100-Hr. for Eagle Project

[Wapiti]

Our District Advancement Chairman is requiring all Eagle Service Projects to have at least 100 Man Hours before he approves them.

Is this a National BSA requirement?

[wagionvigil]

Nope not a requirement. ASk him to show you in a National requirement book where it says that.
Now with that said. you have How many boys in the troop? Plus the Boys Family. The hours start with the planning. each minute should be recorded. Like discussing the project with your parents say for an hour so that now becomes 3 hours etc. Discussing it with the troop Committee say 5 people for an hour that is now 6 hours the youth plus the 5 others now with the eagle chairman and The head of who ever the project is for another 3 or so hours we are at 12 hours now when we work the project it takes say 10 hours and we have 8 people working. guess what? we are now over 100 hours.
Again it is a made up rule. That will bite him on the butt!

[ASM-142]

Our District Advancement Chairman is requiring all Eagle Service Projects to have at least 100 Man Hours before he approves them.

Is this a National BSA requirement?

Your District Advancement Chairman is wrong. There are no set number of hours and he can not require that there should. Along the same subject there is no requirement for doing x number of x for the project as well. I have seen requirements added for projects that did not satisfy the advancement chairs requirement on the size of the project.

[evmori]

Ditto to the previous posters. There are no hour requirements except to list the hours worked on the project.

[NatureBoy]

Yeah there's no set number. But its up to him whether he can approve them or not. Its not the BSA's requirement, its his requirement. In other words, it cannot be an official requirement set by him because he does not have that power. But he can say that he won't approve them if they don't have 100 man hours. He's not breaking any rules, he's just being really strict about the number of hours.

[wagionvigil]

No he can't. That is crazy. That is adding to the requirements. Remember there is a council advancement committee that All it takes is a call to National or Region then someone is going to be chewed out and there will be a new advancement cahirman. that Simple.

[don]

Where would you find that number?

How long would the call back take?

The scout would age out before "if" it ever got changed.

[wagionvigil]

Nope! Been there done that.
Took about 5 minutes to get the right person.
this was an OA question when I was Lodge Adviser

[don]

What is the number? Where would one find it?
What does this have to do with OA?

[PaulSWolf]

Call Terry Lawson, Director of Boy Scout Advancement
Boy Scout Division - (972) 580-2436

[Scouting179]

This 100-hour requirement will never hold up. Take it all the way through council adv chair and national if need be.

That being said, there does need to be enough umph to the project to warrant being an Eagle project, ie, more than just "gather kids together and pick up trash", but this 100-hour requirement is for the the birds.

[Bfitz]

Although there is no requirement if you think about it 100 hours isn't that much.
As wagionvigil said you need to count all the hours put into the project. If on the day of your project you get 20 people working for you for 5 hours thats 100 hours right there (20 people times 5 hrs each). The prep work prior to the project (the planning, the arranging, the shopping, phone calls) also counts. When you start doing it you'll see the time will easily add up to more than 100 hours.

Bill
Bronx, NY

[evmori]

I agree. 100 hours isn't very much although it seems like it is. My son had a total of 152 hours in his project.

[Scouting179]

All well and dandy, but you can't add requirements.

[ThunderingWind]

I just moved from Missouri and had the privelege of representing the troop as an Eagle candidate presented his project to the District Eagle Chair (while in Missouri). The scout was a neighbor boy and in the troop my son crossed over into. I also helped him practice and polish his presentation.

The number of 100 man hours was also mentioned. It was never stated as a requirement. However, it seemed to be a "local practice" that most projects "needed" to be over the 100 man-hour mark. And the question of man-hours was asked. The scout showed his work on how he arrived at the projected man-hours (nearly 200). The District was satisfied.

I was not aware that the question and target number are not a written rule (still learning something new everyday). But I can see now how projects are evaluated for Eagle worthiness.

And while it easy to reach 100 man-hours, I can accept asking the Eagle candidate to show his planning in the area of man-hours. Not to see if he hits the 100 mark, but to see that he has spent the appropriate brain power in planning and estimating his project.

So, wrong to set a minimum hour requirement, good to ask Scout to show his planning work.

[jr56]

No such thing as a 100 hour limit. Urban legend.

[cballman]

having thought about this the 100 hour limit could be just a guideline that a council or district came up with. not a law but maybe just a guideline. now if you look at the other peoples post then you can see that the 100 hour mark is not a small task but a very reachable goal to use as a guideline. now we also must take into consideration the abilty of the scout in question. some scouts are not able to reach the guideline number but the project is still impressive. before a project is started it must be approved in advance to see if it has merit whether it is a 25 hour project or a 200 hour project. so we must look at it from the merit of the project instead of hours.

[mhjacobson]

If national wanted guidelines in this area, it would have established guidelines. The material provided by national is guideline anough. The proposed 'guidelines' could, in itself, discourage a very capable scout who has a full scedule in school and life.

Our role is to encourage scouts to be successful.

[summertop]

It seems to me that the issue shouldn't be the number of hours. The issue should be, does the project allow the scout to demonstrate his leadership abilities and does it help the community.

[FrankJ]

This came up in roundtable last month. Our district advancement chair was clear that there is no hour requirement. He went on to say most projects in our district were between 100 & 200 hours.

When discussing projects, I think it is reasonable discuss how many hours is typical so the scout can get an idea of the scale that is required. The problem is when a rule of thumb gets reinterpreted as a requirement.