Chartered Organization Rights
You’ve been chartering Scout units for decades.
Your church. Your school. Your civic organization. You provided the meeting space, the youth, the adult volunteers. You assumed the liability. You paid the charter fees. You built Scouting in your community.
In October 2025, while BSA was hemorrhaging chartered organizations, National eliminated their voting rights.
Now the same people who’ve been running your local council decide who gets to vote. They select their friends. They vote to elect themselves. Your voice? Gone.
Welcome to the new BSA: a self-perpetuating insider club where you do the work and they make the decisions.
What BSA Promised
BSA’s federal charter (36 U.S.C. § 30902) requires the organization to operate “through organization, and cooperation with other agencies.”
For over a century, that cooperation meant something real: Chartered Organization Representatives were automatic voting members of local councils. Your church, school, or civic group had direct voice in how your local council operated.
That ended in October 2025.
What Actually Happened
Before October 2025
Chartered Organization Representatives could vote at annual meetings. But so could council board members, officers, and hand-picked “members-at-large.”
In practice: Very few CORs attended. Insiders controlled every election. The system was already broken.
Most chartered organizations didn’t realize they were being shut out. The insider club was running things, but at least you theoretically had a vote.
After October 2025
BSA made it official. The new Rules & Regulations state: “chartered organizations will no longer be automatic voting members of the local councils.”
Translation: The people who actually own and operate Scouting units no longer have any guaranteed voice in governance.
Each council now decides who can vote. Current board members select new voting members. The insider club picks who gets into the insider club.
Download RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA As amended on October 28, 2025
The Timing Is Insulting
BSA has been losing chartered organizations at an alarming rate. Churches are walking away. Schools are dropping involvement. Civic groups are closing units.
BSA’s response? Silence the chartered organizations that stayed.
While hundreds of organizations were abandoning BSA, National formalized a system where those who actually run the program have no voice in governance. It’s like losing customers and responding by telling your remaining customers they no longer matter.
The Monopoly Traps You
You might think: “If BSA doesn’t want our input, we’ll charter units with a different organization.” But you can’t. BSA holds a congressional monopoly over the words “Scout” and “Scouting” in the United States. There are no alternative Scouting organizations.
When one party holds a monopoly and the other has nowhere to go, there’s no partnership. Just power.
Self-Perpetuating Insider Clubs
A council is, by definition, constituents coming together to make collective decisions affecting all.
BSA local councils are supposed to be councils OF chartered organizations. The churches, schools, and civic groups that charter units. National Council is supposed to be a council OF local councils, each representing their chartered organizations.
But that’s not how BSA councils actually operate.
The chartered organizations, the actual constituent members, have been eliminated from governance. BSA kept the name “council” while abandoning what a council actually is. What you have now are self-selecting boards that govern themselves, accountable to no one.
At the National level, it’s the same structure:
The National Council includes local council representatives. But it also includes National board members, regional presidents, and appointed officials. All voting together. The councils that are supposed to BE the National Council have been outvoted by the people who are supposed to serve them.
From top to bottom, BSA kept the name “council” while deterring the constituent council members from governance.
The October 2025 change created approximately 250 autonomous councils, each independently determining its voting membership. Some might restore COR voting. Most won’t. There’s no consistency. No unified accountability. National may have lost control, too. Each council now operates independently, neither responsive to local chartered organizations nor necessarily to National direction.
A Recommendation to Local Councils
National gave each council a choice. The new Rules & Regulations state councils “can continue to elect chartered organization representatives as voting members if desired.”
Your council can do the right thing.
Restore COR voting rights. Not because you’re forced to, but because it’s right. Because the churches, schools, and civic groups chartering your units deserve voice in governance. Because partnership matters more than insider control.
I recommend you go further: make ONLY chartered organization representatives voting members.
Why? Because partnership should be real. Because the people doing the work should have a voice in governance. Because accountability requires structure, not just promises. Because it aligns with BSA’s federal charter requirement for actual cooperation with chartered organizations.
Your council board can make this decision. You don’t need National’s permission. The rules explicitly allow it.
Consult your attorney and your chartered organizations. Then decide what serves your local community.
A Recommendation to BSA National
You have an opportunity to restore partnership and accountability throughout BSA.
Establish clear governance principles:
For local councils: Only Chartered Organization Representatives should have voting rights at council annual meetings.
For National Council: Only local council representatives should have voting rights at National Council annual meetings.
These principles restore the partnership structure that BSA’s federal charter requires.
This gives you strategic opportunity. Councils that restore COR voting gain a powerful message for retention: “We’ve restored your voice in governance. Your partnership matters to us.” This becomes a tool to retain current chartered organizations, approach departed organizations with substantive reform, and demonstrate to prospective partners that cooperation is real, not just promised.
The path forward requires choosing partnership over power, transparency over insider control, and accountability over autonomy. The alternative is continuing the very governance structure that enabled BSA’s transformation from 4 million youth to 1 million youth while chartered organizations watched helplessly from the outside. And left.
What You Can Do
If you’re a Chartered Organization Representative (COR):
- Ask your local council: “Who can vote at annual meetings?”
- Show up to the next annual meeting
- Demand voice in governance
- If your council won’t restore COR voting, ask them why
- Coordinate with other chartered organizations in your council
- Consider whether continuing to charter units serves your organization’s mission when you have no voice in how the program operates
If you’re a council board member:
- Propose restoring COR voting rights
- Go further: make ONLY CORs voting members
- Consult your attorney about proper governance
- Talk to your chartered organizations about what they need
- Lead by example: show other councils that partnership still matters
If you care about Scouting:
The congressional monopoly over Scouting terminology enables this. Without competition, BSA has no accountability to anyone. Not chartered organizations, not families, not communities.
Breaking the monopoly restores accountability.
Next → The Monopoly Problem