Report from our Annual Meeting.

Report from our Annual Meeting.

As you know, we just finished our first full year as the High Desert Council, and held our annual business meeting on April 11 at the Inn of the Mountain Gods outside Ruidoso, NM. The business meeting was combined with our annual awards banquet, making for a great day! Here’s my report from the day.

There were plenty of accomplishments in 2025 for us to celebrate. Our 2,400 youth members earned almost 1500 ranks, including 102 Eagle and 2 Summit Awards. Scouts performed nearly 23,000 service hours and collected over 74,000 pounds of food through the Scouting for Food drive! 140 Cubs attended Day Camps, and 178 Scouts participated in Summer Camp at Gorham. Girls and young women succeeded in all level of the Program.

We have been a leader nationally in the number of adult Scouters with current Safeguarding Youth Training. In the evening of the 11th, we recognized 28 adult and youth leaders for their outstanding work in 2025. And we are

operating for 2026 under a balanced budget! Those are accomplishments of which we can all be proud.

At the same time, we are facing challenges. Like our National organization, HDC has seen its youth membership decline. We are below last year’s levels in all age tiers of the Program. And that is our greatest challenge. Simply put, we know that membership drives success:

- When we have a growing base of youth members, we have parents and families who have good reasons to become active volunteers.

- When we can show donors and funders that our outreach to youth is moving up, we will see a much more receptive response and increased financial support.

My friends and fellow volunteers, if we do not reverse the decline in membership, both here and around the country, we can’t expect to continue as a viable youth-serving organization. It’s that simple.

I challenged everyone in attendance on the 11th to commit to three Rs in 2026, and I ask all of you to take on that challenge as well:

- Reconnect

- Rejuvenate

- Rebuild

Reconnect: We have lost our historic connection to the larger community and we should not be surprised that young parents don’t have us on their list of possible things for their children to do. Now is the time to use all our personal connections to tell the positive story of Scouting. Tell those young parents that involvement in Scouting has demonstrated positive effects on character development: in kindness, trustworthiness, helpfulness, and obedience. Explain that youth in Scouting are more likely to embrace positive social values than non-Scouts. And note that over 75% of children want to spend more time in nature—and nature is our classroom for teaching lifelong skills.

Rejuvenate: Recruiting is just the first step in increasing membership; retention is the other key! We lose huge numbers of new Cubs soon after their first Pack meeting, because they don’t experience engaging program. And we lose older Scouts when their Unit’s program is not youth-driven, is repetitive, or just plain boring! So please, take a

hard look at your Unit’s programming. Are you just MEETING, or are you and your youth DOING Scouting? Are your activities new, fun, and challenging learning opportunities? Do your fellow adults need some additional training and support to keep youth engaged and doing new things? Can you draw on your Unit Commissioner to rev up the variety of your program?

Rebuild: Look at your Unit’s lost members over that last year or two. Do you know why those youth and their families left? Have you asked them? If you don’t know what was missing to hold their attention, how can you avoid repeating those results? Have you worked with your Unit Commissioner to improve retention? Are there new sources of potential youth members that you have overlooked? Determine how you can help that essential rebuilding happen!

Together, we have the power to rebuild HDC and serve an expanding base of children and families. Thank you for all you have done for Scouting and HDC this past year, and for all that I know you are going to do throughout 2026!