February 17, 2005 | Read Time: 8 minutes
A Federal Bureau of Investigation examination of an Alabama Boy Scout council has put the spotlight on a rumor that has long circulated about the Boy Scouts: that some local affiliates of the national charity pad their membership rolls to make paid Boy Scout recruiters look good and to coax more money from United Ways, grant makers, and other donors.
Although the Scouts have long denied that they exaggerate the size of their membership, allegations that Boy Scouts in Alabama created fake members to increase their enrollment figures, and similar accusations raised in Atlanta, are just the latest in a string of membership scandals going back at least 30 years.
The new cases appear to be garnering extra attention because of the FBI’s involvement.
The Scouts already have strained relations with many United Ways and other organizations in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2000 that upheld the Boy Scouts’ right to reject gay leaders. Some United Ways have cut off or reduced their support of the groups.
“We’re monitoring the situation closely,” says Samuetta Nesbitt, spokeswoman for the United Way of Central Alabama, in Birmingham, which this year has awarded nearly $1-million to the Greater Alabama Council of the Boy Scouts, the group that is the subject of the FBI examination. Federal prosecutors last month subpoenaed United Way’s records on the Scouts, including grant applications, audits, and tax forms dated from 1999 to the present.
The United Way of Madison County, in Huntsville, Ala., gives the Greater Alabama Council of the Boy Scouts more than $100,000 each year.
The United Way’s president, Stephen J. Kirkpatrick, says the board has met to discuss possible action pending the outcome of the federal investigation.
“Clearly, we take any accusations of wrongdoing in the allocation process seriously as we know that the hint of unethical behavior would seriously interfere with our ability to ensure the investor their money is being well spent,” Mr. Kirkpatrick says in an e-mail message.
Membership Count
Concerns that the Scout council in Alabama could be fudging its numbers first came to light among members of the council’s governing board and other volunteers who met last fall to air their grievances about a potential real-estate deal in which the council was involved.
Some of them were also troubled by the council’s membership count — the organization’s Web site states that more than 12,000 volunteers help provide scouting experiences to more than 100,000 youngsters — and in December they asked for a special audit of membership records.
Thomas T. Willis, a dentist in Decatur, Ala., who is a member of the board’s executive committee, says he and other volunteers had suspected for several years that the membership figures publicized by the council might not be accurate. But it wasn’t until last fall, Dr. Willis says, that some Scout leaders began sharing their concerns and became convinced there was a serious problem. Among other things, he says, he saw a list of some 30 youngsters registered in a scouting program, all with the same last name: Doe. “It was clear that it was time to ask a simple question,” Dr. Willis says. “Where are all these people?”
Randall L. Haines, the incoming chairman of the Alabama scouting council’s governing board, and the group’s sole spokesman, declined to discuss the membership figures or any specifics of the case. He did say, however, that the council is taking the allegations “very seriously,” and that Scout officials are cooperating with the federal investigators. The council is also conducting the recommended audit, he says.
Charges in 1974
Charges that Boy Scout groups are inflating their membership numbers have surfaced around the country for decades. A 1974 Chicago Tribune series laid out accusations that the Chicago area Boy Scouts had exaggerated its numbers to justify requests for money. Before Alabama, probably the highest-profile case of so-called ghost units emerged five years ago in Dallas, where an inquiry by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service prompted the local Boy Scout council to reduce by thousands the number of boys it said were enrolled in its programs.
A recurrent theme in the membership cases is the allegation by current and former Scout employees and volunteers that the Boy Scouts of America, the national umbrella group in Irving, Tex., puts pressure on local councils to inflate membership counts to bolster the Boy Scouts’ image as a growing organization and keep contributions flowing from United Ways and other donors.
Gregg Shields, national spokesman for Boy Scouts of America, says a goal of the organization is to offer the scouting experience to as many people as possible. But he says the organization has never put any pressure on local troops — directly or indirectly — to inflate membership rolls, and that staff members know they are evaluated on much more than their record as recruiters.
“We want to accomplish our goal honestly and straightforwardly,” he says.
The Boy Scouts of America, Mr. Shields adds, has systems in place, such as periodic audits of council records, to ensure accurate membership reporting. Plus, he says, falsifying memberships would be expensive for local councils.
“The $10 annual membership individuals pay goes directly to national,” he says. “It doesn’t make any sense to create unpaid memberships.”
Focus on Results
Some grant makers and United Way leaders say they, too, fail to understand why charities would inflate their membership numbers, particularly as more and more United Ways, foundations, and other donors have made concerted efforts in recent years to evaluate groups based on criteria much broader than numbers. Grant makers are more likely to be concerned these days with how, for example, a tutoring program affects kids’ school grades than with the number of kids who are tutored.
“We’re not counting widgets,” says Ellen K. Annala, chief executive officer of the United Way of Central Indiana, in Indianapolis. “It’s not just how many in the door. It’s what happens after they walk out of the door.”
In Jacksonville, Fla., the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, which supports the local Boy Scouts, held off awarding new grants to the Scouts after audits revealed in the late 1990s that the group, the North Florida Council of the Boy Scouts, appeared to exaggerate the number of active scouting units in public-housing complexes.
Sherry P. Magill, president of the duPont Fund, says the grant-making suspension was not about the controversy over membership size.
“It wasn’t, Gotcha, you didn’t deliver on the numbers,” she says. “We took the long view. Let’s work past this and focus on how we can build on the success at the units where good work was being done.”
For several years following the audit, the duPont Fund did not contribute to the North Florida Council of the Boy Scouts, but it did encourage the group to improve its internal processes to better monitor the size of its membership. By 2002, duPont, which had contributed more than $325,000 to the council from 1992 to 1997, was once again awarding grants to the Florida Scouts.
“We all can learn from mistakes,” Ms. Magill says.
Controversy in Atlanta
Ayesha Khanna, chief operating officer at the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, anticipates something to be learned from the brouhaha at the Boy Scouts’ Atlanta Area Council.
The council commissioned an independent audit of its records after a local civil-rights leader, Joseph A. Beasley, said last fall that the group had misrepresented by thousands the number of black boys participating in its programs so it could get additional grant money. Mr. Beasley also contended that the council had redirected money intended for a program to recruit minority youngsters to pay for salaries and other perks.
Tom Gay, president of the Atlanta Area Council’s board, said in a written statement that last year the board “became aware of a few instances of inappropriate and/or irresponsible practices relating to unit chartering, registration, and funding processes.”
The statement says that as a result two people were fired or resigned, and the board commissioned an independent review by specialists in forensic accounting.
“Depending on the findings, we will do an analysis,” says the United Way’s Ms. Khanna. “We absolutely expect there will be some learning from this, even if it’s just that we are reminded that we have to be vigilant in our evaluation process.”
But for Ms. Khanna and many other nonprofit officials, so much of the relationship between charities and grant makers comes down to one element: trust. Without the resources to verify all the information submitted by every group, grant makers say they must simply trust that the reported data are legitimate.
Mr. Kirkpatrick, at the Madison County United Way, says that, with a similar dynamic in play for donors of all kinds, the membership scandals have the potential to cause broad damage.
“These cases hurt all charitable giving because they bring into question the integrity of charities,” he says. “The reality is that it causes people to be concerned about where their money is going.”
