State Boy Scouts announce merger

Arkansas’ two largest groups to form Natural State Council

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ two main Boy Scouts of America groups, the Quapaw Area and Westark Area councils, announced Tuesday a historic merger into one group in an effort to make sure that scouting in the state “stays attainable and affordable for all youth.”

The newly created Natural State Council — which takes effect Dec. 1 — impacts more than 6,200 youth across 56 of Arkansas’ 75 counties.

The move was announced Tuesday at Murray Park in Little Rock by new Natural State Council CEO Shanna Richardson, incoming Natural State President Don Greenland, Westark Area Council President Jack Butt, and U.S. Rep. French Hill, who attained the rank of Eagle Scout in 1972.

Tuesday’s announcement, made on a cold and windy day next to the Arkansas River, is the culmination of four months of discussions between the two groups and comes after a decrease in scouting membership in the state during the years of the covid-19 pandemic, Richardson said.

“The best way for us to make sure it stays affordable is to streamline top-level services so that we’re not having to pass those costs on to the kids,” she said. “So that’s our purpose of the merger is to make sure that we can support all kids in the state of Arkansas.”

Richardson, who has been part of the Boy Scouts of America for 23 years, started her career in Utah and has run the Little Rock office for two years. She is one of five women who currently hold the title of CEO in the organization, including counterparts in Texas, California, Washington and New York.

The Quapaw Area Council, originally formed as the Little Rock Council in 1913, has been under its current name since 1927. Still headquartered in Little Rock, it is comprised of 3,400 registered members in 39 counties and six districts.

The Westark Area Council, based in Fort Smith, was originally founded in 1920. Under its current name since 1947, the council has more than 2,800 registered members in 17 counties and four districts.

Richardson said the two councils have had a “positive” partnership so far.

Butt said it was “love at first sight” between the two councils when they had a “blind date” meeting to discuss a merger in Russellville.

For the first year of the merger, both of the council’s boards will remain intact, resulting in a 100-member board.

“Then we’ll work through our nominating process to kind of shrink it down a little bit because a board of 100 people [is] a lot to manage,” Richardson said. “So we’ll work from there and figure out who the best fit for each position is. As a staff structure, it will not change for the staff. We’ll still retain two service areas, one will be called the Westark Service Area [and the other] will be called the Quapaw Service Area, and we’ll retain all of our staff and continue forward.”

Butt has been a member of the Boy Scouts far longer than Richardson.

At Tuesday’s announcement, he pulled open his windbreaker to show off a green badge from his first scout Camporee, held in 1961 on the property where the Northwest Arkansas Mall in Fayetteville now stands.

Butt called the merger a “huge significance” for both councils due to “several big hits” in a handful of years, including covid and more.

“We lost a big slice of our membership, we used to be heavily supported by the (Latter-day Saints) church,” Butt said of the Westark Council Area. “They used to consider scouts one of their ministries and all of their youth were involved. When they pulled out that was … almost 20% of Westark’s membership. … And then covid cut our membership by almost 50%.”

In all, Butt said in a threeyear period, “we went from almost 6,000 scouts to just under 2,000 scouts,” or a loss of 66%.

Butt said, “both councils were recovering, but we had a long way to go and we perceived there was mutual strength. You know, Little Rock is the capital and urban economic center of Arkansas and Northwest Arkansas is cooking pretty good right now, too, Walmart and J.B. Hunt and Tyson, all the vendors.”

Also announced along with the merger was a matching grant of $500,000 from the Walton Family Foundation.

Butt said two-thirds of the matching funds for the grant has already been raised.

“It’s huge,” Butt said of the grant, which will go toward “things that people don’t think about on the surface” when it comes to scouting, including deferred maintenance at summer camps.

“If you don’t have what it takes to do $40,000 of work to repair your faucets and prepare the window screens and grade the roads, you’ll have summer camp next summer, but it’s funky,” Butt said. “The next summer it’s even funkier and the next summer, it’s even funkier and people don’t think about that.

“They go, ‘what are you going to feed the scouts for dinner and are they going to get a new tent?’ But personnel and facilities and all that has to be paid for and the Walton money will be used … to enhance a program. And it’s not targeted for anything.”