Membership Resources

Membership Plan

Western Massachusetts Council has an ambitious membership plan for 2023!

Our plan is simple: Provide every boy and girl, grades one through five the opportunity to join Cub Scouts this fall! During Covid-19, too many young people missed the opportunity to join. Now we need to invite everyone to join!

Simply put, we plan to recruit at every elementary school in our council. Every Cub Scout pack has traditional schools that they have recruited from in the past. Our District volunteers will review that list, compare it with the list of public and private schools in our council and make sure that no school is left out.

One critical part of the plan is to hold all recruitments in September. Waiting until October is too late as parents find other activities for their children to become involved with. We have designated the third week of September as Join Cub Scout Week. We ask that your pack make every effort to hold your recruitment between Tuesday and Thursday of that week (specifically 9/19, 9/20 or 9/21). We plan on helping our Packs saturate our market area with publicity and getting the word out.

We look forward to helping your Pack have a great fall recruitment night. There are some simple steps that need to be followed now. We have provided a timeline of a few simple tasks to accomplish in the next month. Please fill out the enclosed form and send it back into the office as soon as possible. Thank you in advance. Together, we can “fill up our Dens and recruit more leaders”!

Jeffrey W. Glaze Richard Belford Gary Savignano

Council President VP Membership Scout Executive

Western Massachusetts Council Western Massachusetts Council Western Massachusetts Council

PS. On average less than 3 out of 10 Scouts of Cub Scout age are involved in the program. So, there are plenty of Scouts to recruit! We just need to go out and get ‘em!

Updated Fee Structure

The National Council has released an update regarding the 2022 Membership Fees that will take effect on August 1, 2022, for the 2022-2023 program year. The Western Massachusetts Council, unlike many of our neighboring Boy Scout councils does not charge individual additional money on top of the National BSA registration fee. Fees charged by other councils can go as high as $100 additional dollars. We fund ourselves through Popcorn Sales and Family FOS presentations and appreciate our unit’s support.

The fee updates include the following:

$75 for Cub Scouts, Scouts BSA, Venturing and Sea Scouts participants
$45 for Exploring participants
$30 for council-paid memberships
$45 for all adult volunteers (includes cost of background check)
$100 for a unit charter/affiliation fee
$25 one-time joining fee for new program participants in Cub Scouts, Scouts BSA, Venturing and Sea Scouts (Not pro-rated)
$15 for Scout Life magazine; this is the first price increase since 2005

The one-time $25 joining fee for new program participants in Cub Scouts, Scouts BSA, Venturing and Sea Scouts is still required; however, there is no joining fee for Exploring participants, participants previously registered in any BSA program, those transferring from one program to another, council-paid memberships, or adult volunteers.