How My ADHD Inspired Me to Build a Scout App

I am a scout leader. I am also a programmer. And I live with ADHD — attention deficit disorder. That last detail matters for the rest of this story, because when your brain works like mine, time spent juggling paperwork instead of actually leading scouts costs you three times what it costs everyone else.

Let me tell you how things used to work.

A Typical Tuesday Evening

Picture this. It is Tuesday evening, the kids are pouring in, the usual cheerful chaos. I am standing at the door with my attendance sheet — a piece of paper, usually crumpled, sometimes the same one from last week with things crossed out. I check off names. I ask a kid I do not quite recognize if he is new or if he was just absent for the last three weeks. He looks at me like I have three heads.

And honestly, he was right to look at me that way. With some kids missing often, I could never really tell who was there when. A kid missed a lot of meetings? Hard to say for sure. We thought he missed the group outing on November 12th, but maybe not? The sheet says… something illegible. Wonderful.

All of this had to be transcribed after the meeting. Every single time. You know what happens when an ADHD leader gets home at 9 PM on a Tuesday night with an attendance sheet to transcribe? It ends up in a coat pocket. You find it in the wash. Sometimes.

Baloo and His Spreadsheet

Meanwhile, there was Baloo. Baloo was the dedicated leader who had decided to track badge progression on his phone, in an Excel spreadsheet. If you have never tried navigating an Excel file on a phone screen while a Cub tugs at your sleeve to show you his bowline knot… well. Let us just say the user experience leaves something to be desired.

Baloo was squinting at tiny numbers in tiny cells, tapping carefully with the precision of a surgeon. Meanwhile, scouting life was happening all around him. He was missing precious moments because he was absorbed in his spreadsheet.

Badges and the Big Question

Speaking of badges. A kid deserves a badge for participating in the group outing on such-and-such date? All right, but was he actually there? Let us check our attendance sheet — the one that might be in the washing machine. Let us check Baloo's Excel file — the one in size-6 font on his iPhone. Let us check our memory — and with ADHD, memory is a bit like looking for a file on a cluttered desk. It is there somewhere, probably.

Google Drive: Our Collective (Failing) Memory

We had gotten into the habit of keeping everything on Google Drive. Every meeting, every activity plan, every document — it was all there. In theory, it was our group memory. In practice, at the start of every season, we asked ourselves the same question: "What did we do last year around this time?"

And then the archaeological dig would begin. We would open folders nested inside folders. We would search for the right file among names like "Meeting-Nov-12-FINAL" and "Meeting-Nov-12-v2-REAL-FINAL." We would eventually give up and reinvent the wheel.

Which led to another problem: games and activities. We would look for original ideas so we would not end up playing dodgeball at every meeting. We would browse the internet, find gems… and six months later, we had forgotten them and were playing dodgeball again. With ADHD, if it is not right in front of me, it does not exist.

Camp: When Chaos Gets Organized (Or Not)

If Tuesday evenings were an administrative workout, camps were the Olympics.

There was Grey Brother — the responsible, conscientious leader — with his big binder and his Ziploc bags of medication. He would try to build himself a handmade chart so he would not miss a single dose. One pill in the morning for this kid, drops at noon for that one, another tablet at bedtime for a third. All of this while camping, in the rain, with kids running everywhere. You do not mess around with children's health, and Grey Brother did a remarkable job. But he should not have needed a logistics degree to pull it off.

And then the parking lot. Oh, the parking lot. At the last minute, on departure day for camp, it was pure chaos. Who rides with whom? Does every kid have a spot in a car? A parent who was supposed to be there cancels — we redistribute. Another one shows up with an extra car seat — saved! A leader makes three round trips because the math does not work out. All of this organized mentally or on the corner of a picnic table.

Allergies: The Stakes That Do Not Forgive

When it came time to prepare meals at camp, we would pull out the registration forms and health forms. We would spread them across the table and go through each one, line by line, making sure we did not miss a single allergy. Lactose intolerance. Nut allergy. Gluten-free diet. Vegetarian. Every mistake could have serious consequences. And this information was scattered across paper forms, some of which dated back to the September registration.

Communications: The Obstacle Course

Reaching parents was an adventure in itself. We had two options: go online and look up contact information in the national management tool — which meant logging in, navigating an interface that could have used a serious refresh, and copying addresses one by one — or dig through our binders to find the registration forms.

When we tried group emails, we would carefully assemble a mailing list… only to receive a message from a worried parent who was not getting anything. Wrong address? Spam filter? Email change that was never reported? The mystery remained unsolved, and our confidence in our communications eroded a little more each time.

