What Our Councils Say

Luke McNeese
Sequoyah Council
Program Director
I've used Black Pug Software in 3 different councils in my 10 year career in the Scouting program. I highly recommend them. Their customer service is amazing, as is their ability to implement new features or fix any issues I have usually in 24 to 48 hours. It's a big promise and may not happen all the time, but on something really important they make sure to fix anything I need fixed. The main thing I like about Black Pug Software is it allows me to continue focusing on outdoor adventures and less on administration. Our program team can focus on keeping Scouts outside and leaders happy, and less on paperwork and accounting. Join the Black Pug team!

Chris Guarniere
Greater New York Councils
Deputy Scout Executive
Black Pug is the only provider that I would recommend for a council to use to manage event and facility reservations. They are the complete package, amazing customer service, great customization options, accounting that makes sense and access customization to allow backend accessibility to all that need it. With other solutions there was always feedback from volunteers about user experience, with Black Pug, that feedback has dropped significantly. I have worked with different services for event registration and facility reservations for councils and Black Pug is the only service I would use. The Black Pug team is responsive to our needs. Through the use of a forum, questions and answers are shared. I have never felt like I was stuck without an answer. Black Pug has a product roadmap and at times a feature request is identified as being on the roadmap and might take some time to implement. The team is always open to listening to requests and will implement them when possible. Bugs are addressed quickly. The team will go the extra mile to fix an error, even if it was a user error. Key areas that separate Black Pug from other solutions is ease of campership awarding, membership validation process, bountiful customization options for events, and a parent portal that allows a unit to give access to parents to pay and signup for merit badges for camp. Black Pug easily uploads into the PeopleSoft. As long as the system is set up correctly on the council end, the system works well. Black Pug recognizes that when a credit is created that the credit use is accounted for correctly. It’s a simple concept but other solutions lack in this area. Black Pug shines above the rest for accounting.

Justin Feld
Pathway to Adventure Council
Program Specialist
Black Pug’s support team never fails to amaze me at their quick responses to questions and issues. Any time an issue arises, I have no doubt that BP will have a solution for me fast!

Rebecca Alberda
Michigan Crossroads Council
Reservations Manager, Outdoor Adventures
I recently took over the role of Reservations Manager fully managing the Black Pug system for my Council – the Michigan Crossroads Council – the largest Council in the nation. As you can imagine, the prospect was daunting, but the team over at Black Pug have been tremendously helpful in answering all of my questions (even the silly ones), and have been so friendly to work with – sharing personal pictures of our pets with one another makes the experience more human and helps to show that their team really cares. My questions, concerns, and requests are always answered quickly, efficiently, and with helpful graphics! They’ve even taken time out of their busy schedules to hold video meetings with me to go over large topics – like setting up summer camp – and will even check in to make sure things are going well. In sum, the team over at BP is personable, friendly, helpful (without judgement), and responsive. Black Pug can sometimes be a daunting system, but the team makes it easy, manageable, and empowers you with confidence.

Tasha Oanes
Northern Star Scouting
Registrar
I have been working with Black Pug for just shy of 10 years now, and they are wonderful to work with! They respond to questions/requests in a timely manner, and are always extremely helpful! They have worked with us on all sorts of requests, from new reports to helping us work membership and charter renewal into the system! I am extremely confident in the accuracy and security of our data, and have found the system to be extremely reliable. Black Pug continues to come out with new enhancements, making our jobs easier. They are wonderful about looking at suggestions from councils, and implementing changes that are widely beneficial. Steve, Judy, Autumn, and the entire team are a joy to work with, and I will continue to highly recommend them every chance I get!

Lynette Sarther
Pathway to Adventure Council
Controller
I am the controller of a multi-office council with a $10 million budget, who right now uses Black Pug for our camping and event registrations. These reservations then roll forward to our accounting system to book our revenue. More and more we are relying on Black Pug for all our registration needs. Camping uses it extensively. At the beginning of the year, we are converting over and using Black Pug as our POS system. So, we will be relying on Black Pug even more in the coming year. Why are we using Black Pug? Because their systems and software are built with Boy Scouts in mind. They understand our non-profit reporting system and can design their software to meet our requirements. Whenever we have a problem or a question, Steve and his team are right there to help us out. Customer service is superb, timely and helpful! Black Pug has always been responsive to our needs and will customize their software to meet any nuances we may have.

Heather Cox Rosenberg
Suwannee River Area Council
I came on board with our Council very suddenly when one of our employees had to go out unexpectedly for a health issue. I had no prior knowledge of the Black Pug software other than having used it as an end user to register for events. When I reached out to support for help figuring out how to use the software, Julie was simply incredible. Her response was lightning fast and the webinar she held with me was thorough, easy to understand, and helped me understand the inner workings of the program so that I could do my job much more effectively. In the course of that training, I actually learned more information about the program that we have since implemented which will make our lives so much easier next year as we fill out our paperwork for our national organization. I like the ability to put notes in the various sections of the software that allow us to capture details about events and reservations that will help us in our continuous quality improvement efforts to give excellent customer service to our members. I particularly like that as we become more heavily involved in using the system, we’ll also be better able to tell the unique story of our camp property so that people can see the true beauty of each asset they’re making reservations for. Like Ken said in his response to you, the customer service experience with Black Pug is phenomenal. I would 14/10 wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone considering adopting the platform

Ken Griffin
Suwannee River Area Council
Vice President, Marketing and Communications
Black Pug customer service is second to none! Support representatives are always helpful and know the answers to questions immediately. Sometimes they even answer questions that you didn’t realize that you had! A personal note, I have adopted management of a customer support organization as a part of my “real world” job and have used Black Pug’s support as an example of how we should strive to deliver world class customer service! Black Pug’s software has helped Suwannee River Area Council accelerate our event operations in ways that we had no idea that it would. It’s made everything from event promotion to our customer experience through event closeout much easier than we ever expected. We could not imagine returning to a world where we weren’t using Black Pug!

Mark Saxon
Green Mountain Council
Scout Executive & CEO
Steve, Julie and the team at Black Pug empowered the Green Mountain Council to make the quantum leap from an unworkable manual registration process to a 100% digital event management approach in the midst of a global pandemic. They are responsive and continue to do a superior job of empowering key volunteers and staff to find efficiencies and enhance our engagement with Vermont’s Scouting Community.

Bud Harrelson
Old North State Council
Director of Cherokee Scout Reservation
Switching to Black Pug as our event management tool revolutionized the event registration and facility reservation process for our units, families, volunteers, and professional team. Black Pug has anticipated the needs of a council and is able to accommodate most any event registration needed, and, then, produce useful reports to help manage and close out the event. Black Pug helps us empower our volunteers with event management by providing them accounts where you can limit their access. The customer service and responsiveness to requests is second to none. The customer service team either provides feedback using the Black Pug forum page or schedules a video chat to teach you how to use Black Pug to meet your needs. Everyone in our council loves Black Pug – especially our event management and accounting teams.

Mike Alberts
Bay-Lakes Council
Field Director
All the members of the Black Pug team strive to better serve the Scouting Community. When posting in the forums about a question, bug, request or just throwing out an idea, all the members of their team jump in no matter the department. Anytime a member of our staff or a volunteer has reached out to the Black Pug team about a bug or a request they have responded within a day. Even with some of the more challenging/off the wall requests they have not only made it happen but is a short turn around. The software is really designed with Scouting in mind. Unlike other softwares, Black Pug was built and designed by Scouters for Scouters. Unlike other systems we have used in the past, Black Pug gives us the ability to provide volunteers access to all aspects of the software allowing us to empower event chairs to really manage their events.

Butch Walker
Quapaw Area Council
Program and Marketing Director
Black Pug’s customer service team is really shockingly good! After working with lots of other vendors in the Scouting software space, it was so gratifying to find a team that was exceedingly prompt and professional in their responses. They obviously care about the Scouting movement and want you to succeed. Totally 5 star service! We moved to Black Pug from another vendor because of the user experience, plain and simple. As a volunteer turned professional, I had wrestled with the previous vendor and how counter-intuitive it was to use for long enough and wanted to make it easier for our Scouting family to register online. Black Pug solved this problem and has continued to improve the experience in the years since we switched. Now we get compliments on how easy our registration process is!

