Boy Scouts of America

A major project was started in the Fall of 2007 to develop an information system to help the Boy Scouts of America manage information about current Boy Scout entities and help them identify geographical areas of potential interest for fund raising, new scout candidates and new scout troops. We worked with the Boy Scout National Office to develop requirements for the new system. It was decided that a visual tool that displays geographical maps should be used. This tool should allow users to visually mark and select areas for further evaluation while viewing maps of their area of interest. The tool should then display pertinent information about Boy Scout entities within the selected area. The tool should also use census information to allow the user to identify demographics associated with the selected area. The demographic information will be used to identify potential fund raising and scouting activity in the area. We evaluated a number of mapping software packages and have identified Google Maps as the software most appropriate to handle the requirements. The first priority of this project is to satisfy the Boy Scout requirements. But, this system also has the potential to be developed into an open source software package that can be use by other businesses to manage their daily operations and to identify potential clients, resources and donors.