Honour Badges: The Memory Game

At the end of every meeting, we would award honour badges — a small recognition for exemplary behaviour. A lovely tradition. Except that each of us would try to remember: "Did we already give one to Mathis for helping a younger kid? I think so. Or was that Nathan? When was that again?"

With ADHD, this kind of memory exercise is an extreme sport. We would end up awarding the honour anyway, hoping we were not making a mistake. Sometimes we were.

Fundraisers: Scribbling Purgatory

And then there were the fundraising campaigns. The famous calendars to sell. We would write on a sheet — always a sheet of paper — who took how many calendars. Who had sold how many. Who had turned in the money. Who still owed an amount.

The sheet would become a battlefield of cross-outs, arrows, and notes in the margins. By the end of the campaign, the final tally was as much archaeology as it was accounting.

The Treasurer and the Cheque Chase

Our treasurer, meanwhile, was living his own nightmare. He would spend months chasing membership fees. In cash or by cheque. Yes, cheques. We were still using cheques until last year. In 2025. Cheques.

With blended families — dad pays half, mom pays the other half, the stepfather sent a cheque but for the wrong amount — financial tracking became a puzzle worthy of an advanced accounting course. The treasurer did all of this as a volunteer, on top of his day job and his own family life. I still do not know how he held it together.

The Phantom Inventory

A leader from another unit told me about her own particular headache: equipment inventory. Several units shared the same stock — tents, camp stoves, tarps, ropes, cooking utensils. Who has what? Who borrowed the big six-person tent in May and never returned it? Do the stoves still work? Nobody really knew. The inventory existed… somewhere. Maybe in a file. Maybe in the head of someone who moved away last year.

Permission Slips: Organized Chaos

Before every camp or special activity, we had to collect parental permission slips. We would send out forms — paper or PDF — and wait. We would follow up. We would follow up again. We would call, the night before camp, the three families who still had not signed. A kid would show up at the meeting point without a signed form and a parent on the phone would swear they had sent it. We would dig through emails. We would not find it. The stress would climb.

And Yet, We Made It Work

With all these administrative tasks, it is almost surprising that we still managed to lead quality meetings. To prepare camps that kids still talk about years later. To create extraordinary memories.

We made it work. But barely. Exhausted by the invisible — all the behind-the-scenes work that nobody sees, nobody thanks you for, but without which nothing functions.

The Moment It Clicked

I am a programmer. I have been passionate about scouting since childhood. And I have ADHD that reminds me every day that if a system is not simple, accessible, and obvious, I will forget it, lose it, or abandon it.

One evening, looking at this long list of frustrations — attendance on paper, spreadsheets on phones, medication charts, parking lot chaos, allergies scattered across binders, lost communications, duplicate honour badges, scribbled fundraiser sheets, the treasurer's cheques, the phantom inventory, the missing permission slips — it clicked.

Each of these problems was concrete. Each had a digital solution. And if a single application could solve them all, we would save hours. Dozens of hours. Hundreds of hours, taken together.

That is where Wampums was born. (The story behind the name is worth telling on its own — I will save that for another day.)

Two Years in the Field

I have been developing Wampums for two years. Not in an office, not in theory: in the field. I test it at every meeting. I listen to feedback from other leaders. One tells me a button is not visible enough. Another points out that the attendance flow could be faster. I refine, I adjust, I iterate.

Because a tool designed by someone who has never led a rainy Tuesday evening with 30 hyped-up Cubs — you can tell. And a tool designed by someone living with ADHD — you can tell too, but in a good way. If the interface works for me, with my attention bouncing from one thing to the next, it will work for everyone.

Today, I realize that Wampums replaces, on its own, a whole pile of tools that groups use as best they can: spreadsheets, scraps of paper, Drive files, improvised email lists, handmade medication charts, crossed-out fundraiser sheets.

A Tool for the Community

I want to share this creation with the scouting community. During pre-launch, I am offering it for free, because I want to deliver a quality product that will work for as many groups as possible. I care about accessibility — making sure every leader, regardless of their comfort with technology, can find their way around. And I care about offline capability, so all this data is available when you are deep in the woods with no cell signal.

The Irony

Ironically, I built a digital management tool so that we spend less time in front of screens and more quality time with our kids. Less paperwork, more campfires. Fewer spreadsheets, more wide games. Less administrative stress, more honour badges properly awarded.

I started from concrete problems — mine, Baloo's, Grey Brother's, the treasurer's, the leader struggling with inventory — to build a single solution.

So you can have scouting at your fingertips.

Wampums is free during the pre-launch period. Request a demo and we will set up your organization together.