About "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt

The “Green Bar Bill” Hillcourt Foundation honors the memory and work of William “Green Bar Bill” Hillcourt and his wife, Grace.

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​A Boy Scout from its earliest days, Bill was a volunteer Scoutmaster and professional writer for the Boy Scouts of America for more than 40 years. He authored the best-selling biography of Scouting’s founder, Baden-Powell: The Two Lives of a Hero, three editions of the BSA’s Boy Scout Handbook and several books and hundreds of articles in Boys’ Life, Scouting Magazine and other publications on nature, camping, and physical fitness for young people. He perfected Baden-Powell’s patrol method of Scouting, emphasizing boy-led patrols. (The nickname “Green Bar Bill” comes from the patrol leader’s badge of two green bars.)  A respected authority on Scouting history and Scout leader training around the globe, he was the “Scoutmaster to the World.”

 

Bill and Grace had no children, and Grace died before Bill. Bill died in 1992, and his last will and testament created the “Green Bar Bill” Hillcourt Trust to preserve his extensive Scout memorabilia collection and administer funds left from his estate for the purposes of “commemorating, preserving the history, and fostering the growth of the national and international Boy Scout Movement.” In 2016 the Trust, under court authority, transferred its assets to the Foundation. 

 

Since 1993 the Hillcourt memorabilia collection has been on loan to the National Scouting Museum, now at Philmont Scout Ranch, Cimarron, New Mexico, which uses many of the collection’s unique, historic pieces in its exhibits, including a featured exhibit on Bill Hillcourt.

 

Since 1995, the Trust and Foundation have made generous contributions to Scouting America and the US Foundation for International Scouting. These funds have been used for projects such as:

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• New materials for national junior leader training programs;

• The first three Inter-American Region International Leadership Trainings put on by the World Organization of the Scout Movement;

• Support for the Order of the Arrow’s lodge history program;

• Grants of $5,000 to $6,000 to support as many as 25 youth with registration fee assistance to work on staff at the 2013, 2017, and 2023 National Scout Jamborees, and the 2019 World Scout Jamboree. 

• A $25,000 grant to the National Scouting Museum at Philmont.

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In the last quarter of the 20th century, Scouting in the US and internationally came under criticism on many fronts, often based on incomplete facts or a negative point of view. Leadership of the Trust understood the detailed and balanced analysis of professional historians and other social scientists would add accuracy and fairness to the study of the Scout movement.  

 

The Trust began expanding its connections in the academic community in the early 2000’s. As a result, the Trust and Foundation have distributed funds to institutions of higher learning to support independent scholarly work on the history of Scouting:

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• 2008 – Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; “Scouting: A Centennial History Symposium”; the world’s first academic program on Scouting history, bringing together 30 scholars from ten countries;

• 2015 – American Historical Association, New York City; four-person panel on international Scouting history;

• 2015 – Society for the History of Children and Youth, Vancouver, BC; four-person panel on comparative history of aspects of Scouting in the US and Sweden.

 

The Johns Hopkins symposium resulted in a published collection of 15 of its papers, Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2009), which is frequently cited in academic books and articles on Scouting.

 

The Foundation board understands the study of history – from activities as basic as collecting patches to investigating sophisticated topics such as the social and cultural trends that led to the invention and growth of Scouting – teaches young people skills of fact-finding, comparison, and analysis. To this end, the Foundation is active in encouraging history activities for Scout youth. The Foundation was a sponsor of the 2019 National Scouting Historian Summit at Philmont Scout Ranch, a week-long event attended by almost 200 students of Scouting history, including many college-age participants. In 2022, Foundation leadership participated in updating the Scouting Heritage Merit Badge Pamphlet.

 

The Foundation is a Texas nonprofit corporation qualified as tax exempt under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. The Foundation is not affiliated with any international, national, or local Scout or Guide organization.