Heritage Society
Your legacy is the promise that the values of Scouting, which you share, live on in future generations. Your endowment journey begins at the trailhead...
The Lake Erie Council Endowment Fund exists to support the needs of Scouting in our community. We invite you to join us at the trailhead to further your legacy, thereby helping Scouts on their lifelong journey. The James E. West Fellowship is the trailhead of your endowment giving journey.
Scouting in Northeast Ohio
Has more than 7,000 adult volunteers leaders who serve youth by delivering the Scouting promise to over 15,000 youth in seven NE Ohio Counties.
Keeps the “outing” in Scouting by camping over 20,000 youth year-round at Beaumont Scout Reservation, and Firelands Scout Reservation.
Collaborates with over 260 charter organizations to provide youth programing, leadership and meeting space in local communities.
Scouts provide hundreds of thousand of service hours to our community.
Raises its $5.1 million annual operating budget with the support of many friends.
Scouting provides a literal compass for your pocket and a moral compass for your heart!
James E. West fellow
James West was an orphan, a voracious reader, an administrator, attorney, husband and father. His interest in youth - their care and development - guided his early career where he was instrumental in establishing the juvenile court system, pushing a bill through Congress. He held leadership positions in the Boy’s Brigade, the Washington Playground Association, and the National Child Rescue League. He was a Mason, a member of the Knights of Pythias and a Sunday school superintendent.
He was self-reliant, a leader, a promoter and a diplomat. At the age of 34, he was recruited by his peers to lead, engage and collaborate with the heads of the various organizations, educators and community leaders to create what we now know as the Boy Scouts of America. He put the Scouting organization on solid financial footing, backed by the nation’s leading industrialists and the US Congress, ultimately creating the highly organized national structure that was a key to the BSA's growth and reputation.
If an institution is truly the “lengthened shadow of one man,” it is more than fitting that the BSA honor James E. West's many contributions to Scouting with the James E. West Fellowship Award.
The James E. West Fellowship Award recognizes gifts of $1,000 or more in cash or marketable securities to the Lake Erie Council Endowment Fund. Gifts can be in your name or given on behalf of someone else –such as in honor of an Eagle Scout, or Silver Beaver recipient, a retirement, a special accomplishment, or an anniversary–or in memory of a special individual.
Bronze Fellowship - $1,000 gift
Silver Fellowship - $5,000 gift
Gold Fellowship - $10,000 gift
Platinum Fellowship - $15,000 gift
Diamond Fellowship - $20,000 gift
1910 Society
Ernest Thompson Seton - $25,000 gift
Daniel Carter Beard - $100,000 gift
Theodore Roosevelt - $500,000 gift
Waite Phillips - $1,000,000 gift
Founder's Circle (Estate Gift Commitment)
Bronze - $100,000 gift
Silver - $250,000 gift
Gold - $500,000 gift
Platinum - $1,000,000 gift
Legacy of an Eagle Scout
Upon receiving the Eagle Scout Award, a young man is charged with helping those behind him, just as he was helped by others. As the expression says… “much has been given to you and therefore, much is expected of you.”
Achievement of the Eagle rank has marked him for leadership—in Scouting, in his community and nation; to inspire others, to contribute something worthwhile to our world and to leave it better than he found it.
