The Delegate Formula Proposal Revisited
National Governance 3 Comments 
2023 NCS, 2026 NCS, delegate, farthest north council, governance, gsusa, national board, national delegate
A month has almost passed since the NCS, and I wanted to circle back to the delegate formula proposal that was voted down and review a few points. In case you missed it, I had the honor of serving on the resource team for the Farthest North council who sponsored the proposal. In this post however, I am NOT speaking for Farthest North in ANY capacity but only sharing my own personal thoughts. I’m not rehashing this out of any sort of sour grapes but because I’m a governance nerd, and I like talking about this kind of thing. I hope you other governance nerds out there will enjoy the discussion from my point of view.
Personally, I feel like I did my best within the framework and circumstances that I was handed. It wasn’t the easiest proposal to wrap your mind around. It involved everybody’s favorite subject — math — and it also asked delegates to revisit a decision made by the National Council back in 2008. Some of the delegates weren’t even born then as one pointed out rather bluntly during the NCS. I could read the room before I even got to the NCS, and the voting went the way I thought it would go (Yes: 228 | No: 650 | Votes cast: 878), although I also wouldn’t have been surprised if a motion had been made to send the proposal to a committee (aka the Movement Governance Task Group).
If you have a proposal that GSUSA doesn’t support, you’re behind the eight ball right off the bat, because a good chunk of National Delegates will automatically support GSUSA’s position no matter what it is. I know some of you either won’t believe me when I say this (or don’t want to believe me), but it’s true. I know this because my council was guilty of it under our former leadership in 2017. We had a number of delegates who didn’t take any of it seriously and just went with what GSUSA supported because that was the easiest thing to do. Our discussion of the proposals in our two hour training class took all of 10 minutes (if that). It would have been five minutes if I hadn’t asked a few questions. One National Delegate from that year even admitted to me later that she didn’t even read any of the documents. I’ve heard from some of you recently regarding your delegations, and this same thing is still going on today in other councils. Honestly, I don’t know what to do about it, because I feel a lot of this comes down to the attitude of the CEO for that council. If a council CEO doesn’t care about the NCS (or governance in general), then most likely, the delegation isn’t going to be engaged as a whole. They’ll be rubberstampers because they’ll defer to who they view as “authority,” which in their case is GSUSA.
That voting bloc aside, I think the proposal failed for a couple of reasons. First, I believe a good number of delegates just didn’t get the concept of the proposal. They didn’t understand how the delegate formula works. I had a feeling this would be the case, so I attempted to educate delegates on how it works on both the recorded webinar and my blog post, but either some delegates didn’t watch or read the material, or maybe they did and it just didn’t click. This was evidenced by the amendment brought forward while the proposal was on the floor that changed the delegate formula number from 3,500 girls to 2,500 (instead of 1,000). There was also a delegate who came to the interrupting microphone wanting us to explain how the delegate formula number worked because she stated that delegates weren’t following what was going on. I did my best in the short time that I had at the mic, but frankly, it’s a hard task to try to explain it in just a few sentences in front of thousands of people. If a delegate didn’t understand it by the time the NCS rolled around for whatever reason, I felt it unlikely that any attempt to explain it in a quick statement at the NCS would make a difference. I tried though.
But ultimately, for a lot of delegates, the proposal came down to whether or not they felt like 1,500 was too high for the number of National Council members. We didn’t want the debate to head in that direction, but I knew it was inevitable. And this is where “the principle of it” comes in. Voting in favor of this proposal to honor the wishes of the 2008 National Council to keep the size of the National Council as close to 1,500 meant you were voting out of principle. But the average person doesn’t make decisions based on principles. I’m sure this would make a great case study for a social scientist and they could delve into the why, but my guess is that going with the principle of the matter has to do with seeing the big picture. And most people in this world aren’t big picture thinkers. Instead, they focus on the details, like saying it’ll cost more money to send more delegates (which was stated ad nauseam at the mics).
If I could study the voting patterns, I have a feeling pro and con votes divided down council size lines for the most part. I heard more support from delegates in smaller councils than I did larger ones. One delegate from a very large council stated in the delegate website that she wouldn’t be voting for it because she felt that 16 delegates could effectively serve her council and any more would just be a waste of money. And actually, I see her point. Using 1,000 girls as the delegate formula would have raised the number of that council’s delegates to approximately 23. Is there really a difference between 16 and 23 delegates when it comes to representing voices? Well, not really. But if you’re from a council that only has 3 or 4 delegates, then adding one or two more delegates WOULD help. So this leads me to ask – are delegates supposed to be voting for what’s best for their council, or for the Movement? If you don’t know the answer, it’s supposed to be the Movement. This needs to be emphasized in delegate training (among other things).
The answer from GSUSA’s resource team about making a decision on National Council size after consulting with councils on NCS finances just hung a big responsibility around GSUSA and the National Board’s neck whether they realize it or not. I personally felt like stating outright that they purposely lowered the number of National Council members out of concern for council finances didn’t hold much water when the decision was made to host the NCS at Walt Disney World (cha-ching $$). But if that was really the case, then going forward, GSUSA and the National Board now have the obligation to find inexpensive cities to host the NCS because council finances will ALWAYS be a concern from here on out. All this considered, could that be what is partly driving the question about decoupling the NCS from the “Girl Event?”
