible program for the young people in our care.  

 As a board, we’ve not adopted such rigorous standards when it comes to membership – recruiting new youth and retaining those youth in our packs, troops, ships, and crews. It’s no surprise that the board decided to center the discussion at our off-site retreat around Membership. We’ve set the bar in Money and Manpower standards and now’s the time to set the bar for Membership standards. 

 We have much to accomplish here: Increasing the level of proactive communication about all the good things we’re doing in our communities (marketing & PR); recruiting a board member to focus on Activities and Service (things like Scouting for Food and council-wide community service events); building stronger relationships with schools and districts (better school access = better recruiting opportunities), ensuring our packs are adequately resourced to fill full dens, and more. 

 The Council Key 3 and Executive Board will continue to iterate on the ideas and discussion from our off-site and we’ll drive to a set of standards and goals that set the bar for Membership growth and retention. Opportunity is everywhere – there’s no community within our service area where we’re serving more than 10% of available youth. Opportunity is everywhere – there’s not a child that can’t benefit from our program. Opportunity is everywhere – we’re a strong council with the resources and standards to serve these youth exceptionally well. Opportunity is everywhere – we have tremendous leaders and volunteers who are dedicated to serving these youth. 

 As I said, we have a lot of work to do, but I am confident that with the leadership from the Council Executive Board, we will lay the foundation in 2020 for the council to reach our Vision 2025 goals. 

 – Steven Davis