The most enrollments I ever got from elementary schools came from the very schools that had a rule against it. A “no” from the front desk is where the work starts, not where it ends, and the owners who grow are the ones who teach their staff to see the opening instead of the wall.
By Stephen Oliver, 10th Degree Black Belt, school owner since 1975 and publisher of this journal
Can a martial arts school get into places that have a rule against it?
Yes. In my experience, if you have an advocate on the inside, a rule against martial arts is rarely the end of the conversation. I said it on a coaching call this week and I will say it again here: “The most enrollments I’ve ever gotten from elementary schools were the same ones where there was a rule against it.”
That is not because I went around anybody. It is because a rule scares off everybody else. When the front office says no, most schools walk away, and the ones that keep looking for the right person have the place to themselves.
What did the Boy Scouts’ rule against martial arts actually say?
For years it said, in black and white, that karate was not an authorized Scouting activity, and we still did a booth at the jamboree every year. Here is how I put it on the call:
“Boy Scouts of America — we did every year the Boy Scout Jamboree. We got so many leads I don’t think we ever counted them, but they were in leaf bags full of papers filled out. 30,000 Boy Scouts showed up at this thing. They have a rule in their national manual, at least they used to, against martial arts, boxing and motorcycles. Didn’t make any difference. As long as we had an advocate, we were making that happen.”
My memory of the manual turns out to be right. The 1999 edition of the Guide to Safe Scouting, under “Unauthorized and Restricted Activities,” lists “Boxing, karate, and related martial arts—except judo, aikido, and Tai Chi—are not authorized activities.” Two bullets later it says “Motorized go-carts and motorbike activities are unauthorized for Cub Scout and Boy Scout programs. All motorized speed events, including motorcycles, boats, drag racing, demolition derbies, and related events, are not authorized activities for any program level.” The same martial arts wording appears in the 2001 and 2007 editions.
The rule is still there in a different form. The organization now calls itself Scouting America, and its current “Prohibited Activities” list, marked as approved on February 13, 2018, includes “Activities where participants strike at each other, including martial arts, boxing, combat games, gladiator games, and reenactment activities… (exception: tai chi).”
Read that carefully. The rule is about Scouts doing martial arts as a Scouting activity. It says nothing about whether a local karate school can meet families at an event. The receptionist who tells you “they have a rule against it” has usually never read the rule. An advocate has, and knows what it covers and what it doesn’t.
Ignoring a barrier is not the same as breaking a rule
When I say ignore the barrier, I mean don’t accept the first person’s reading of the rule as the final word. Find the person who has the authority to say yes, learn what the written policy actually covers, and work inside it. A written safety policy is something you respect. A front-desk guess about that policy is not.
Why does “they told me there’s a rule against it” frustrate me so much?
Because the rule usually isn’t the problem. The problem is quitting after one conversation. My biggest frustration, after five decades of doing this, is the owner who calls a school, gets a no from the front-desk person, and tells me, “This doesn’t work in my area because they told me there was a rule against it.”
That person at the front desk is paid to protect the principal’s time. Saying no is the safe answer, and they are doing their job. They are not the person who decides what happens at the school’s family night, and they are almost never the only way in.
How do you get into an elementary school when the front office says no?
You go through every angle until one of them works. I live up in the mountains. As soon as it gets cool, there are mice everywhere, and you’re plugging every hole. Getting into a school works the same way, except you are the one looking for the holes.
As I put it on the call: “I’m going to get in through the after-school director, the PE teacher, one of the moms in the PTO, an introduction to the principal — I’m going to go through every angle until I get it done.”
| Angle | Why it can work when the front office says no |
|---|---|
| After-school director | Runs the hours when outside programs usually fit, and is often looking for activities that keep kids engaged. |
| PE teacher | Already thinks about fitness and movement, and can ask for a demonstration or a guest session. |
| A parent in the PTO | Parents who are already in your school can champion you from the inside. The PTO plans events of its own. |
| Introduction to the principal | A warm introduction from someone the principal trusts gets a meeting a cold call never will. |
| Front office | Useful for dates and names. Not the place to ask for a yes. |
How do you teach staff to see opportunity instead of barriers?
You train it, deliberately, because it doesn’t come naturally. “You’ve got to be able to start seeing opportunity and ignoring barriers. And then teach the staff that, which is an exceedingly difficult thing.”
Most people don’t see opportunity until it’s shoved in their face. I want my staff driving down the street, seeing a business, a youth league or a community center and thinking, “That might be useful for us. What if I built a relationship with these guys?”
On that same coaching call, a school owner walked us through a plan for getting into an organization. It was detailed and careful, and it was backwards. It was pushing the barriers in your face: we’ve got to get permission from the city, then permission from this person, then a sign-off here. No. I want to see the opportunity first, then look for every angle to get in. The permissions come later, when you know who the advocate is.
