A Current Snapshot of our Properties
An overview of the Properties Portfolio, Strategy and Dashboard and the work we are undertaking to create more Quality Nights Away.
Scouts Canada’s Property portfolio is gearing up for improvement.Taking a new engagement-based approach for our Properties Portfolio strategy, we connected with stakeholders1 in April 2024 to hear their insights on how we move forward with our portfolio. We are committed to growing our strategy in a more transparent and collaborative way.
Following their feedback, a Properties Report was created to bring the many perspectives together in a single source for us to learn from, as we continue with this important work.
As we move ahead, we will continue to update this webpage with improvements.
Property Strategy and Dashboard Feedback Report
1 Chairs of Property Societies, Camp Committees, Functional Key Threes (FK3s) and Council Key Threes (CK3s)
The Properties Portfolio
Scouts Canada’s Property Portfolio contains over 200 sites. 35% of these are in Ontario, 30% in British Columbia, 10% in both Nova Scotia and Alberta, with the remainder spread across all other provinces. 50% are owned (with vast majority of titles held by provincial property societies) and 50% are leased.
The Strategic Plan for Managing our Properties
Scouts Canada’s Strategic Plan contains the goal of creating more nights away and outdoor adventures for Canadian youth, in part through the sale and reinvestment of unsustainable properties or diversifying how they generate revenue. This is based on the assertion that our Properties Portfolio:
- has too much supply: 100 of our properties have less than 300 members within 90-minutes of them;
- with too little demand: many volunteers and parents are unwilling to travel more than 90-minutes;
- is over-concentrated geographically: For example, southwest Ontario offers 2.5 million camping nights per annum, via 31 sites, which is 16 times the supply needed to offer every Ontario youth access to a camp for 10 nights a year;
- and generates an unacceptable loss: $1.6M in financial year 2022/23 (FY23) and a forecast of $1.3M in FY24;
- and carries significant liability: 90% of leased properties do not allow sublease or monetization of the Scouting program, and 80% include remediation clauses which Scouts Canada does not currently have a dedicated fund to manage.
The Way Ahead
Property Portfolio Strategy: 2024-2030
Before we can evolve our Properties Portfolio, we need to develop a strategy. This would include deciding the criteria for which properties Scouts Canada should invest in, sustain, offer up to third-party partnership or no longer keep. Endorsed by the Board of Governors, below are the guiding principles of our portfolio, its goals, and how decisions will impact local Scouting communities.
Principles
- More Opportunities: Nights away and outdoor adventures are some of the most powerful experiences we give young people. We want more of it.
- Mission not Ownership: Property ownership, in and of itself, is not integral to achieving Scouts Canada’s Mission. We measure success by quality opportunities for young people, not quantity of owned properties. Regardless of how the opportunity is created, we’re working towards more—and better— experiences for our youth.
- Member Engagement: Our members have deep personal ties to specific camps, having shared countless memorable moments there as youth, volunteers or staff. That’s why we’re taking a careful approach in how we lead, co-design, consult and communicate our intentions regarding properties. We recognize that how our members feel truly matters.
- Evenly Distributing the Benefits of Scouting: It’s unfair that the Property Portfolio should continue to generate losses while the majority of our members don’t benefit from the sites our portfolio holds. For example, we can’t justify revenue remaining within a single property or Council when others struggle with circumstances that are not within their control, which prevent them from accessing our properties. Our portfolio must generate revenue across the board, and increasingly benefit young people across all of Canada.
Objectives:
A group of Scouts Canada volunteers who have extensive experience in real estate, property management, law and asset management were appointed to an Asset Advisory Committee. This committee provided advise and expertise and following targets were established to demonstrate how we will track our progress. As we currently have no benchmarks or methods of measurement, we may change and evolve our methods at the discretion of the Executive Leadership Team. In the meantime, the Board of Governors have confirmed these to be the right measures of success, in general, to guide us forward:
- Impact, ‘Better Experiences’: We will achieve better experiences and memorable milestones for young people as a result of quality nights away and outdoor adventures. By August 2025, 10% of our camps will offer programming; we aim to increase this to 50% by 2030.
- Reach, ‘More Opportunities’: Even more youth will have the chance to take part in nights away and outdoor adventures, as a result of increased opportunities available. We will offer 5,000 (10% of membership) spots for youth at high-quality Adventure Centres (i.e. those we consciously choose to invest in) at any given time - with a proportionate split in each Region by 2030. We will offer 10,000 (20% of membership) spots for youth at basic camp sites (i.e. those we consciously choose to sustain) at any given time, with a proportionate split in each Council by 2030.
