The new Yearly Membership plan for the Boy Scouts of America began August 1st with a change from a prorated fee to a renewable annual membership. All new members and current members renewing will be a 12-month membership and their renewal month will be the anniversary date of joining (or renewing if they were already members).
Charter renewal will remain the same through the December 2023 recharter cycle and then, in March 2024 the unit renewal changes will be implemented.
Key points to the August 1st change:
- Implementation of the new National Fee Structure.
- Elimination of the prorated fee structure and implementation of the Yearly Membership plan, including tokenization of the member’s credit card for auto renewal.
- The Future Fee collection in Online registration will stop being collected.
- Implementation of the new $25.00 fee for Merit Badge, Nova, and Supernova Counselors.
- Changing the Council Program Fee settings for online registration and Internet Rechartering to an annual amount (not prorated).
- All terms for membership beginning today, will be 12 months.
- All new members will reflect on their unit as a Yearly Membership and if the unit renews, they will be treated as pre-paid as their term is not being renewed (like how the future year paid members have been calculated).
- Between August 1st through March 2024, all new units, and recharters will be for 12 months only, with no long-term or short-term charters.
With fees going up every year Scouting is becoming unreachable to low income households. Even with the scholarships, everything in scouts costs so much… uniforms, camping fees, registration fees, gear costs, transportation…. It all adds up. I think scouts is a great program, I just wish more people could afford it.