Scouting America charges a national membership fee for all youth and adults who register as Scouts or leaders. Although you pay this fee to our council office, we are required to send all of this money to the national organization. The Membership Assistance program helps make sure every youth has the opportunity to join Scouting.

You will also want to see if your unit and its Chartering Organization can help. We do this because many units and charter partners offer this kind of help, and we want to make sure we prioritize our available funds at the council level to help as many Scouts as possible who can’t get help elsewhere.

Here’s how the Membership Assistance process works:

1. Unit leaders will provide the Registration Assistance request form to families who are not able to pay registration fees (and whose unit or chartering organization cannot help).
2. The family will fill out the form and return it to unit leaders.
3. Unit leaders will then return the form (by saving the fillable PDF or printing and completing by hand) to the District Executive (find contact information here, by district), preferably by email.
4. Our staff will process completed financial aid forms in an expedited manner so that financial aid requests are timely considered.
5. Our staff will notify the applying family and the unit Committee Chair with results.