After 114 years, the Boy Scouts of America is changing its name to help make it more open to everyone.

 

There will no longer be a Boy Scouts of America. Instead, there will be Scouting America.

 

This move is part of an effort to make the organisation more welcoming as it works to get past problems like bankruptcy and a lot of sexual abuse claims.

This name change is a big change for an organisation that has a lot of history behind it.

Girls and gay teens have been able to join the Boy Scouts for a short time now.

The group’s home base is in Irving, Texas, where the statement came from. It was decided at their yearly meeting this Tuesday in Florida.

Roger Krone, who became president and CEO last autumn, talked to The Associated Press before making the event public.

He had a clear picture of the future: “In the next 100 years, we want all American youth to feel very, very welcome to join our programmes.”

The new name will become official on February 8, 2025, which is also the 115th anniversary of the group.

In 2013, the Boy Scouts began letting gay teens join their programmes. In 2015, they ended their rule on gay adult leaders.

In 2017, the group said that girls would be able to join as Cub Scouts in 2018 and its main Boy Scout programme, which is now called Scouts BSA, in 2019.

Plus, more than 6,000 girls have become Eagle Scouts since then.

But the Girl Scouts of the USA, which is a different organisation, has had problems with the Boy Scouts about how to get girls to join.

When asked about the situation this Tuesday, the Girl Scouts did not say anything.

Many people on social media have different thoughts about the name change.

Some complaints, like the one from Texas Senator Ted Cruz, are about the name not having the word “boy” in it.

He wrote on Twitter, “Boy Scouts of America has decided to change its name to make it clear that “boys” are no longer welcome.” That will definitely help with hiring.”

Along with other groups, the Boy Scouts saw a drop in membership during the plague.

In 2018, there were more than 2 million users, but now there are just over 1 million, with more than 176,000 girls and young women.

In 1972, there were almost 5 million users, which was the most ever.

Some well-known people who were scouts are former presidents Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford, scientist Buzz Aldrin, and actors Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg.

Krone stressed how important it was to keep getting new members:

“Part of my job is to reduce all the barriers I possibly can for people to accept us as an organisation and to join,” he said.

In 2021, there were almost 1,000 young women in the first group of female Eagle Scouts.

Selby Chipman was one of them. She helped start a troop for girls only in Oak Ridge, North Carolina.

From five people, her troop has grown to almost fifty.

She thinks that the new name will get even more girls.

She said: “Girls were like: ‘You can join Boy Scouts of America?’”

David Aaker, vice chairman of the branding and marketing company Prophet, said that rebranding could turn off longtime fans who don’t think the change is necessary.

He did, however, say that the rebranding was smart because it started a new talk about the group while staying true to its scouting roots.

He also worked as a professor emeritus at the Haas business school at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to tell a new story,” he said.

The decision to let girls join at all levels of Scouting caused problems with the Girl Scouts and led to a lawsuit.

The case said that what the Boy Scouts did shook up the market and made it harder for the Girl Scouts to find new members.

The case was over when the judge threw out these claims, saying that both groups could use the words “scouts” and “scouting.”

The National Organisation for Women and other groups pushed for girls to be included and praised Tuesday’s statement.

People who didn’t like X often used the word “woke” to say so online. For example, Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia said on X, “Wokeness destroys everything it touches.”

Still, Lois Alvar, an Eagle Scout and assistant scoutmaster from the Dallas area who is 20 years old, supports the new name because she thinks it makes the group safer and more open to everyone.

“Having it nationally recognised that girls are being welcomed and included in scouting allows it to be a more safe space, just in general,” she told us.

The Boy Scouts went through a $2.4 billion bankruptcy reorganisation plan last year. This allowed the organisation to keep running while paying over 80,000 men who said they were sexually abused as kids in the programme.

The official name change to Scouting America won’t happen until next year, but Krone thinks that people will start using it right away.

“It sends this really strong message to everyone in America that they can come to this programme, they can bring their authentic self, they can be who they are, and they will be welcomed here,” he said.