Journey to Excellence

"Scouting's Journey to Excellence" is the BSA's performance recognition program designed to encourage and reward success and measure the performance of our units, districts, and councils. It is meant to encourage excellence in providing a quality program at all levels of the BSA. As each unit, district, and council improves its program delivery to youth and families, our organization as a whole grows and improves.

Journey to Excellence Brings to Your Unit:

  1. A framework for planning the year.
    • The Journey to Excellence standards are based on what successful units do to continually improve.
    • If your unit plans to achieve gold or silver Journey to Excellence, you'll have a strong and active program.
  2. A method for evaluating your unit.
    • Journey to Excellence provieds tangible measurements based on things you are likely already tracking, such as how many campouts you have, how many youth are advancing, etc., and uses simple ways to calculate your performance.
  3. Guidance in areas where you might do better.
    • As you track your performance against the Journey to Excellence standards, you can easily see where you could do better.
  4. Specific guidelines and standards of what is considered good performance.
    • Journey to Excellence has specific, measures to help you. You can easily compare what you are doing against the standards.
  5. Early warning of potential problem areas.
    • You track any areas where your unit is not performing as you might like and have plenty of time to make corrections.
  6. Recognition for good Scouting.
    • You can proudly receive your bronze, silver, or gold recognition for your Scouting unit for the year.
  7. Benchmarking to get ideas and tips from other good units.
    • You can receive help and best practices in areas where other units have met the gold standard.
    • In the areas where you are doing well, you can give help and ideas to other units.

Journey to Excellence Resources

You can download (below) the requirements and scorecard for your unit, and ask your unit commissioner, district executive, or any other district team member for assistance in achieving Journey to Excellence for your unit.