Journey to Excellence to be Retired

Effective December 31, 2024, the Journey to Excellence unit recognition program will be retired. Moving forward, metrics for Scouting and Exploring unit success will be seamlessly integrated into unit leader support materials and resources. These metrics will be consistent with those used by the Commissioner corps to support Scouting and Exploring units. This new approach aims to provide a consistent and more streamlined and effective method for evaluating and enhancing unit performance. Feedback from unit leaders and survey results played a crucial role in making this decision. We believe this transition will better support our unit leaders and ultimately improve the experience for all participants as we continue to develop and deliver relevant programs. Units can continue to purchase 2024 Journey to Excellence recognition items through December 31, 2025.

See below for Information on the Scouts BSA Replacement — Self-Assessments.

New Troop Self-Assessment Launched in May 2025! Scouts BSA is rolling out an updated Troop Self-Assessment—a simpler, more practical tool that helps Scout troops take a fresh look at how they’re doing and where they can grow. This new version replaces the old Journey to Excellence (JTE) and is meant to be used throughout the year, not just once.  Troops can complete each Fillable PDF survey in about 10 minutes. You’ll get immediate feedback plus suggestions and tools to help strengthen your program.

Check them out today!

Legacy Information on Journey to Excellence

Scouting’s Journey to Excellence (JTE) is the BSA’s planning, performance, and recognition program designed to encourage and reward the success of our units, districts and councils. It is meant to encourage excellence in providing a quality program at all levels of the BSA.  It lets unit leaders self-evaluate and see, quantitatively, how well their unit is meeting the goals of Scouting.

Here are the major changes in the JTE scorecards for 2022.

  1. The standards are written as activities that the unit will do. This is to emphasize that JTE is primarily a planning tool.
  2. The Cub Scout scorecard has many changed standards. This is because of changes in the Cub Scout program.
  3. For standard #10, Gold now includes recruiting a new leader. We have found that the best units continually recruit parents and other adults who have never been involved in Scouting.

There is no requirement, no expectation and, in fact, we might discourage a unit from believing that they should achieve Gold in all JTE criteria.  A great unit is balanced in the service that it provides to youth. There is no shame and no problem if a unit achieves Silver or Bronze. That unit is serving youth. 

UNIT TOOLS

DISTRICT TOOLS

COUNCIL TOOLS

SERVICE PROJECTS

SUPPORT DOCUMENTS

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS