The Badge Archive

What’s Next for The Badge Archive

After a year of incredible growth, creativity, and community support, The Badge Archive Team (our family trio of Ms. Tia, Mr. John, and Scout K) held an executive meeting to talk about the future. Here’s what we realized:

The Badge Archive has been a labor of love.
We’ve spent countless hours creating free resources, graphics, meeting plans, and activity lists. We’ve answered questions, built tools, and shared rants (with love!) to help leaders feel supported and seen.

But it’s not free to run.
It costs $354/year just to keep the website and critical tools (like Canva Pro) going. To continue growing (adding better content, upgrading the site, and exploring app conversion) we’d need $1,278/year to cover all the tools and subscriptions we use. It’s $1,662 to try all the new projects we want to do.

Ms. Tia has been able to work on The Badge Archive full-time this past year due to medical challenges. The flexibility to work on good days and rest on hard ones made this possible. It’s been great occupational therapy. But now, she’s well enough to try part-time work.

Our family finances need her to spend her time and energy on that instead of the Archive. Scout K shared that she’s ready to focus on other passions as she prepares for college. Mr. John has a new creative project he’s excited to pursue.

The meeting concluded with the big decision. We’re saying goodbye to the full-time Badge Archive Team… but we’re not saying goodbye to The Badge Archive.

What’s Changing (and What’s Not)

Ms. Tia will continue to support leaders in Facebook groups and add content when she can. In fact, production has already slowed since the school year began. Between personal scouting adventures and real-life responsibilities, we’ve shifted to a lighter pace.

The decision to move forward with just Ms. Tia won’t change much in the short term. She’s always been the primary creator behind The Badge Archive, and we hope to continue producing useful resources. It’s just going to be more of a solo effort with some collaboration with guest writers and content creators.

What happens next depends on how well we do at our November vendor fair and whether we can cover the costs of running the site. If we reach our goal, Ms. Tia may be able to continue growing The Badge Archive full-time. If not, she’ll take on part-time work and keep contributing through smaller updates, just like we’re doing now.

We’re going to work hard to keep The Badge Archive open.

How You Can Help

Our new Badge Archive Creations page features products you can purchase to support our work, and we’ll be at a local Fall Festival in South Houston this November with handmade crafts from past badge adventures. And of course, we have the handful of printable plans on our Teachers Pay Teachers store.

If our vendor table or donations help us reach our $1,662 goal, Ms. Tia may be able to continue full-time work on The Badge Archive. If not, she’ll still be here, just continue at our current slower pace.

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