My More Honest Thoughts About Governance in 2023

I haven’t written much of anything with substance lately, but I had an epiphany and had to get this out there. Recently, there have been announcements about the Movement Governance Advisory Team (MGAT) and National Council Session (NCS) Advisory Team, and I have been dealing with a lot of wildly swinging emotions about governance in general. Normal people have wildly swinging emotions about run of the mill stuff, but not me. No, I have them about governance in Girl Scouting. Man, I’m weird. Anyway, I didn’t apply for either one of the committees for a variety of reasons that I won’t share here, but there was something else that I couldn’t put my finger on that’s been bugging me lately. Finally I realized that I have not been true to myself these past few months. After the NCS, I wrote what I thought was a positive spin on where we stood with national governance. However, I left out some of my full and complete thoughts because I’ve been getting pressure to scale back my writing because it’s supposedly being viewed as too heavy-handed by some folks. Well, I tried that. But sitting on my thoughts isn’t being true to myself, and I’ve always said that if I ever got to the point that I was being fake or kowtowing that I would shut down the blog. I actually considered it recently because I do feel like I’ve run the gamut on a lot of topics. I also want to give the new leadership a chance to fix things but I know it’ll take some time to turn it around. So we’ll see where I go from here.

But back to the wildly swinging emotions. I alluded to it in my previous blog post about the NCS, but what I didn’t share in July was that when I walked out of the NCS, I told myself that was the last one I would be attending. I felt completely out of place and as if I didn’t fit in with the organization anymore. Or maybe I never fit in. I wasn’t sure. However, as the week in Orlando progressed, I talked to some folks who were very encouraging about the work I’ve done through the years, so that was a nice pick-me-up. But that offbeat feeling still lingered in the back of my mind as the weeks and months passed, and I wondered why I felt that way.

When it comes to governance, I believe in the democratic process for the mere fact that it makes sense. Basically, the ones in charge should sincerely listen to all points of view before coming to any major decisions. That’s it. It boils down to communication. When I wrote my white paper five years ago, I believed the death of the democratic process was at the heart of the problems of our organization and rebuilding it would be the answer. Through the years, I’ve watched things play out and had a few conversations that make me second guess if it’s even realistic to build back what I envisioned in my white paper.

I also believe that our organization’s Constitution and governance documents are similar to the U.S. Constitution in that there are a variety of checks & balances built into them to prevent abuses of power. Or at least they used to be there. It was restructured to the form we know now in 1957, and while I’m no scholar on governance and admittedly don’t have a lot of experience in it outside of Girl Scouting, I think our Constitution is solid for the most part. However, some of these checks & balances have been chipped away at since 1957, so now there are holes.

I also believe that good governance means you close loopholes in your governing documents. This is usually where I butt heads with folks. When I point out loopholes and explain how they can be exploited, I am sometimes accused of being “negative” or they believe I’m assuming the worst intentions of people. Well, I hate to break it to you all, but Girl Scouts isn’t immune to the ills of society. Not everybody has the best intentions at heart when it comes to our organization. I’ve personally seen it with my own eyes. Or even forgetting that – maybe it’s not that people have evil aspirations but instead hold ill-fated and flawed thought processes that will lead to bad outcomes. I don’t see pointing out loopholes as being negative but instead see it as a sort of risk management. Your governance documents should be watertight to protect your organization against the worst case scenario. My pointing this out is not meant to be personal and shouldn’t be taken as such. Maybe I missed my calling in life and I should have been an attorney shoring up governance documents. Plus I could have been paid big bucks to write strongly worded letters. But I digress.

So for a few years now, I’ve been wondering – now that a lot of power has been stripped away, what’s the point of the National Council as it stands now? It’s supposed to represent the voice of the membership and per the Constitution, it’s “the coordinating head of the Girl Scout Movement in the United States.” Does it succeed at living up to this? Not even close in my opinion.

In the past, I put my eggs in the membership basket hoping that volunteers would rally to the cause and become involved in governance to right the ship. Through the years, I have found that by and large, most volunteers are completely apathetic about governance until something catastrophic happens like the announcement of a camp sale, and then they desperately scramble trying to pick up the pieces. But usually, the state of their council’s governance structure is too dysfunctional for a variety of reasons and there are too many hurdles to overcome. Crash courses in parliamentary procedure only go so far. The exception to this story is the Heart of the Hudson council delegation who successfully used governance to usher in leadership that supported their aims, and now they are on their way to rebuilding their council in a positive fashion. There are also some active national delegations like the Chicago council, so it can be done.

But I also had a very discouraging conversation earlier this year that made me face reality and reset my expectations when it comes to the volunteer base and its commitment to governance. I had the opportunity to speak to a CEO whose council has a board-only governance structure with no local delegation. Out of curiosity, I asked the CEO how on earth it came to pass that the delegation dissolved itself. I won’t go into the whole story, but basically after fixing a number of issues that were important to the delegate body, the CEO and board asked the delegation to return the favor by dissolving itself, and the delegates agreed with no pushback. I was absolutely stunned. It really shook me to think it was just that easy.

