Annual Report
One year of Scouting across central and southern Ohio and northern Kentucky.
A Letter to Our Friends
Dear Friends of Simon Kenton Council,
Every year this report gives me the chance to do something I look forward to, which is putting numbers to what you made possible. This year those numbers are worth sitting with. In 2025, Simon Kenton Council served 10,133 young people across central and southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. Behind them stood 3,654 volunteers. They included parents, den leaders, merit badge counselors, camp staff, and board members. They gave up evenings and weekends so a kid could pitch a tent, lead a patrol, or stand in front of a board of review and answer for the person they are becoming.
Our facilities hosted 84,381 Scout and volunteer visits in 2025. That is not an abstraction. That is 84,381 times someone slept under canvas, cooked over a fire they built, took a first shot at the rifle range, or sat around a campfire long enough to say something true to a friend.
The service numbers may be the ones I am proudest of. Our 2025 Eagle Scout class of 215 young men and women contributed 30,028 hours of service to their communities through their Eagle projects. Valued at the current national rate for volunteer time, that service is worth more than $1 million. The figure is conservative, too. It does not count the hundreds of additional volunteers who showed up on project days, or the value of the materials and the finished work itself. Ramps built. Trails cleared. Food pantries stocked. Cemeteries restored. Playgrounds made usable for kids who could not use them before.
Through ScoutReach, 819 young people took part in Scouting who might otherwise never have had the chance. Cost, transportation, or circumstance stood in the way. The State of Ohio recognized the value of that work with an award of $400,000 per year for two years. Removing those barriers is not a side program for us. It is central to the claim that Scouting is for every kid.
Ramps built. Trails cleared. Food pantries stocked. Playgrounds made usable for kids who could not use them before.
None of this happens without you. In 2025, 1,153 donors invested $1,759,981 in this council. Seventy-nine cents of every dollar we spent went directly to youth programs, and the council closed the year in the black, with revenue of $4,649,629 against $4,554,671 in expenses. I take that stewardship seriously, and so does our board.
Thank you for believing that character, citizenship, and fitness are still worth teaching, and for making sure a young person in our footprint can learn them.
Yours in Scouting,
2025 by the Numbers
One year of Scouting in Simon Kenton Council.
Camps & Properties
A generational investment in the places where Scouting happens
Camp is where Scouting stops being a meeting and starts being a memory. Every decision the council makes about its properties comes back to one question. Will our camps still be strong in fifty years?
Camp Falling Rock: 37 acres added. The council purchased 37 additional acres adjoining Camp Falling Rock, expanding program space and protecting the camp's boundaries from encroaching development. More than 700 Scouts attend summer camp at Falling Rock each year.
84,381 visits. Across all council properties, Scouts and volunteers logged 84,381 uses of our facilities in 2025. That covers summer camp, weekend campouts, district events, training, and unit activities.
Investment in the program. Completed capital improvements across our camps in 2025 went directly into the things Scouts touch: program areas, shelters, waterfront, and infrastructure. A dedicated endowment now supports camp maintenance and upgrades on a permanent basis, so the Scouts who arrive a generation from now inherit facilities as good as the ones we inherited, or better.
Eagle Scouts & Service
215 Eagles. 30,028 hours given back.
Fewer than one in twenty Scouts who join ever reach Eagle. In 2025, 215 young people in Simon Kenton Council did. Each one completed a service project they conceived, planned, funded, staffed, and led themselves.
Together those projects represent 30,028 hours of service to communities across our footprint. Based on the national value of volunteer time ($34.79 per hour as of April 2026), that service is worth more than $1 million. The valuation is conservative. It counts only the Eagle candidates' own hours, not the hundreds of parents, siblings, unit volunteers, and community members who turned out on project days, and not the value of the donated materials or the finished improvements themselves.
But the number that matters is not the dollar figure. It is what an Eagle project does to the young person who leads it. Somewhere in the middle of a project, usually when the lumber order is wrong or half the volunteers do not show, a teenager discovers they can hold a plan together anyway. That is the actual product. The ramp is a byproduct.
Across the full council, units and individuals logged service in every category Scouting tracks: conservation and environmental work, food and shelter, support for veterans, care for the elderly and those with disabilities, disaster relief, literacy, and landscape restoration.
ScoutReach & Access
819 youth who might not have had the chance
Scouting's promise is that any young person can join. Making that true takes deliberate work, and money.
ScoutReach exists to deliver Scouting in communities the traditional model does not reach. Places where families cannot cover dues and uniforms. Where there is no parent available to serve as a volunteer leader. Where transportation to a weekly meeting is itself the barrier. In 2025, 819 young people took part in Scouting through ScoutReach.
In these units, the council supplies trained program leaders, covers registration and gear, and brings the program directly to schools, community centers, and neighborhood partners. The curriculum is the same one every Scout gets: outdoor skills, service, advancement, leadership. What changes is who pays for it, and how it gets there.
Donor support is what makes this possible. ScoutReach is almost entirely underwritten by contributions, and it is the clearest example of what a gift to this council actually buys.
The program also drew significant public investment. The State of Ohio awarded Simon Kenton Council $400,000 per year for two years to expand ScoutReach, an $800,000 commitment that reflects growing recognition of what structured youth programming does for communities. State support strengthens the program. It does not replace the donor base that built it.
Volunteers & Leadership
3,654 adults who showed up
Simon Kenton Council employs a small professional staff. The program itself is delivered by volunteers, 3,654 of them in 2025.
