Boy Scouts Will No Longer Be Called Boy Scouts

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Boy Scouts Will No Longer Be Called Boy Scouts

A major change comes five years after the organization first allowed girls to join.

The Boy Scouts of America announced after 114 years that it will change its name and will become Scouting America in an effort to emphasize inclusion as it works to move past the turmoil of bankruptcy and a flood of sexual abuse claims.

The rebrand is another seismic shift for an organization steeped in tradition that did not allow gay youths or girls to begin joining its ranks until relatively recently. Seeking to boost flagging membership numbers. The change will officially take effect on Feb. 8, 2025, timed to the organization's 115th birthday.

The organization began allowing gay youth in 2013 and ended a blanket ban on gay adult leaders in 2015. In 2017, it made the historic announcement that girls would be accepted as Cub Scouts as of 2018 and into the flagship Boy Scout program — renamed Scouts BSA — in 2019. Over 6,000 girls have now achieved the vaunted Eagle Scout rank.

Like other organizations, the Boy Scouts of America lost members during the pandemic, when participation was difficult. After a high point over the last decade of over 2 million members in 2018, the organization currently serves just over 1 million youths, including more than 176,000 girls and young women. Membership peaked in 1972 at almost 5 million.

Generations of scouts have included eventual presidents (among them Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford), astronauts (Buzz Aldrin) and celebrities (actor Harrison Ford, filmmaker Steven Spielberg).

There were nearly 1,000 young women in the inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts in 2021, including Selby Chipman, she thinks the name change will encourage even more girls to join.

The move to accept girls throughout the Boy Scout ranks strained a bond with the Girl Scouts of the USA, which sued, saying it created marketplace confusion and damaged its recruitment efforts. They reached a settlement agreement after a judge rejected those claims, saying both groups are free to use words like “scouts” and “scouting.”

The Boy Scouts’ $2.4 billion bankruptcy reorganization plan took effect last year, allowing the organization to keep operating while compensating the more than 80,000 men who say they were sexually abused as children while in scouting.