A Current Snapshot of our Properties
An overview of the Properties dashboard and the work we are undertaking related to creating more Quality Nights Away.
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 out with the Scouting program, and 80% include remediation clauses which Scouts Canada does not currently have a dedicated fund to manage.
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. One property, Camp Goodyear, has been sold, and the sale of three others (Tamaracouta Scout Reserve, Camp Woods, and Baseline Road) is in progress at various stages.
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 Scouting charm rather than becoming 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.
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 Dashboard v1.0
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 is a pre-release build of the Properties assets. The purpose of releasing a beta version is to collect your detailed feedback to help us identify and resolve any remaining issues with the dashboard before the final release which will be shared with all members for their feedback.
Important considerations when reviewing the dashboard
- How this was built: The numbers are picked up from the 2023 financials. 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 was split evenly between all properties.
- 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:
Review the Dashboard v1.0
The dashboard is fully interactive. There are two 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.
- 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: Refers to the clean-up of a property from environmental damage, like storm or flood water, to keep the property safe.
- 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): A potential buyer expresses interest in purchasing a property without committing, allowing them to showcase their seriousness to purchase.
- 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)
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.
