I Wrote a Strongly Worded Letter

Yes, believe it or not.  I did, and the recipients were the National Board, Karen Layng (our National President), and Judith Batty (our interim National CEO).  Again.  But this time, it was regarding Volunteer Systems 2.0 (or as I’ve called it in the past, CEI).  Last week, I got a wild hair and posted an open letter to the NB in the Convention Chat Facebook group basically stating that they need to get off their heinies and do something about how poorly the registration process is designed and executed in Volunteer Systems 2.0 because it’s costing us members.   It was very off-the-cuff.  I am not a big fan of open letters but I just felt like getting it off my chest.  A couple of people encouraged me to send it to the National Board office, but I declined because I felt like I’d get ignored and therefore it would be a waste of time.  The thinking was (and still is) that if council CEOs and staff are getting blown off regarding VS 2.0, then of course I would be too.

But, over the weekend I suddenly had a change of heart and felt the urge to rewrite the open letter and send it.  I know nothing will come of it, but it made me feel better to write and get my frustrations out.  I also weighed whether to post it here and was siding on not bothering, but what the heck.  Things are slow on the GSWAC (Not a Council) blog front and probably will be for a while, if not from here on out.

So without further adieu:

To the National Board, Karen Layng, and Judith Batty:

I am writing to express my disappointment, displeasure, and frustration regarding Volunteer Systems 2.0.  As you know, VS 2.0 rolled out in November of 2020, and since then, it has been filled with bugs that have taken forever to fix – if they’re even fixed at all.  Lately, the issues with member registration have come to the forefront and are causing a Movement-wide crisis.

As a volunteer, I’m a leader for two troops, and I also serve on my service unit team in a variety of roles, one being the “go to” person when it comes to computer related questions due to my background in IT.  A few weeks ago, a leader from our service unit contacted me on a Saturday night asking for help because her parents, who had never registered before, were having issues doing so.  They called her expressing their frustration, and after attempting to figure it out on her own, she got in touch with me.  I spent 15 minutes texting back and forth before I finally called the leader directly because of the complications we were encountering.  I then spent 30 more minutes on the phone attempting to find a workaround to this issue.  And then, there was a bug with that workaround, so we had to find a workaround to the workaround.

Additionally, our service unit realized that due to the catastrophic impact of COVID-19 on our membership numbers, we needed to place a major emphasis on recruiting this fall.  We all pulled together to lay out an “all in” plan, and we put a large amount of time and energy toward executing it.  One aspect of this plan involved a recruitment event. We heard ahead of time that there were issues with the VS 2.0 registration process, so just in case, we had parents fill out paper interest forms because we wanted to follow up to make sure nobody fell through the cracks.  Parents who attempted to register on-site ran into issues. We also gave direction to try to register at home.  A day later, one of the parents called my Service Unit Manger to complain that she had gotten so frustrated with the registration process that she stopped trying. My SUM promised that she’d get someone from the council staff to follow up with her.  So now, council staff are having to take additional time to tend to something that should have been an easy step in VS 2.0.  A week after our well-attended recruiting event with enthusiastic parents and girls (which included two weeks of promotion in schools, social media, and well placed yard signs), I logged into the Looker system to see how many new members registered in the past two weeks.  We have one adult and two girls.  Let me state this again – one adult and two girls.  I cannot tell you how livid I was when I saw how much energy we put into this recruiting plan only for what I believe are issues with VS 2.0 registration to wreck it.

I also communicate with volunteers around the country, and they too are frustrated with the registration process and fear we are losing potential members due to it.  If a parent gets stuck while registering, they very likely could say forget it without contacting anyone at the council, and then that’s one more girl we’ve lost due to the complications and bugs inherent in VS 2.0.  I cringe wondering how many times this has already happened throughout the country.

And I’m only relaying what I’m seeing as an end user of VS 2.0.  I have heard that the council side of the equation is even worse.  Plus, I am just concentrating on the registration process in this letter to you. I’m not even touching on other issues with GSEvents and other components.  My letter is long enough as it is.  But the fact that of all things – member registration – is a complicated and unworkable process is beyond all comprehension.  We cannot afford for this to happen due to our critically low numbers.

National Board members need to drop what they are doing to get to the bottom of why these issues were not fixed IMMEDIATELY when they were discovered and why such a breakdown is occurring in the first place.  I cannot imagine that there is ANYTHING more mission critical than this.

In my previous IT job, I worked with developers and rolled out applications worldwide.  When bugs arose, they were fixed as soon as possible.  If critical bugs surfaced, we stopped in our tracks and worked on the problem WITHOUT DELAY until it was fixed and in production.  Months and months and months passing before bugs are fixed is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE, no matter how “little” they are. Is anyone on the board asking why we have such a dysfunctional relationship with our developers and consultants, especially considering the large amounts of money we’re paying for their services?

I don’t believe any National Board member would ever allow something of this magnitude to go on at his or her place of business.  I take a lot of pride being a Girl Scout alumna and volunteer, but it is very embarrassing when I have to hem and haw to a frustrated parent who WANTS TO JOIN because our registration system is problematic, hard to navigate, and unintuitive.  I truly feel for council staff who have to use up valuable time to try to workaround things that are out of their control, not to mention dealing with irritated volunteers and parents. We are short staffed enough as it is without running off overworked staffers.

What boggles my mind is not only does GSUSA deliver a product that is deficient in basic functionality, it coerces councils to use VS 2.0 by threatening their charters.  And to add insult to injury, councils have to pay large amounts of money to be sabotaged.  I cannot imagine the stress council CEOs and staff are going through.  They must have the patience of Job.

I would like to remind the National Board of its commitment statement issued before the 2020 National Council Session.  The first three promises were:

1)     “Ensure the long-term sustainability of Girl Scouts….” You can’t do that when we can’t register members.

2)     “Remain focused on Girl Scout membership growth so that every girl in the U.S. has the opportunity to join our Movement….” You can’t do that either when we can’t register them.

3)     “Champion and protect our Movement’s federated model….” Councils will fail and go under when we can’t register members.

I personally support a council-wide technology platform because it makes sense and has the potential to bring benefits to the Movement.  However, our current platform is much like a big chain attached to an anchor around our necks, and it is dragging all of us down between its enormous cost and just flat out not working. It will bankrupt us at the rate we’re going – both nationally and locally.

To show that I want to be part of the solution rather than just complaining with nothing to show for it, I would like to offer my services for testing, serving on a committee, or whatever else is needed from a volunteer standpoint.

Thank you for your time and service to Girl Scouting.

Yours in Girl Scouting,

Amy M. Brown
GSSC-MM
Troop 2562 and Trailblazer M2M Co-Leader
Service Unit 639 Team Member