M3Planning

Empowering the "Voice of the Scout" to create a program for today's youth

Company: The Boy Scouts of America

Industry: Non-profits

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) is one of the nation's largest and most prominent values-based youth development organizations. The BSA provides a program for young people that builds character, trains them in the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and develops personal fitness. For over a century, the BSA has helped build the future leaders of this country by combining educational activities and lifelong values with fun. The Boy Scouts of America believes — and, through over a century of experience, knows — that helping youth is a key to building a more conscientious, responsible, and productive society.

Service: Market Research

Need:  BSA is one of the few service organizations that have endured past the century mark. In order for the Scouts to remain relevant in today’s youth market, it needs to stay connected to what matters most to the youth, parents and volunteers that currently make up its 3.2 million membership population. To drive the right programmatic and operational decisions forward, it is imperative to understand how these member groups value their scouting experience. BSA needed a system to capture those scouting experiences in a standardized way over time; a system that would help guide strategic development of the organization for the next 100 years.

Solution:  Apply the Net Promoter Score methodology, but include a standardized way to measure the scouting experience with seven driver questions that help validate the value of scouting from the point of view of its members. Member feedback will be collected and delivered in a manner that is easily understood and utilized into all organizational tiers of BSA. The solution uses information technology that allows for real-time visibility into the feedback that includes comparisons, trend analysis, and scores at the unit, district, council, area and regional levels. This full-scale approach will be provided under a program entitled, the Voice of the Scout (VOS).

Deliverables:

• Deploy a Net Promoter Score (NPS) system that was customized in its approach in order to give insight into the value of the scouting experience.
• Strategize with organizational leaders to steer the Voice of the Scout (VOS) relevancy and effectiveness.
• VOS implementation was inclusive of BSA’s research department and technology experts to ensure they would effectively receive the feedback provided.
• Design a program that empowers individual councils to launch the VOS in their respective region.
• A comprehensive communication strategy that delivers clarity of the program to different tiers of the organization plus the external volunteer structure.
• An online dashboard that could integrate different performance metrics visually and intuitively.

Result:  The "Voice of the Scout" has just recently cleared its first year of voluntary participation. The program's first nation-wide application of VOS is set to launch to all BSA councils this year (2013). The communication roll-out was a very robust series of live events with dozens of webinars over a five month period. These informational videos were recorded, and along with support material, the training has been archived for continued on-line reference when needed. As councils listen and learn how to act on the feedback, the “Voice of the Scout” Net Promoter Score will become a key performance metric and leading indicator to improve the Scouting experience for units, districts and councils across the country.