Survey Results: What’s the #1 Stressor for Troop Leaders/Volunteers?

Previously I wrote about a new series I’m going to start here on the GSWAC blog featuring surveys.  I’m curious about getting the pulse of the volunteer base, and it is my hope that this serves as useful to someone out there.  I plan on creating very quick surveys that can be shared easily among Facebook groups, service units, and anywhere else!  It seems like there’s a void for something like this that really tries to get to the root of issues or perceptions of volunteers. 

Here’s my informal methodology, so you may wish to take the results with a grain of salt.  I won’t be offended.  😉  I created a one question survey via Google forms with the option of adding comments if the person so wished.  Respondents were completely anonymous and they were not asked for any information like their council.  The survey was posted in various Girl Scout related Facebook groups including Girl Scout Gab (over 28k members), GreenBlood Gab (almost 4k), The UNOFFICIAL Outdoor Journey Facebook Page (over 10k), a few Facebook “think tanks” dedicated to one level, and various service unit and council groups through sharing (email and FB shares).  It was also featured on the GreenBlood News and GSUSA Are You Listening? Facebook pages.  There were a handful of Other votes that I reclassified into the appropriate one.  There weren’t many of them, but I threw out any Other votes that stated they had no stress as a leader since that wasn’t the point of the survey.  I also threw out any Other votes that wrote in multiple categories.  After cleaning things up, a total of 1369 votes were counted.

So without further ado, here are the results of the very first GSWAC survey:  What’s the #1 Stressor for Troop Leaders/Volunteers?

#1:  PARENTS

If you’re a volunteer, it’s probably no surprise to you that parents are easily the top cause of stress coming in at 40.3%.  If you browse Facebook groups such as Girl Scout Gab, it’ll become obvious based on the number of complaints and issues that are raised involving them.  I monitored the results as they came in, and interestingly enough, at one point parents got up to 44%, especially after the survey hit the Girl Scout Gab Facebook group.  Here are a few comments:

The parents believe that you have to do everything for them as a part of a Job they believe you have. This would be fine if we could just say that’s nice and ask them to leave the troop. However, council does not permit this and you have to keep monster parents that create frame [drama?], excessive amounts of work, and are the perfect antithesis of what Girls Scouts are.

I decided to disband a troop because I had no adult support. My second problem is when everyone regards GS as their last priority.

Parents who don’t communicate, parents who don’t sign girls up for events in a timely manner if at all, parents who want special treatment for their girls, parents who volunteer for troop roles and then don’t follow through, parents who sabotage their daughter’s efforts. I’ve got them all.

Sometimes the parent difficulty is because more parents want to attend than council guidelines for an event but usually not. Many parents are supportive but some procrastinate registration, do not communicate, are late, one set of divorced have sometimes put their daughter’s participation in the middle of their fight. Etc. It’s more work organizing parents than girls.

Parents can be a blessing or a curse! You get parents who want to spend the meeting talking loudly to helpers about things that are not appropriate for girls to hear. Then you have the parents who bring young kids and allow them to run wild -with you as the leader having to be the meanie by stopping them.  Then you have the parent who know everything and loudly proclaim that you are doing it all wrong -too many booth sales, don’t like the trips the girls chose, don’t like booth locations, don’t want to do ceremonies, don’t want their child to go anyplace.. of course there are the wonderful parents when it comes to sign up for refreshments after a ceremony that sign up for napkins, paper plates, plastic forks, paper cups, plastic spoons… er we need food to put on the plates and drinks to put in the cups… I had to ban all plastic and paper goods saying the troop had that covered. In 22 yrs I had one girl that was a bully -parents are the problem hands down!!!

Rarely does a girl ruin an event. It’s almost always a parent.

Parents who do not communicate at all. And others who do not realize you are a volunteer and treat you with very little respect or consideration.

Parents in crisis….drug addicted, divorcing, ill…. all with just enough time or sense to get their gals into Girl Scouts to give them stable, positive influences…but not enough time to respond to anything.

Parents not 1. following deadlines or not responding in a timely manner 2. not reading the information provided & asking questions that are answered in the information sent 3. failure to pick up cookies/fall product or turn in fall product or cookie money in timely manner. (and, even if it’s only a few parents in a Troop, the amount of time & energy these parents take from leaders is draining)

I see that lack of organization is also an option, but I selected Parental Issues since its primarily the parents who aren’t organized. It seems like this season as TCM [Troop Cookie Manager] every parent seems to think I should be able to cater to just them. Money turn in is every Wednesday, I will get a call on wednesday morning asking if they still owe, how much, how many cookies have they sold, etc. Its in the emails, and its in the messages, and yet I still get asked. Similar things with booths, I post weekly reminders and still I get asked if they have a booth, can they just pick up the cookies at school instead of coming to me, can they just keep everything until the next week, etc. It’s like whatever message I have, I have to speak it,one on one to each parent, or it doesn’t process. I see on this page other TCMs have similar experiences, so at least I know it isn’t just me.

#2: COUNCILS

In a somewhat distant second compared to parents, dealing with the local council is the most stressful thing for leaders at 18.4%.  But I daresay the most vitriolic comments were reserved for them.  Many of the complaints dealt with councils’ disorganization and poor “customer” (I still hate that word) service when it comes to responding to questions or issues.  Put on your oven mitts for this sample of comments!

While parental issues are probably my biggest stressor overall, I have to say that stupid stuff done by council staff has also been a significant contributor. For an organization that prides itself on developing leaders, our staff can often exhibit very poor leadership.

Our council has zero experience in leading a troop, sets our new leaders up with a bank account for cookie money and turns people loose. They also disbanded our service units several years ago, as much of our meeting time was spent discussing our frustrations with our CEO. Our council leadership is quite toxic.

My council has NO PROBLEM contacting me when they want money, but returning my phone calls when I want to get this “on-line” stuff resolved — never hear from them.

Also lack of support from council. Email us! But we will never respond back

To be honest, the lack of answers and turnover and council is equal to issues with parents.  the constant need to hound council is exhausting, but so is chasing parents constantly for answers, money for dues, and lack of help. We are not a babysitting service nor am I a paid worker that should be constantly keeping paid staff in line or accountable.

The local council is so disorganized it’s become a joke now among leaders and parents. They mess up every single event we try to register for and provide very little support to troops. We pretty much do everything on own now since they have lost our trust and we get so little support for them.

It’s a straight toss up between parents and lack of council support but I voted council because when you have parent issues you SHOULD be able to turn to council for advice and support but they aren’t there. We are on our own.

Council forgets that if they want to meet their numbers/quotas on girls, they should invest more in training and helping leaders. Leaders are a big part on whether a girl chooses to make scouts a priority against other activities and stay in Girl Scouts.

All council phones go directly to voice mail. You have to wait and pray for a response often not getting a response. Why can’t they answer their phones like any other company. Council’s role is to support the volunteer and if the volunteer can’t reach them then why are they there.

The Council turnover is the worst. Please stop hiring super young girls with zero business and GS background. You turn SU teams into babysitters. We spend an enormous amount of time training these new staff members and going in circles with all their “ideas” that they think are new. We have tried them and would like to move on. It’s impossible with novice staff interrupting our flow over and over.

Council acts like they don’t know what they are doing and always messing things up for everyone else. It is ridiculous that no one can seem to be organized.

Turnover is HORRIBLE

Lack of council support, that trickles down to the other things… training that teaches GS chat speak (“We want to make everyone a G.I.R.L- go getter, risktaker, etc” but little practical information [like], “Here’s some class management skills you can use with a group of girls”, “Here’s one way you can set up info in a troop binder”, “Here is a list of who to contact with what problems” (Drives me NUTS everything in my council goes through “customer service”) so then you have to wait for them to answer, wait to forward it on, then wait for that person to answer– and you have no idea where on the line it is when 2 weeks later you’ve still not heard anything. Additionally- issues with staff members who are not fully aware of programming and issues that leaders face.

As SU Event coordinator, I feel the stresses from all of our leaders when things don’t work the way they were told by last year’s person, or even more often, when they drive the 30 minutes to closest store and it isn’t open with no answered phone line to call and check before driving. We need communication – and while it has gotten miles better recently, we need it to keep going! Dependable hours at stores/service centers, someone whose job is to answer the phone and pass the message along to whomever needs it, and some way of checking up on training for volunteers so that most of the dumb questions get answered and the real questions can have time (in chats and email answers) would be my first items to fix. Thanks!

#3:  TROOP PROGRAMMING

Behind councils, troop programming came in at 13%.  This category encompasses how to run meetings, how to do badges or journeys, or pretty much anything involving how to deliver our program to girls.  There weren’t a lot of comments associated with those who chose this answer.  Of those, many asked for more older girl programming and badges.

I would love more training on how to run/schedule badges, and how to handle inter-girl dynamics in a troop, rather than how to fill out forms and what rules to follow. I can figure out that part myself. I don’t know how to deal with cliques and backstabbing and how to organize and keep on track an activity surrounding it. Where are the new Cadette journeys? How do I run these more complex badges in a single meeting? I’ve needed this kind of help for years.

I have a very small older girl troop. I would love to have a list of recommended resource people for badges or journeys for which a requirement might be “talk to someone about such and such.”  Would also like a contact list of other older girl troops outside of my SU that I might team up with for these things. People are busy, and it would be great if they could talk to several troops at once (and for the girls to meet other older scouts.

