April 27 2022

I Wrote a Sternly Worded Letter

National Governance, National Operations    6 Comments    , , , , , ,

Yesterday, I opened my mailbox to find a letter from GSUSA Headquarters! I thought at first that it was the long-expected Cease and Desist, but then I spotted the words “Invest in Girl Scouts. Change the World” on the front, and I realized it was a solicitation for donations.  A business reply envelope was included.  I decided then that this would be a good opportunity to send a sternly worded letter up to NYC. I’ve tried to communicate my message via this blog and email, so why not snail mail?  Maybe I’ll attempt sky writing next.  I realize this letter will probably go no further than the intern who opens up the envelope, but perhaps they’ll enjoy it at the very least.

Notice that I didn’t write a strongly worded letter but a sternly one.  There is a difference.  Sternly isn’t quite as high on the nuclear scale.

Here’s my letter.  If you’re a regular reader of my blog, there’s nothing new in it other than some legal dollar amounts. Continue reading

April 18 2022

The Emphasis on Network Alignment

National Governance, Opinions    2 Comments    , , , , , , , ,

When I first started writing the Tough Cookies Revisited paper, it originally contained much more integrated commentary throughout the text. I eventually decided to go a more formal route and instead presented an objective timeline and survey results with a small section dedicated to my personal thoughts at the end. So now that a few months have passed since I published it, I wanted to flesh out a couple of topics.  Because you know, forty pages wasn’t long enough to explore everything. 😉

If you haven’t read the paper yet, you may want to in order to give this post a little more context. But I know not everybody is down with reading a forty page paper, so I’ll try to summarize things as I go.

The Core Business Strategy was a plan to completely overhaul and redefine Girl Scouting from top to bottom and included parts such as council mergers, a streamline of governance, a new volunteer onboarding and support system, and a major shift in the national programming model. Its development began in 2004 with implementation starting soon after that. Changes happened quickly. Continue reading