A Follow Up to My Membership Cards Posts

Back in December of 2020, I noticed that the membership cards printed from Volunteer Systems 2.0 did not feature Juliette Low’s name as Founder as all credentials should according to the GSUSA Constitution in Article VIII/Credentials, Section 4:

4. Charters and other credentials shall be issued for no more than six years. Certificates of membership shall be issued for annual, lifetime, or other applicable periods. All the credentials shall bear the name of Juliette Low.

I reported the issue to GSUSA’s Customer Care and never heard back.

A couple of months later, I created a template out of Avery business cards that you could print on your own if you UNOFFICIALLY wanted more OFFICIAL looking cards than the ones provided in VS 2.0.

Fast forward a couple more months to August of 2021, and after still not receiving a response from GSUSA, I wrote the National Board office and reported that Juliette Low not being listed as Founder on the membership cards was technically a violation of the Constitution. The response I received stated they’d look into the matter, but I never heard anything else after that.

So here we are over two years later, and while checking on something in myGS, I wondered if the cards had ever been fixed. At first glance, the cards that are displayed in the dashboard didn’t seem much different, but I thought I’d follow the process all the way through to make sure that was the case before I wrote the National Board office again. After selecting the cards to print, a PDF was generated which I then downloaded. And lo and behold, look at them now!

I dug up my oldest daughter’s Lifetime Membership letter from this past summer, and the card included in hers lists Juliette Low as Founder as well!

I know I have taken GSUSA and the National Board to task many times over the course of my blog, but I do give credit where credit is due. I am very pleased to see that they fixed the error. They also added “Girl Scouts of the USA” and gray cut lines as I originally suggested.

However, about that last sentence in Section 4 of the Constitution: “All the credentials shall bear the name of Juliette Low.” This sentence didn’t sit right with me the first time I wrote about it in 2020, and it still nagged at me when I revisited it. My inner Sheldon went down a rabbit hole to see if this sentence was always worded this awkwardly, and sure enough, I found a typo.  In the January 2014 edition of the Blue Book, the language was:

4. Charters and other credentials shall be issued for no more than six years. Certificates of membership shall be issued for no more than one year, except for lifetime membership. All credentials shall bear the name of Juliette Low.

But it was amended in the February 2015 edition to reflect changes made at the 2014 National Council Session:

4. Charters and other credentials shall be issued for no more than six years. Certificates of membership shall be issued for annual, lifetime, or other applicable periods. All the credentials shall bear the name of Juliette Low.

The second sentence was amended due to the “Flexibility of Dues and Registration Practices” proposal passing, and I’m assuming the additional “the” was mistakenly added in the third sentence when the edit was made.

I have reported this to the National Board office. I’ve always wanted to have a hand in the Blue Book, so I suppose this is my moment in time. If you’re claiming that typos don’t count, I’m ignoring you. I’ll take it where I can get it.