DOC Minutes 2026-04-02

Agenda Items

Virtual Meeting – Wednesday, April 8th, Alameda Program Office
Renews of members and units may return to be unified. This has not been officially confirmed yet.
Chris and Rose shared the overview of District Unit Metrics
- Results were slightly improved from last month.
- 59% of the units are at risk with only 2 or less metrics being met.
- 22% of the units are meeting 3 of the metrics
- 19% of the units are doing well, meeting 4-5 of the metrics
- Only 16% of the Packs, and 30% of the Troops have both the Committee Chair and Unit Leader fully trained.
We lost two units, Troop 168 and Pack 815.

The priority is to recruit a committee chair and vice-chair for the Finance Committee.
- Charlie Howard-Gibbon will restart the Nominating Committee to seek candidates.
A discussion was held over the option of focusing on Task Leads vs Committee Chair.
Family Friends of Scouting, Community Friends of Scouting, Popcorn.
Our district is currently at 5.72% of our goal, with the Family FOS at 7.11%. This includes those who have signed up previously for continued automatic contributions.
- 6 units have declined to hold a FOS presentation.
- 20% of the units have scheduled FOS presentations.
- ½ of the scheduled FOS presentations have been done.
- Overall contributions are low council wide.

This committee needs a Chairman and Team
Need the commissioners to report on units that are planning recruiting events.
- Rose Godfrey is working on the San Leandro Cherry Festival. Ongoing planning meetings with the team made up of various units in San Leandro and Castro Valley.
- Mark Hovermale is willing to help organize a Alameda-based Scout-O-Rama if there are packs interested in doing it. The focus would be Cub Scout recruiting..
We are down 200 youth members from last year (3/25 vs 3/26).
- Cub Scouts retention was 48.5%.
- Scouts BSA retention was 70.7%.
- Sea Scouts retention was 63.6%
- Explorer retention was 71.9%
- The Cub Scout retention level is especially distressing
- A discussion was held about ways to find out why members are not staying with the programs.
- A discussion was held on ways the district could be proactive to aid units in retaining members.
Roundtables are desired. It is hoped that they will be in person.

Scouting for Food
- November 7th and 14th are the flyer handout and pickup dates.
- The Alameda drop off site will be at the Elks lodge again. Looking for a second site in the Bay Farm area. Donations will be to the Alameda City Food Bank.
- The Oakland area campaign is expected to be headed by Steven Rodriguez. Chris will reach out to him to confirm this.
The Coast Guard Island Webelos Woods fall event is currently scheduled for November 15th. The event committee is reaching out to the Sea Scouts as well to assist.
The Merit Badge Advancement Day on the USS Hornet is being planned for May or June. Richard Christman and Henry Ramos are leading this effort.
A discussion was held about ways to encourage units to schedule and report service hours. Not just for Eagle projects, but all service hours including Scouting for Food. This should be done in Scoutbook Plus.

Event is on Saturday, May 23, 6:00 pm at Alameda Elks Lodge
The theme is “Honoring our Heritage”.
Budget target of $35 per person, based on 60 or more adults
Black Pug is now live.
Online nomination form, to nominate worthy Volunteers, is active (training info will be taken from My.Scouting). Nomination must be received by April 15th.
The District Dinner website page is up and contains links for registration, nomination forms, and various self-submitted forms.
Units are encouraged to help Scouters apply for Veteran Awards, available for years of registration as adults and as youth. The form link is on the web page.

11 youth and 5 adults have signed up. Our goal is 89 youth and 42 adults.
- Richard Christman and Charles Hoffman lead a discussion about why this is not unexpected. Many units wait until the last couple of weeks to sign up, as they don’t want to lose money if youth cannot attend.
The 2027 camporee site has been reserved at Rancho Los Mochos for April 9th-11th.

Council Camping Committee
- The are looking to tie Summer Camp attendance to membership retention.
- Financing is a huge issue.
- Camp Directors are meeting with the Camping Committee to develop the summer sessions.
Summer camp
- Alameda Area only has 51.53% of Scouts BSA members signed up for Summer camp. This is from 17 of the 25 Scouts BSA troops in our district.
Day Camp is in good shape.
- Theme is “Invention Convention”
  - July 6–10, 2026 Drop-off: 8:30 AM | Program: 9:00 AM–4:00 PM
  - Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach, Alameda
- Registration includes T-shirt, patch, and all supplies
  - Cost is $225 till May 22, $250 afterwards.
- Will Pallas of Troop 9 and Ship 9 is leading the planning.
- 20 participants have signed up so far.

IOLS has 26 participants, no SMS participants so that course was dropped.
Council still is concerned about the low level of training.
- The good news is that most leaders have taken the Hazardous Weather training.
- The bad news is that most of the Key2 in the units have not completed their training.

A district planning session is tentatively scheduled for May 30th at the Alameda Office. More information will be available soon.

We have a new District Executive for Alameda Area District. Rian Tiernan from Troop 1015 Alameda will be starting 4/5/2026. Her Scouting experience includes being Scoutmaster of the 1015 Girls Troop. Congratulations.