October 31 2022

The First Step

Traditional Stuff    2 Comments    ,

Since I launched this blog in 2014, I’ve always made it a point to post something on March 12th and October 31st for obvious reasons. Admittedly, sometimes the date sneaks up on me, and I scramble to try to find something at the last minute.  I usually look to copies of Leader Magazine or various other books and what not to see if something inspires me.  I came across this short blurb in the October 1931 edition of Leader Magazine, and I found it especially apropos, especially lately. Continue reading

October 19 2022

MacKenzie Scott’s $84.5 Million Donation

National Operations    7 Comments    , ,

The news broke yesterday about billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott’s $84.5 million donation to Girl Scouts.  The money will be divided between GSUSA and 29 councils. One article makes it sound like the councils haven’t been chosen yet, but another one names the Southern Arizona council as a recipient.  The article doesn’t state how much each council will receive, but the Southern Arizona council is listed as receiving $1.4 million.

How much does that leave GSUSA?  Doing the math, $1.5 million x 29 councils = $43.5 million.  I’ve seen reports where some councils received more than $2 million (and even over $4 million), so if you bump that up to $60 million going toward councils, that leaves GSUSA with $24.5 million. Note that this is TOTAL conjecture on my part and don’t quote me. Continue reading

October 2 2022

Daisy Petal Plans from VTK

Troop Leader Resources    4 Comments    , ,

I’ve served as a mentor to new leaders in our service unit for a few years now, and to get right to the point, the Volunteer Toolkit isn’t for everybody as we all know.  It’s a horse that we’ve beaten to death, so I’m not going to go into its shortcomings and why some new leaders don’t use it. But they should have the opportunity to see the activity plans that are available as a programming option, so to help them out, I pulled them down and consolidated all of them into one document:

Daisy Petal Plans

It features the newly revised petal plans. It comes in at a hefty 61 pages, so get your printer in shape if you want a hard copy. I find it crazy that I received a 4 page document of petal ideas when I started as a Daisy leader in 2010, and now we’re at a 61 page scripted meeting plan. Times change, I guess.

If you see anything that needs to be edited, please let me know. Continue reading