Capitol Area Council RASD Task Force

Scouting is provided to youth members through units (Packs, Troops, Teams, Crews, Ships, Posts). Many things need to happen for a unit to be successful in delivering Scouting to their youth members. These include having programs (Cub Day Camp, Camporees, Webelos Woods, etc.) and having trained leaders. The most significant elements of this are provided by the district the unit is affiliated with. Structure of the districts in a council are the responsibility of the Council's Executive Board. The actual BSA policy regarding districts is "A Scouting district is an optional geographical area within the local council, as determined by the council executive board. District leaders mobilize resources to ensure the growth and success of Scouting units within the district's territory".

As the RASD Task Force presented its findings to various groups of professionals and volunteers, a number of comments, suggestions, and recommendations were received. These may be reviewed by clicking on the button below. The comments shown here are synopsis of the actual comments received. If you would like to see the full text of any correspondence, send an e-mail to Sid Covington with the number of the communication you are interested in.

The work of the district is managed and run by a combination of volunteer and professional Scouters. For a unit to be successful, the district must be successful. For the district to be successful, it must have volunteers and professionals who are able to succeed in the performance of their positions. We cannot expect either the volunteers or professionals to achieve this success if we overburden them with a job that is simply too large for them to handle. And yet, this is exactly what we were doing! Asking our volunteers and professionals to take on jobs that they shouldn't be expected to do! In many instances, this is tantamount to asking our volunteers to run the equivalent of a corporation that may be larger than the company they work for! While we have been successful in doing this, it lead to burn-out, frustration, and simply isn't the way we should have managed our most precious resources -- our volunteers and professional staff.

To keep with the overall objective of helping our units provide the best possible Scouting experience to their youth members and to make this experience available to the maximum number of youth in our Council, we simply need to do a better job of managing.

The Capitol Area Council has had the same district organizational structure of 9 geographic districts since 1989 although significant changes have occurred in our 15-county area since then. This resulted in a dramatic imbalance in the districts that made them difficult to manage from a volunteer and professional standpoint. This has had a negative impact on the ability for the districts to deliver the Scouting program to the youth in their territory.

In 2002, the Capitol Area Council initiated a new program of planning. This began with the development of a council Strategic Plan which has been updated annually since that time. An outcome of this planning process was a study of the council's district organization and staffing directed toward the development of a better balanced structure to facilitate more manageable districts and help achieve the councils overall goals. This study was conducted by the Resource Allocation Service Delivery (RASD) Task Force. This website describes the result of that study.

The Task Force was given the challenge of developing a structure for the Capitol Area Council that will prepare for the next ten to fifteen years. After almost six months of work, the task force arrived at its final recommendations. These have been reviewed and approved by the leaders of the current districts and were presented to the Council Executive Board and were approved in June 2007.

Click on the links at the top of this page for information about how the new structure has been implemented and the impacts it will have on Scouting in the Capitol Area Council.

This is an exciting opportunity for all of us to be able to do a better job of making Scouting the best possible experience to our growing number of youth in our growing 15-county council region. Thanks for working with us to make this happen.