Chris Wolfe
Transatlantic Council
Chief Financial Officer
We used Sellwise for many years as our Point of Sale system…. Tracking inventory, sales transactions, and lots of Unit Deposit Account transactions. We knew we wanted to move away from a desktop based system to something in the cloud, as well as being very user friendly for our unit leadership. COVID-19 helped us accelerate the transition from a desktop system that we had no access to for months due to workplace restrictions. Now months after the transition, our unit leaders love it that they can inquire of their UDA balance 24/7, they can make a deposit anytime and see that it posts to the account immediately, use their UDA balance to purchase Council Trading Post and other items as well as pay camp and activity registration fees. Unit leadership’s ability to update Trusted Users as they need and when they need is a huge benefit to the units, and eliminate a great deal of administrative work previously done by council staff. Wow what a great toolset that has dramatically streamlined our operations related to retail sales (primarily internet sales) and Unit Deposit Account management. We would encourage every council to take a look at Black Plug Software.

Sarah Spinks
Ozark Trails Council
Development Director
The onboarding process to Black Pug was painless for our Council. Our volunteers and staff all agree that Black Pug provides a more customer friendly platform than what we had prior. When we need something, Black Pug responds quickly with in-depth steps/screenshots/photos to assist. Black Pug was easy to drive right into and start work. During the on-boarding process, Black Pug recorded our trainings, which have become invaluable in training new hires.

Michael Hesbach
Pee Dee Area Council
Scout Executive
The Pee Dee Area Council has used Black Pug Software for 2 years. We transitioned from unit Constant Contact’s event registration services for our events. The shift to Black Pug has allowed us to streamline office staff and permit us to continue to reduce our staffing needs for event management. Every day our office manager spends less than 10 minutes downloading the Peoplesoft Upload ready spreadsheets for the previous day's transactions and process them in the same manner as the daily Sellwise upload. Using the many volunteer permission options we have volunteers who create events, and have a staff approval before they go live. Those same volunteer chairs have access to monitor registration and run reports in Black Pug. When we rebuilt our website we utilized Black Pug’s ability to provide live feeds into our Events Page and Calendar Page. Once an event is uploaded in Black Pug our website is automatically up to date. Finally, their facility reservation system was something we did not have. Once set up, it provides real time camp availability to prospective Scouting and Non-Scouting customers with tiered pricing to match. A reservation journal is automatically sent to our Camp Master and Ranger, who also have access to view and modify the reservation. As a 500 level Council who spends about $100 per month we receive a lot of value. We have shaved a quarter of a full time equivalent from our office staff because of the automation and volunteer interaction. Our OA pays the Council back for the management fees it incurs. Most importantly they treat our Council like we are one of the big boys out there with the mega camps, and I appreciate that the most.

Susan Eckbloom
French Creek Council
I have been a user in Black Pug since 2013. I am not computer savvy, and even I found it very user friendly. When I need help, I receive a detailed explanation in a timely manner. I am never made to feel inadequate. I highly recommend Black Pug for all councils, they address all of our Scouting needs.

Christine Sammons
Mid-America Council
Camping Director
Black Pug is great to work with and excel in their customer service. They take your feedback and act on it in a timely manner. I commonly get a response the same day or next day. If they can't accomplish your request, they add it to their idea board for future upgrades. Black Pug is easy to navigate and has countless reports to share the event information. There are many features to customize each event including merit badge scheduling, fee schedule, no cost, customize questions to ask participants, standard information collected, validates membership from roster upload, and so much more. I use Black Pug software every day for work. It has everything I need to be successful and is a great company to partner with.

Michael Czawlytko
Circle Ten Council
Very awesome! As always, y'all deliver the best customer support service and support I have ever seen. Thank you so much!

Terry Dutton
Pathway to Adventure Council
Director of Program
I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to you and your team for your incredible responsiveness to tech support requests. You do a wonderful job troubl-shooting and are very accommodating to new features and requests. It's no wonder you keep adding councils to your client list. Kudos!

Kim Forbes
Pacific Harbors Council
Registrar
I cannot express how much I appreciate all of y'all. You answer questions in a timely manner with answers a layman can understand. You make my life so much easier. Thank you for all you do.

Mike Evano
Central Florida Council
Director of Camping Service
The site keeps looking better. Little tweaks that you guys make, seemingly overnite, do NOT go unnoticied. The interface keeps looking nicer and nicer and I appreciate all the time you all put in. Thanks for making a product that works so well and keeps improving our customer's experience.

Will Hartzell
Aloha Council
Dean, University of Scouting
I'm doing 3 events right now on Black Pug and I very much enjoy using it. It's easy and fun and works very well for what I need to do. Many thanks for a well-designed, well thought out program!!