How do you turn opportunity-spotting into a staff routine?
Make it a weekly exercise with one assignment per person, and check back. At our Monday staff meetings I brought in the local parent newspapers and handed out highlighters. The job was simple: find every event and every organization we could build a relationship with. Then we assigned people.
The rule I learned the hard way is one project at a time. Give a staff member a list of 30 things to do and nothing happens. Give them one relationship to build this week and you’ll get it.
The same discipline applies when something big lands on you. We once ran a flyer campaign connected to a children’s hospital, and after a lot of coordination, pallets and pallets of flyers arrived at one school. We printed 30 white flyers and then one blue one, so we could count and sort them fast. Every school’s stack was rubber-banded. Then we divided the schools among roughly 12 staff members, each taking somewhere between 7 and 12 schools, and I checked back with every one of them at the end of the day. Nobody got a list of 30 jobs. Everybody got one job, with a clear finish line.
What happens when the weather, or the world, closes the door?
Murphy’s Law applies to martial arts marketing, so you never bet everything on one channel. I have had the biggest event of a quarter cancelled by a blizzard. I have had a tornado warning, and golf-ball-size hail at an outdoor event.
Then there are the things that are not about marketing at all. After the shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, access to public schools in Colorado shut down, as I remember it. We had three schools within a couple of miles and many students from Columbine. Nobody should have been thinking about marketing then.
The business lesson is the one I have been making all along: the owner with one channel is out of business when that channel closes. The owner with advocates in scouting, in the schools, at the after-school programs and in the parent community keeps going.
Frequently asked questions
Can a martial arts school get into an organization that has a rule against martial arts?
Often, yes. In my experience the decisive factor was an advocate inside the organization. A “no” from a front-desk person is usually one person’s reading of a policy, not the final word, so find the person with the authority to say yes and work within the safety rules they actually enforce.
What did the Boy Scouts’ rule on martial arts say?
The 1999 Guide to Safe Scouting listed “Boxing, karate, and related martial arts—except judo, aikido, and Tai Chi” as not authorized, and the same wording appears in the 2001 and 2007 editions. Scouting America’s current policy prohibits activities where participants strike at each other, including martial arts and boxing, with tai chi as the exception.
How do I get my martial arts school into an elementary school?
Work every angle at once: the after-school director, the PE teacher, parents in the PTO, and an introduction to the principal. If one door closes, keep working the others until one of them gets you in.
How do I train my staff to find community partnerships?
Teach them to see opportunity before barriers. Give them a concrete exercise, such as highlighting every event and organization in a local parent newspaper, then assign one relationship per person and check back. One project at a time gets done; a list of 30 does not.
Why shouldn’t a martial arts school rely on one marketing channel?
Because something will close it. Weather has cancelled my biggest events, and after Columbine in 1999 access to public schools in Colorado shut down. A school with several channels keeps enrolling when one of them disappears.
Disclosure / about this account
This is a signed first-person feature. The anecdotes here, including the jamboree booth, the lead counts, the flyer campaign, the weather cancellations and the effect of Columbine on school access, are my own recollection from decades of running Mile High Karate in the Denver area. The events could not be independently dated, and figures such as “30,000 Boy Scouts” are my memory, not verified attendance. The quotations are adapted from a recent coaching call among martial arts school owners; no member, school or result from that call is identified.
Sources, and what we could not confirm
Boy Scouts of America, Guide to Safe Scouting, 1999 edition (third-party archived copy), “Unauthorized and Restricted Activities,” p. 33. Accessed September 24, 2026.
Boy Scouts of America, Guide to Safe Scouting, 2001 edition (third-party archived copy), and a 2007 printing hosted by a local unit: same martial arts wording. Accessed September 24, 2026.
Scouting America, “Activity Planning and Risk Assessment” (Prohibited Activities, approved February 13, 2018). Accessed September 24, 2026.
Scouting Newsroom, “Boy Scouts of America to become Scouting America” (May 2024).
Wikipedia, “National Scout jamboree (Scouting America)”, attendance table. Accessed September 24, 2026.
Colorado Encyclopedia, “Columbine Massacre” (date of the attack).
What we could not confirm: which jamboree this account refers to. National Scout Jamborees are held roughly every four years, outside Colorado, with reported attendance of about 28,600 to 43,400 between 1977 and 2010, so an annual event may have been a regional or council gathering. We could not confirm the dates of the events described, the lead counts, or the details of the children’s hospital campaign. We did not find a published policy record for how Colorado public schools restricted outside access after April 1999; that part of the account is the author’s recollection.
