BuddyPress.org

@porscheheritage: have you read this article on child theme development: https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/building-a-buddypress-child-theme/ ?

That’s the best starting point.

You don’t copy the BP-default theme – instead in your child theme, you create new templates where you want to override the default ones, and simply inherit the others. A directive you add to your child theme’s style.css file identifies which theme is it’s parent.