Richard Hawkins
Patriots' Path Council
Outdoor Program Specialist
Judy, Autumn, Steve, and anybody else on the team who has ever had to deal with me or try to fix a problem I may have had (even if I've never spoken to you personally), THANK YOU! Thank you for hearing our requests and suggestions with such open minds. Thank you for communicating with us to let us know you've heard us, and to let us know what to expect or what's in the pipeline. Thank you for working so hard to help us meet the ever higher expectations of our customers. Thank you for always striving to exceed our expectations. Thank you for going above and beyond; not just fixing the problem, but helping us locate and correct the ripple effect of corrections. Thank you for always having a fantastic attitude when dealing with my commonly idiotic problems. You guys are the best!

Andrew R. Zilnik
Patriots' Path Council
Camping Director
Steve and his team are fantastic. They are responsive to our needs, always available, and take our recommendations seriously. Their software is designed to meet the needs of the local council, and is very user friendly.

Kevin McPherson
Crossroads of America Council
Director of Support Services
Our council began working with 247Scouting this past year when we implemented "Scouting Event". We were surprised to find out how much it can do while remaining flexible enough to meet the demands of any activity. One of its best features is the long list of pre-designed reports. Our council has tried other online solutions in the past with only limited success. We're so impressed with Scouting Event we can't wait to adopt Camp Reservation as well. Oh, and if the quality of the software weren't enough, just wait until you see the customer support that comes along at no extra charge!

Randy Parsons
Mid-America Council
Troop 99 Soaring Eagle District
I have mentioned this before, but would like to say it again...the new registration system and the reports that are available are fantastic. I'm really glad you implemented this system.

Linda Mickel
Patriots' Path Council
Program Assistant
I just have to tell you how much I LOVE Black Pug and the amount of time it saves me from prior years. I used it this past year for two NYLT sessions. The amount of time it saved me and the quality of work I was able to provide has been incomparable. Now, I'm doing University of Scouting and I used to have to manually track over 150 classes. I hated it. If classes closed over the weekend then I would have to call people who registered after the cut off and then find new classes, etc. I spent so much time trying to figure that all out. I just went in and pulled up Class Attendee Counts and all the information I need is right there! I already know what classes are closed, close to closing etc.. I just emailed that list to the U of S chancellor and now he has the info. If you ever have someone who is interested in this program and wants to speak with someone who uses it PLEASE give them my email and I will gladly speak with them. My volunteers so far are loving what I'm able to do for them.

Lyman Gifford
Great Alaska Council
Chief Development Officer
Over the years I have tried several softwares that would allow the council to take online registrations for events and camps. Never have found any I was particularly pleased with. Many lacked flexibility or had the "muscle" needed to handle the complex process that camp affords. That is until now. We found one that seems to be doing all of those. We use this also for our council calendar for our website. We collect fees, deposits, names and emails for those registering/participating, communicate directly to those registered for an event/camp, conduct surveys... This robust software seems to be the answer. This program is intuitive, simple and is loved by staff and volunteers here in Alaska. Our SE also loves it as he can see real-time how registrations are coming for any event and especially camp. How many times I would have given anything for that for the many years I sat in that chair.

Spencer Finley
Mid-America Council
Assistant Scout Executive / CFO
Mid-America Council has started to use their Camp Reservation and Scouting Event software. They are a great Scouting partner as we strive to make Scouting easier for our volunteers. They have been very responsive on helping us get set-up. I would encourage all councils to take a look at what they have to offer.

Rachel Blacker
Northern Star Scouting
Accounting Specialist/Customer Service Manager
There is so much that Black Pug has been able to do for us with their reservation system, both in Scouting Events and Camp Reservations. Our volunteers can make reservations online, we no longer need to track everything by hand and in a couple different databases, and both have a nice close out section where you can capture all of the information for the event and a session at camp. We can quickly see who owes money and get the bills sent out. And they all look the same! They don't vary from one district to another. They also have a great refund process built in and they get that the councils need two signatures on any refunds. I'm in the accounting department and I've been very excited about all of the reporting tools that they have. If they don't have a reporting tool that we need, they are really quick to create one; usually within a day or two. I've really enjoyed working with them because they are so easy to get along with and they get the Scouting lingo. I look forward to working with them in the future!