The Journey to Excellence Recognition is going through some changes for 2012.

Scouting's Journey to Excellence

(Formally called Centennial Quality Unit Award)

New in 2011! Scouting’s Journey to Excellence is the new performance recognition program for Councils, Districts, and Units. This program replaces the Centennial Quality Recognition program. The BSA Journey to Excellence program uses a balanced approach and key performance indicators to measure performance versus process, encourage and reward success, and achieve the BSA mission.

• 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.

• Journey to Excellence provides 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.

• 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, simple measures to help you. You can easily compare what you are doing against the standards.

• You track any areas where your unit is not performing as you might like and have plenty of time to make corrections.

• You can proudly receive your bronze, silver, or gold recognition for your Scouting unit for the year.

• 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.

Tips for Unit Leaders

By now, your Scoutmaster, Cubmaster, Team Coach, or Crew Advisor should have been introduced the new process through information distributed at roundtables, District Hot Sheet, or during unit visits by commissioners, and at training events.

The Journey to Excellence Award gives your unit national standards that let you assess your performance in key areas, including:

Depending on whether your unit is a pack, troop, Varsity team, or Venture crew, these eight areas of performance are weighted and prioritized differently (e.g., advancement is much lower priority for a crew than for packs and troops)

Journey to Excellence is not just a process to measure good practices that are simply repeated year over year. Instead, the goal is continuous improvement over many years.

Each Pack, Troop, Team or Crew can qualify for an award based on the performance standards set by Journey to Excellence (JTE). You receive points in each of the categories (gold, silver, or bronze—just like the Olympic medals). Your points across every category are added to give your total score, which determines your final JTE achievement level. Requirements are weighted as they correlate most with success. No one requirement is mandatory.

Your unit leaders (Pack, Troop, Team or Crew) can download further information and tools of the JTE Website. The Pack, Troop, Team, or Crew spreadsheets can help a unit track and record final results for JTE. A final scorecard can be printed for presentation to unit commissioner during the next recharter period. Just the scorecard can also be located and printed from the JTE Website. For further information, please review the JTE Website or contact your unit commissioner.