North Star Museum Annual Fund

The North Star Museum of Boy Scouting and Girl Scouting is operated by North Star Scouting Memorabilia, an independent non-profit organization founded in 1976. The Museum boasts more than 150,000 items from around the world, some dating back as far as 1908. The Museum began as a small group of veteran Scouts who wanted to preserve their tangible memories--the uniforms, equipment, badges and books that showed the Scouting experience so vital to the adults they had become. It then grew from these humble beginnings, transforming from a tribute to the personal memories of a few to a testament to the collective memory of everyone who had an interest in and experience with Boy Scouting and Girl Scouting. Through traveling displays that appealed to both youth and adults, Museum volunteers shared these memories around the region, helping to put current Scouting programs in context with the decades-long development and growth of the Scouting movement. Through the acquisition of a building and the development of permanent displays, meeting space and youth programs, the Museum has today become a place where the past joins the present. Boy Scout and Girl Scout units use Museum resources to learn, teach, experience and advance. The Museum and its programs fill a unique niche that enriches all who experience them. In this manner, the Museum has accomplished something that neither the Boy Scout or Girl Scout organizations are equipped to accomplish. It is also important to note that in a time when children are spending many hours in front of screens, taking in a "virtual" world, museums are one of the few remaining places where they can encounter the real thing, in an environment where it can be explained to them. By studying a photograh of a camping trip from the 1930s or a uniform from the 1950s, they can learn not only how to look, but also how to see. The North Star Museum of Boy Scouting and Girl Scouting is the keeper of Scouting's legacy. History informs, inspires and defines us, opening us up to new ideas, offering new perspectives, and bringing us closer to the future we long to create.