I also don’t really know what I am doing with the Journeys, even though I have worked with them for about 7 years. Looking through them, I think it would take a while to properly complete one, yet I know troops that do several in a year, so I think one or the other of us are not really using Journeys the way they were intended. I guess what it comes down to is I just don’t get them, even though our Council has had training to try to break them down for us. I sometimes get the sense that Council staff doesn’t really know what they are supposed to do with them either.

My troop is testing new Space Science badge and the resources made planning SO easy. Better meeting plans and road maps for the year would really help ease the mental burden of planning.

New STEM journeys for Brownies and Jrs are extremely stressful. They take too long to complete as well. I want to do them, but there just isn’t enough time.

#4:  TROOP ORGANIZATION

This is all about the logistics of running a troop whether it be finances, paperwork, managing cookie season, or anything of that sort.  I personally expected this to be higher than programming.   But it came in 4th at 11.1%.   I sorted a few Other votes into this one because they talked about how time consuming it is in general to be a volunteer.  Here are some thoughts from this category:

It is hard to narrow down, I put troop organization because I would say that time is my biggest stressor. It takes time to keep up with the paperwork, finances, etc. It takes time to plan meetings and try to make the journeys fun. It takes time to deal with girl behavior, time to track down parents and get answers, time to follow up that co-leader is doing what they agreed to. It takes time to go to council and try to find an answer to your question when it gets bounced from dept. to dept and it takes time for trainings. If I did not have some freedom at my full time job, I would not have the TIME to handle any of it.

It’s really just the amount of time I spend as leader and tcm [troop cookie manager]. The girls want to do so many things, it takes a lot of planning and money- figuring, even after handing over much of the duties to the girls. Usually I’ll get help if I really stress that I need the parents for a thing (ski day was amazing), but sometimes I get attitude from one mom who just doesn’t get it.

I’m not a money person (it’s just not my forte) but there’s no way to delegate all financial responsibility to another person.

Too much red tape! I understand safety but the insurance and permission slips are overboard. Also just as frustrating is lack of parent appreciation and follow through with all the paperwork and deadlines.

#5:  THE GIRLS

At first this answer might seem a little off-putting to some, but like parents, dealing with girl behavior is a hot topic in Facebook groups.  In some cases, it’s tied to the parents – but not necessarily.  Girls took up only 7.5% of the votes, but they seemed to come with more comments and further explanation:

Girls are hard to get to listen or to work together had to send one home and now she is encouraging others to quit

Girls are in 9th grade. Their lack of response, changing minds, etc. is frustrating. Their moms allow it to be even more frustrating by not responding, not making girls follow through, and making excuses.

Much of the problem girl behavior we experience is due to learning difficulties (ADHD, autism, etc.) and mental health issues (anxiety, depression, etc.).

As the girls are getting older and still in GS “to be with friends” and not too interested in all that GS has to offer-treats meetings like play-dates.

Trying to make things girl led when the girls just want to chat with each other. Drives me crazy.

We want this to be more girl led, since they are Cadettes. I am finding that many aren’t interested in leading.

#6:  OTHER LEADERS/VOLUNTEERS IN THE TROOP

I personally thought this one would be higher since adults (as parents) are by far the biggest cause of stress, but it only came in at 5.3%.  The few comments that were shared were specific incidents that had happened in their troop.

#7:  LACK OF SERVICE UNIT SUPPORT

The lack of support by service units rounded out the list at 3.6%.  The comments that were shared had to do with stubborn team members who had served forever and unwilling to do things differently, cliques, inactive service units, or the fact that their council has no service units in the first place.

#8:  OTHER

After reviewing what had been written for Other votes and reclassifying them, there were 10 entries left.  They included the lack of consistency from GSUSA and councils; overall communication issues between parents, councils, and co-leaders (I wasn’t sure where to include this so I left it as Other); GSUSA Leadership; GSUSA’s choice of programming/badges (especially for older girls); GSUSA’s constant changes and moving away from basics; inconsistent messaging; and a few of just frustration in general:

Trying to do it all with little support from troop parents and other SU volunteers.  I do all the programming and paperwork including cookies for my troop. I’m also a SU (community) volunteer on an under-staffed team (we have 3 positions filled) and do much of the SU Mgr responsibilities even though that’s not my role. I’m also a new leader mentor and run events for the SU (and troop). I’ve been volunteering for 13 years now and my workload is close to fulltime at this point.

Thank you if you participated in this poll!  Feel free to use or share these survey results.  I do plan on creating more surveys in the future, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know either via the comment section or by contacting me via email at amy@dawgtoons.com.