This extends to national governance. For all of the cries and complaints about GSUSA through the years not listening to volunteers and being tone deaf, National Delegates have had no qualms in handing over power to the National Board and GSUSA time and time again with the exception of the strange aberration that was the 2017 NCS where two out of three proposals didn’t pass. For quite some time, I mistakenly believed that we just needed more of the volunteer voice and that it wasn’t being represented. However, I have come to realize that volunteers and girls are the ones who are voting away this power. After writing the National Board office for some numbers, I was surprised to find out that 77% of the 2023 National Council was made up of operational volunteers (meaning non-board members) and girls. In fact, the breakout is as follows:

• 22% are girls
• 55% are volunteers (non-council board members)
• 2.5% are NB & NBDC members
• 13.6% are council staff
• 6.9% are council board members (governance volunteers)

To be fair, if you look at national governance through the decades, the National Council has slowly been allowing itself to become irrelevant since its inception. This didn’t happen overnight. But a lot of it has happened in the past twenty years.

To be completely blunt (and I’ve said this before), the National Council is pretty much a figurehead at this point. It has no way to hold GSUSA or the National Board accountable or to make them answerable for really anything. If I’m wrong and there is a way, let me know. It doesn’t even control its own size anymore. The National Board could shrink it down to minimal numbers if it wanted to (I’m not saying they WOULD, but that they COULD. This is one of those loopholes I talked about earlier.). To add to the ineffectiveness, the NCS proposal process is cumbersome, awkward, and incomplete. Council CEOs control the process completely with a few exceptions. I don’t know if it’s always been this way or not.

The NCS has become a dog & pony show on some levels. I stated originally that I thought the “co-presiding officers” did a great job at the NCS, but I held my tongue on my further thoughts. They really did a great job – I’m being sincere about that. However, there is NO such thing as “co-presiding officers” in Robert’s Rules of Order. Article X of our Bylaws states that we should follow Robert’s Rules (pg. 18 in the Blue Book), so therefore, we shouldn’t have “co-presiding officers” even as inspiring as it may be. Nothing bad happened in July, but having two presiding officers raises all sorts of issues if problems do arise in the future. Also I cannot stand it when girls are used as messengers at the mic for councils. It is obvious when they’re sent up with motions that they don’t understand, and it’s not a positive for anyone when this happens. I’m not going to single out examples because I don’t want to embarrass anyone specifically. And while it’s great that girls felt empowered, something like 75 to 80% of speakers consisting of girls (many making the same point over and over again) doesn’t make for good governance. Again, it might be inspiring to hear girls speak, but are we trying to turn the NCS into something that it’s not?

So what do I propose? A couple of things.

I’m not sure how this would be possible since councils control who they elect/appoint for National Delegates, but I would raise the percentage of council board members and staff in the National Council. Yes, this would mean less girls and volunteers. I know a lot of you don’t like that, but I think this would go toward giving the National Council more balance and perhaps more credibility in certain circles.

I saw the webinar on the NCS proposal process that GSUSA sent to governance managers for the 2023 NCS, and it made a point that proposals shouldn’t cover operational topics. I understand the division between governance and operations. However, if you look at NCS proposals through the years, the National Council used to propose and vote on a number of what could be considered operational topics. And let’s be honest. Volunteers and girls are more interested in operational topics than they are governance ones, and other than vague Voices Count surveys, I’m not sure where GSUSA gets its feedback, anyway. Note that the Constitution doesn’t state that the National Council is “the coordinating head of the Girl Scout Movement in the United States” for only governance topics. So I would allow for some operational proposals at the NCS to pique more interest.

I would also streamline the proposal process. Again, I’m not sure if things were done differently in the past or not, but there needs to be more collaboration between National Delegates and councils, and CEOs should not serve as the gatekeepers.

I would also like to see more transparency when it comes to the NCS and proposals for us governance nerd “outsiders.” I was not a National Delegate for 2020 and 2023, and it took me relying on a variety of sources to stay somewhat in the know. Part of the purpose of GirlScoutGovernance.com (GSG) is to make information that’s locked behind a password-protected site available. Why the secrecy? We’re a nonprofit. I sometimes feel like there’s a touch of elitism when it comes to our national governance, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Why do only National Delegates get to meet and greet National Board members at the NCS, for example? There were a few National Board members that I would have loved to have the opportunity to meet but didn’t because I wasn’t a National Delegate and wasn’t allowed to attend the meet & greets. You might see some National Board members in passing during the convention, but that’s only if you happen to be in the right place at the right time in the hallways or you happen to know the right people.

Another idea is to bring back some sort of Girl Leadership Institute where girls can be more hands-on with topics they’re actually interested in. I wasn’t involved in national governance when it was held at the NCS in Salt Lake so I can’t personally speak to it, but supposedly it was a hit and well-received for the most part.

The good news is it looks like the MGAT is studying these topics so hopefully we will get some fixes for these areas in the future. The Office of the National Board is sharing information with GSG as well now, so that’s a good sign and appreciated. I still say that national governance cannot be fixed until local council governance is made a priority and shored up though. How can National Delegates model good governance when they come from councils that aren’t putting it into action?

And for anyone who thinks this post was “hard hitting,” you really should see my first drafts. I very, very rarely publish blog posts like this one on the same day because I always give them a few days to marinate. I purposely chop out a lot of what I think might be too antagonistic.

Whew, I feel better now.