- Sustainability: Our Property Portfolio will generate enough revenue for Scouting to not only cover expenses, but to also save funds for planned and deferred maintenance. The Property Portfolio is breakeven by August 2025 with sufficient surplus for remediation and capital investment. Remediation costs for all leased properties are known, and budgets are established to cover such costs. The portfolio is currently budgeted at ($1.3M) in FY24.
- Partnership and Support: Increasing nights away, not necessarily through Scouts Canada owned properties, but through other options. Easier access to 5,000 places at third party facilities by August 2025. Pilot advanced ‘Nights Away’ training courses to at least 10% of volunteers by August 2025 and 50% by 2030.
- Investment: Investing in sites that offer more or better opportunities, that are also located within appropriate reach of local Scout Groups. To have the means for investing, a percentage of proceeds from any property sale would be reinvested in select properties for better overnight experiences. Explore options to invest $10M in existing or new properties that have been explicitly identified by August 2025.
Actions We Have Taken
To meet our strategic goal, we tried to find partners for four properties through a Request for Expressions of Interest (REOI). This process aimed to create partnerships that could bring in money sustainably while keeping or increasing access for local Scouting. Ultimately, interests expressed did not result in creative solutions that could meet the municipal requirements, financial strength and the means required to operate and maintain the respective properties.
One property, Camp Goodyear, has been sold with retained access for local Scout Groups, and the sale of three others (Tamaracouta Scout Reserve, Camp Woods, and Baseline Road) are at various stages in the real estate process.
Based on this experience we found:
- Members were unclear about how properties were chosen for partnerships or sale, and they thought the process lacked transparency. Many believed that the organization had already made up its mind to sell all our properties.
- Members have wondered if the proceeds from property sales would truly be used to help youth or to only improve Nationals’ finances. Some members preferred camps to keep their traditional, rustic Scouting characteristics rather than become adventure centres that are more like ‘resorts’.
- There has often been a perceived lack of trust between Camp Committees and the National office, as the latter reduces authority and complicates operations, leading to feelings of disrespect and increased difficulty for committees and property societies.
Now that Scouts Canada has fully transitioned from ‘COVID Response’ to ‘COVID Recovery’, the work to review the current Properties Portfolio which initially began before the pandemic, has resumed. In April 2024, a copy of the beta Properties Dashboard v1.0 and Decision-Making Framework was released to Camp Committees, Property Societies, Functional Key 3’s and Council Key 3’s. Feedback was collected and updates have been made based on what we heard.
Our Decision-Making Framework
In 2023, we developed a framework to guide how we handle each property. It was approved by the Asset Advisory Committee and presented at the Asset Advisory Summit in November 2023, attended by the Board of Governors, Property Key 3, Asset Advisory Committee, and relevant Scouts Canada staff.
Each property will be categorized as:
- Invest: Needs capital investment or expansion.
- Sustain: Requires ongoing investment for maintenance, growth, or improvement. This may include holding assets with minimal cleanup costs to preserve capital and reduce uncertainty.
- Partner: Potential for alternative ownership arrangements to improve access, quality, or revenue.
- Sell: Ownership should transfer entirely, while striving to maintain access for Scouting where feasible and beneficial.
Stage 1 Evaluation Against Objectives: Here’s how the process would work:
Once evaluated each property would be categorized into the four categories — Invest, Sustain, Partner, Sell.
Stage 2 – Individual Evaluation of Each Property: We’ll assess each property individually and create a plan of action based on these three factors:
- who owns the property
- the potential for development, and
- how long it will take to put the plan into action. Some properties may Assessment will focus on, depending on how it has been categorized:
Here’s the four areas we’ll focus on during the assessment:
- Property ownership and structure: How does ownership affect property investment, sustainability, partnerships, and sales?
- Organizational structure and culture: How does the organization’s risk tolerance and hierarchy affect property investment, sustainability, partnerships, and sales?
- Investor appetite: Does knowledge of investor preferences affect the ability to partner or sell a property?
- Political motivations: How might external (e.g., government, residents) or internal (e.g., local organizations) views influence property investment, sustainability, partnerships, and sales?
You can expect to start to see proposed intentions from specific camps from June 2024. But at any of the stages outlined above, we may get feedback that means our original intention for a property will change. We won't propose what to do with any specific camp without the Camp Committee and relevant Property Society knowing that we are about to do.
Next Steps
The Strategic Plan committed to transparently show the status of Scouts Canada’s properties, alongside our intention for each one; invest, sustain, partner or dispose. To achieve this, we have agreed, and now wish to communicate:
- a strategy for Scout Canada’s portfolio to 2030 which will be developed with your collaboration and input.
- a framework for making decisions will be built based using your feedback.
- a detailed dashboard showing all properties and their status to provide critical information to enable better decision-making.