They are Cubmasters and Scoutmasters, den leaders and committee chairs, merit badge counselors, camp staff, unit commissioners, and board members. They organized 7,107 campouts in 2025. They attend Wood Badge and Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills on their own weekends so they can teach a Scout the skills they need. They drive. They cook. They stay up after the Scouts go to bed.
Four districts organize this work geographically: Polaris, Daybreak, Frontier, and Gateway. Each one provides training, roundtables, camporees, and support to every unit in its territory.
If you have ever wondered where the return on a donation to Scouting shows up, part of the answer is leverage. Those 3,654 volunteers contribute time worth many multiples of the council's entire operating budget, supported by an organization that costs a fraction of what they deliver.
2025 Activity Snapshot
Reported by units and individuals, January 1 to December 31, 2025.
Service by Category
Service logged in Scoutbook by units and individuals. Eagle Scout project hours are reported separately and are not included in this breakdown. Please note that not all service projects and hours are logged in Scoutbook.
Financial Stewardship
Where the money came from, and where it went.
Simon Kenton Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Every dollar contributed is stewarded with the understanding that it was given for one purpose, which is to put Scouting in front of a young person.
The Council finished 2025 in the black. Support and revenue totaled $4,649,629 against $4,554,671 in expenses, producing an operating surplus of $94,958. Adding gifts and investment gains restricted for endowment, camps, and future program years, total net assets grew by $377,204, closing the year at $15,614,168.
Of every dollar spent in 2025, 79 cents went directly to youth programs: camps, program delivery, advancement, training, and ScoutReach. Twelve cents supported fundraising, six cents covered management and general administration, and three cents went to the national charter and service fee.
2025 Revenue
- Program & activity revenue $1,700,73836.6%
- Contributions & grants $1,354,85029.1%
- Investment & beneficial interests $884,66819.0%
- Released from donor restrictions $370,2768.0%
- Rental & other income $339,0977.3%
Total: $4,649,629
2025 Expenses
- Program services $3,594,77478.9%
- Fundraising $552,34712.1%
- Management & general $290,8926.4%
- Charter & national service fee $116,6582.6%
Total: $4,554,671
The Bottom Line
Year ended December 31, 2025, all funds combined.
Figures are drawn from the Council’s audited financial statements for the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024, audited by GBQ Partners LLC, Columbus, Ohio, which issued an unmodified opinion. Program & activity revenue includes the Scouting program, net product sales, supply sales, and local fee income. Contributions & grants includes Friends of Scouting, net special events, individual and corporate gifts, in-kind contributions, United Way, and government fees and grants.
Ways to Give
Every gift supports Scouting programs.
Friends of Scouting
The annual campaign that underwrites day-to-day program delivery for every Scout in the council.
Camp & Capital Support
Direct investment in facilities at Camp Falling Rock, Camp Lazarus, Camp Oyo, and council properties.
ScoutReach
Underwrites Scouting for youth facing financial, transportation, or leadership barriers.
Campership Fund
Sends a Scout to summer camp who could not otherwise afford to go.
Endowment & Planned Giving
Permanent funds, including the new camp improvement endowment, that support Scouting in perpetuity.
Matching Gifts
Many employers double or triple your contribution at no additional cost to you.
Simon Kenton Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Thank You!
With gratitude to the 1,153 individuals, families, businesses, and foundations who invested $1,759,981 in Scouting in 2025.
Every number in this report started as a decision somebody made to give. The campouts, the merit badges, the Eagle projects, the week at camp a family could not have paid for on their own — all of it traces back to donors who decided that a young person they may never meet deserved the chance to try.
Gifts to Simon Kenton Council in 2025 ranged from a few dollars to six figures. They came from grandparents and Eagle Scouts, from foundations and family businesses, from Scouting parents and from people whose own Scouting years ended half a century ago. What they have in common is that none of them had to give. They did it anyway.
No Scout Without a Uniform
Ask a Scout about the moment they felt like they belonged, and you will often hear about the uniform.
It is not a formality. It is what a Scout wears to their first court of honor. It is what carries the patches they earn one at a time, and what tells a kid walking into a room full of strangers that they are part of something. For a family already stretching to cover dues, camp fees, and gear, it can also be one more cost — the quiet one that decides whether a child joins at all.
In 2025, no family in Simon Kenton Council had to make that calculation. G. Ross Bridgman, a former Scout himself and a current member of our board, made a gift to ensure that every Scout who needed a uniform got one. No form to fill out. No parent asked to explain their finances. No Scout standing in street clothes while the rest of the patrol stood in uniform.
A uniform is not a formality. It is the moment a kid knows they belong.
It is the kind of giving that comes from knowing the program from the inside. Ross did not fund an abstraction. He removed a specific, ordinary barrier that was keeping specific, ordinary kids out — and then let the result speak for itself.
Scouts across Simon Kenton Council in 2025. Thanks to Ross Bridgman and donors like him, not one of them had to wonder whether a uniform was in reach.
Ross’s gift is one story out of 1,153. Most of the others will never be told in a report like this one, because most generosity does not announce itself. It shows up as a Scout at camp who would not otherwise have gone, a troop with a working trailer, a ScoutReach unit meeting in a neighborhood the traditional program never reached.
To everyone who gave in 2025: thank you. You did not buy a program. You bought a young person a place to stand.
Thank you for believing that character, citizenship, and fitness are still worth teaching.