Welcome to Our New Girl Scout Overlord

I recently started a part time job. I don’t get a devoted break, so I keep my phone in my pocket and check it briefly from time to time just in case I get a call from the school or my husband. Last week, my phone started blowing up. I was right in the middle of something and couldn’t check it. The phone kept going off, and finally I stopped what I was doing because I was afraid something had happened and there was an emergency. Lo and behold, many friends sent me this news:

I stared at the screen shocked at what I was reading, but I had to get back to my job. After I got home, I read the tons of messages I had received to find out that Sofia Chang, the National CEO, had stepped down suddenly, and Bonnie Barczykowski (who I shall now refer to as Bonnie B. since I can’t pronounce her last name), the former CEO of the Eastern Missouri council, was tabbed as the new head honcho. Some of my friends asked me if I had gotten a heads-up that something like this was in the works, but I answered no and that this came out of nowhere.

Sofia Chang, we hardly knew ye. She was announced as CEO in December of 2021 and only lasted a little over a year.

Looking back, these women have served as CEO in the span of my 13 year volunteer experience:

• Kathy Cloninger
• Ana Maria Chávez
• Sylvia Acevedo
• Judith Batty (interim for 16 months)
• Sofia Chang

Six National CEOs when you include Bonnie B. Houston, we have a problem.

As it’s been done many, many times, we like to say that we’re going to move on from current issues and problems and attempt to do so by throwing the previous leadership under the bus. The conversation usually goes something like this: “We’re under new management now, and things will be different. So stop being negative and instead, look to the future.”

Rinse and repeat.

While I agree with the overall sentiment that you shouldn’t dwell on what’s happened in the past and let it dictate your attitude, I don’t believe just throwing out the answer that we’re “moving on” without any sort of critical study of what’s gone wrong and where things stand currently solves anything. I hope that’s not our plan. Most issues don’t disappear just because someone new shows up.

I revisited what I submitted to a survey for the National CEO search after AMC resigned in this post from September of 2016. It was discouraging:

I believe that one of the hardest challenges the National CEO will face is repairing the damaged relationships between GSUSA, councils, and volunteers.  There is a divide as large as the Grand Canyon between all three from what I have witnessed and experienced.  Name brands can be shored up, financial situations can be fixed, and programming can be changed, but relationships are the hardest ones to mend when trust has eroded away.  This is what has happened from my personal observations.  I was a Scout from Brownies up to Senior/Gold Award in the 80s, and when I came back as a volunteer in 2010 after being out of pocket all of those years, I stepped into a distrusting and cynical environment.  Those that were concerned and upset eventually left out of discouragement, and the ones left became detached.  New volunteers that enter this environment are disengaged – not out of bitterness since they have no history of what went on, but because there’s no relationship there.

I realize the change that happened in 2004 was supposed to unify Girl Scouts councils and bring them under one umbrella.  I can understand that the belief was that each council was operating as its own unit, and therefore there was no unified message.  However, that disconnect has now shifted to volunteers, who are making up a lot of their own programming away from what GSUSA is promoting as official or even going back to retired programming – like a “black market” if you will.

I feel that if this trust can be repaired through a variety of different avenues – then any other challenges will be quickly and successfully met.

If anything, I think the issue has gotten worse. Now council leadership is angered where that wasn’t necessarily the case in 2016. We’ve got an expensive boondoggle of an IT platform that’s barely functional, and there’s an outstanding lawsuit hanging out there as a result. Volunteer anger has been replaced with complete disengagement about the future of Girl Scouting and the big picture. We’re in our own troop bubbles. Are future Greenbloods being created? I don’t think very many of them are, and that’s going to be a big problem down the road on many levels. But that’s what happens when you change your focus from a membership organization that’s all in this together to a customer-based model where you see volunteers, parents, and girls as static and interchangeable consumers of a product.

Since 2016, I figured out the name of the solution, and it’s called the democratic process. I’ve written about it extensively since 2019 including a white paper. I’m the administrator and one of the writers for the website GirlScoutGovernance.com which was founded to raise awareness of the democratic process and the importance of governance in Girl Scouting on both the national and council level. I know I’m thought of as a troublemaker by some, and I’ve been known to throw a tantrum or two through the years, but I really do hope that I’m contributing to making things better by shining a spotlight on what needs to be fixed, and if possible, put forth a solution.

Recently, the agenda for the 2023 National Council Session (NCS) was released, and you can imagine my shock when I saw that the discussion topic will be “The Democratic Process and the Delegate Voice.” As you may or may not know, I wrote a NCS proposal last year that my council sponsored called “Ensuring the Importance and Effectiveness of the Democratic Process in the Movement.“ We were one council endorsement short getting it on the agenda. I was devastated. But this was a good thing. I originally wanted to write it as a NCS discussion topic instead of what it ended up being which involved creation of a task force to study the democratic process. However, at the time, one of the criteria for a NCS discussion topic was that it needed to be one of interest to girls. I figured my council would push back on it, so instead, I came about it from a different vantage point with the hope that it would serve as a back door to discussion about the democratic process and the role it should play in Girl Scouting. That’s really what needs to happen. And it needs to happen NOW and not in 2026 like my task group proposal suggested. So when I saw that the discussion topic was about the democratic process and that an advisory team would be gathering the results, I was ecstatic because this was my original dream. I’ll write more about this closer to the NCS.

I have to admit that once again I am crossing my fingers that we have finally found someone who will lead us out of our current quagmire. Frankly, our National Board has collectively had a horrible track record over the past two decades when it comes to decision-making, and it’s looked the other way when there were meltdowns in the Movement. It’s been slapped in the face multiple times and acted in the short term only to go back to sleep once the hubbub died down. I have to have the hope that eventually they will get it right. There is no other option.

Good luck, Bonnie B. Hope springs eternal….