The Properties Dashboard
To facilitate this process, we have partnered with a third-party to develop a Properties Dashboard Tool. This tool is designed to be a single source for all our real estate holdings that will showcase ownership structure and financials. The dashboard will streamline the management of our property assets and support our collaborative approach to Scouts Canada’s asset strategy.
The dashboard is in beta version, meaning it will continue to evolve to meet the needs of our members and transparently share information about our portfolio.
The next significant updates include:
- Summer 2024 – The first-round revisions for the Dashboard, recommendations and consultation strategy as camps go through the Decision-Making Framework.
- Late 2024 / Early 2025 – Fiscal 2024 financial statements.
Review the Dashboard
The dashboard is fully interactive. There are five pages that you can scroll through to review data. Click on a chart to see the data of each property. You can hover over the bar charts to see the properties listed in each region.
Revisions to the Dashboard will be live in early June.
- Based off our statements, the dashboard numbers are inconsistent. The Dashboard is based on a third party’s financial analysis tool of our attributed and non-attributed costs, as part of our review – Colliers, it is a work in progress.
- In the next six months the following projected additional cost not included now will be included; Remediation fund and Capital reserve funds.
- Scouts Canada does not have designated funds for capital expenditures or remediation. All plans for funding are part of our annual budgeting process and approved annually.
- Estimated capital improvement requirements and Estimated remediation costs (leased properties only) have not been included. We are working with staff, volunteers and third parties to project costs.
Definitions:
- Non-consolidated: A Scouts Canada property which manages its own financial operations and has not consolidated into National operations. This is often referred to as “One Scouts”.
- Sublease: a tenant rents out a property to a third party for their original lease.
- Remediation: The process of addressing and rectifying damage or contamination that occurred during the lease period. The remediation clause in a lease agreement outlines the tenant's responsibility to restore the property to its original condition, which may include demolishing buildings, cleaning hazardous materials, and repairing damage to ensure the property is suitable for future use.
- We currently do not have a consistent way of collecting occupancy, nor Net Promoter Score (customer satisfaction KPI) for each camp. Once we implement a consistent, reliable way to collect this data our intention is to include it.
- We have only included one year of financial data. We have received feedback that a longer financial picture would be beneficial and we are actively looking into including this information in future iterations.
- Request for Expressions of Interest (REOI): This is a formal request made by one party (often a property owner, developer, or investment firm) to invite potential partners, investors, or developers to express their interest in getting involved with the ‘one party’. The purpose of an REOI is to see who is interested in collaborating with the ‘one party’, and identify which of these interested parties are qualified to participate in a property development project, joint venture, or investment opportunity.
- Attributed vs non-attributed costs: Attributed costs relate to costs billed to the property (onsite expense) vs costs occurred supporting the property but not billed directly to the property (non-attributed)
- How this was built: The numbers are picked up from the 2023 financials and data from Doubleknot. If a non-consolidated property did not provide their year-end financials as required, the information will not be accurate.
- Summer Camps: Properties that host summer camps will appear twice on the dashboard. One entry displays the property revenue, while the other shows the revenue specifically from the summer camp, identifiable by the word “summer” in the property name.
- Properties maintenance costs: It is important to recognize the true cost of operating our camps. In 2023, $648,000 was spent on managing our National properties portfolio. These are referred to as offsite expenses and include:
- the wages of the Property Operations team, general liability insurance, third party compliance inspections, centralized booking system and other administrative expenses. For the purpose of the dashboard, the $648,000 will show up as a property listed as “National Operations.”
- Role of Property Societies: Remember that Provincial Property Societies and Scouts Canada play different roles, and none of the data in the dashboard should suggest that Property Societies are doing anything wrong. The information shared on the dashboard reflects Scouts Canada’s financials as properties are staffed, and supported by Scouts Canada employees and Scouts Canada pays for operational expenses including insurance, utilities, and costs related to water and fire compliance.
- We recognize these numbers may be contested. Given the complexity of the data, the volume of contributors submitting data, the lack of consolidation among our properties and camps and the lack of shared financial information with Scouts Canada, the numbers on this dashboard may differ from your records.
- To address these issues:
- As more information is provided, we will continue to update the dashboard. A more robust dashboard with 2024 financial information and other information including amenities and usage will be released in early 2025.
- To address these issues:
It Takes Teamwork
A reminder – Provincial Property Societies and Scouts Canada play different roles, and none of the data in the dashboard should suggest that Property Societies are doing anything wrong. The information shared on the beta v1.0 dashboard reflects Scouts Canada’s financials as properties are staffed, and supported by Scouts Canada employees and Scouts Canada pays for operational expenses including insurance, utilities, and costs related to water and fire compliance.