Most likely, the 2026 NCS will have under 1,000 National Council members again because I believe GSUSA will continue to use 1,500 girls as the delegate formula number. And even assuming a confident 4.7% increase in membership for both MY2023 and MY2024, it still won’t be enough to get the number of National Council members over 1,000.
I didn’t mention this in any of the webinars or FAQs, but what really triggered this proposal was the fact that the number of National Council members fell below 1,000. If the number had stayed even slightly above 1,000 (even though it’s not close to 1,500), I don’t think the proposal would have ever been written, and it most likely wouldn’t have received 21 council endorsements. Personally, I’d like to see a bottom limit added to the number of National Council members. Right now, there really isn’t one except for the static 369 limitation based on the lowest number possible (2 plus 1 for each council + 2 plus 1 for USAGSO + 33 NB & NBDC members). So a future proposal could set a range of National Council members (my preference being between 1,000 and 1,500) as an example of creating a bottom limit. Another idea that’s been thrown out there is to raise the number of initial delegates from three to four which would help out smaller councils without being a monetary burden to larger ones.
Will the 2026 NCS see a sequel to this proposal? I think it’s a toss-up, because ultimately, it’ll be the National Board’s decision whether or not they want to revisit the delegate formula because it requires a change to the GSUSA Constitution. And when it comes to proposals involving the Constitution, the National Board has sole authority over whether or not they end up on the NCS agenda or not. The only reason this proposal was added was due to a lot of pushback from CEOs after their conference last November over a handful of Constitutional proposals that were initially turned down for the NCS agenda. This one originally didn’t make the cut.
Even though this proposal didn’t pass, there is a lesson to be learned from it. Let what happened to the 2008 National Council be a WARNING to any council delegate out there contemplating council bylaw amendments. LITERAL WORDS MATTER. NEVER leave out wording just because you think everybody is on the same page. EVER. Assumptions do not make for good governance. The 2008 National Council’s fatal mistake was not adding the words “as close as possible” back into the Constitution and just assuming future National Boards and GSUSA would honor its decision. Intentions need to be put IN WRITING. If you see a loophole in a bylaw amendment, CLOSE IT, and DO NOT FALL FOR “PROMISES.” When it comes to governance, the only REAL promise is the one in WRITING.
As I have said before to you privately (and recognizing I’m armchair quarterbacking in retrospect), I believe that the whole delegate formula proposal distracted from the most important and very real issue of setting the optimal size of the NCS. The National Board already has the power to adjust the formula, so the whole part of the FN proposal to adjust the formula was simply unnecessary and WAS distracting (because, you know, MATH). I think there would have been better understanding if the proposal had simply focused on establishing the ideal size of the NCS, by adopting language that was part of the proposal, “as close to ___.” We would have gotten a “clean” vote on the NCS size without confusion about the way the formula works.
Now, although I am one who believes the NCS *should* be as close to 1500 as possible ), I do think it’s appropriate for the NCS to revisit the ideal size from time to time. So, I don’t believe in this case any “principle” of honoring what the 2008 NCS said was involved — other than that the National Board *should* have been honoring that number already rather than steadily moving the size of the delegate body down despite the action of the 2008 NCS. But there’s no principle that says the NCS of one triennium *must* abide by a decision made by an earlier triennium’s NCS. In fact, how else should such a decision to reverse a previous decision by an NCS be made? By the NCS itself, not by the National Board. Now the 2023 NCS has both rejected the idea of the ideal size of the NCS being as close to 1500 as possible and, in essence, has said the National Board can do as it wishes with the formula (including, if they choose, continuing to make the delegate body smaller and smaller until it nearly disappears altogether). We need to respect that NCS decision, at least for a while, and then collectively take any corrective action that may be needed.
As far as adding back in the “as close to” words back in 2008, all of us who have been delegates know that getting an amendment on the floor to be debated is a miracle of its very own — and the bottom line is, likely someone called the question before there was even a chance to introduce another amendment to put back in “as close as” or similar language. For you to say now what the 2008 NCS should have done then is simply unrealistic. The 2008 NCS did the best they could under the circumstances to get the number set at 1500 instead of 1000 — just as this NCS did the best they could on a number of other issues where amendments desired by some never made it to the floor for debate.
I used the word “principle” for lack of a better word. Technically, the National Board and GSUSA were following the Constitution to the letter these past 15 years when it came to establishing the size of the National Council, so there was no legality to the argument to honor the wishes of the 2008 National Council.
Unfortunately, we’re at the mercy of the National Board for that since it would involve a Constitutional amendment. I think it would take an extremely persuasive proposal or the Movement Governance Task Group deciding to study the matter to take it back up. Perhaps enough discussion regarding hearing from enough voices made an impression.
Good comments, Marty.