Special NCS Roundup

Another National Council Session (NCS) is in the books, albeit this one comes a little sooner within the triennium due to it being the first ever special session. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to listen to this 12 hour marathon from start to finish due to my attending and running trainings at our council’s leader weekend at Camp WaBak. However, I did get to hear a good portion of the NCS between sessions so I feel like I caught about two-thirds of it. I also had some friends take very good notes and catch me up on what I missed. If you’re interested in a high level play by play, be sure to check out GSG’s summary. But if you don’t want to read it, know that the National Council decided that girl membership dues will be raised to $45 for Membership Year (MY) 2026 (next year) and then $65 for MY2027, and adult dues will rise to $30 starting MY2026.

You might have noticed that I wasn’t as engaged as I usually am for a NCS. There were a couple of reasons – one being that I am slightly burned out on the topic of membership dues as I stated previously. Which is ironic, because normally most folks nod off at the mention of governance, but money gets people’s attention, so interest in the 57th NCS was probably at an all-time high compared to other NCS. Views for my recent blog post about the potential membership dues hike outpaced all posts dealing with the 2023 NCS by far as evidence of this interest. Another reason for my lack of engagement was due to Hurricane Helene. Helene’s winds were right below hurricane classification when she hit my area, and I lost power for eight days. School was out for almost two weeks in my county. Things were in a tizzy locally, so my focus was off Girl Scouts except for a planned Trailblazer camping trip that we still pulled off in an area of our council that didn’t bear the brunt of the storm. I also needed to prepare for the leader weekend’s sessions, so that took some of my attention away leading up to the NCS.

But I did get it in thanks to our camp’s WiFi connection! Granted, my attention during the evening portion was split between the NCS and the Georgia-Texas game, but I can multi-task. Some random thoughts on what went on (about the NCS, not Georgia football) – so take ‘em or leave ‘em:

First, all initial technical difficulties and the length aside, I thought the special session was well organized and ran smoothly, so kudos to all who worked behind the scenes for making this happen. How Mary Ann Altergott served as presiding officer all those hours, I don’t know. Something must have been in that candy corn. And of course, props to all of the National Delegates who spent a gorgeous fall day carrying this meeting out. Only about 100 delegates dropped off between the start of the meeting to the final vote almost 12 hours later. Amazing.

If you counted up votes among the amount suggestions for girl dues, a slight majority of delegates favored dues between $65 and $85 versus those who supported dues under $65. It’s possible that if there hadn’t been so many suggestions between $30 and $55, the vote could have gone a different way, but those are the breaks. What I do know is that networking between delegations (especially the larger ones) goes on behind the scenes prior to a NCS, and this special one was no different. But when you look at the final vote on the proposal as amended, it passed easily with a 79% majority. So when it comes down to it, there weren’t that many who were staunchly opposed to a raise as there seemed to be, otherwise there would have been a higher number vote it down completely.

Even in a virtual setting, I could sense that it sunk in to the assembly that GSUSA was going to get their money one way or another. Via questioning, Bonnie B said multiple times that GSUSA would pass on costs to councils if they didn’t get a significant enough raise (but don’t call them fees – although I don’t really see the difference between “passing on costs” and “charging fees” – but I digress), so I think people felt like they either had to pay it themselves or get it from outside sources (like caregivers or grants). Some might call that extortion, but that might be a little harsh of a term. But I’m just sayin’.

As for the final decision, while I originally stated I thought $50 was the maximum we could go without taking an enormous hit in membership, I thought the final decision was somewhat of a compromise. I still think $65 is a little steep, and we will see some significant drops due to it, but not like we would have encountered with $85. I also think easing into it with $45 is a smarter approach, although I would have selected the $45/$55/$65 option for the sake of our membership. I think though delegates were antsy to get the “kickbacks” (aka the “promised” financial aid from GSUSA), so there was a push to get to the higher amount sooner than later. If you read the rationale in Proposal 1, you’ll know the National Board passed a resolution that if $65 was passed, they’d give 25% of membership dues revenue back to councils for five years. However, Year 1 starts in MY2026 according to GSUSA (even though there’s no mention of that in the proposal), and since $65 doesn’t take effect until MY2027, that’s only four years of kickbacks. I’m still a little unconvinced these kickback promises will live up to what we’re envisioning, but we’ll see.

To be completely honest with you all, I have to admit this special session stirred up some old feelings of bitterness in me and that slightly contributed to my lack of engagement. I spent the past four to five years highlighting GSUSA’s financials and wasteful spending when it came to IT and other failed projects (cough, cough, CircleAround, cough) and warned we were getting ourselves in trouble. I purposely submitted pointed questions about our financials and especially about our borrowing on the annual GSUSA Stewardship Reports year after year hoping others would pick up on it. And before that, I spent a considerable amount of time and energy campaigning against the membership dues proposals for the 2020 NCS with GSUSA’s lack of financial controls as one of the biggest points to vote against them. But instead, there was a big push to “trust” GSUSA and the National Board that year, and this mantra was lobbied especially hard by council leadership. We heard it on our GSG Town Halls repeatedly. Nobody seemed to have any issues with the balance sheets, and therefore, 83% of the National Council voted to give the National Board shared authority over membership dues at that NCS (with a 25% guardrail). Fast forward four years, and there was finally a loud outcry about spending in certain circles. Hits to my blog posts about the Farthest North lawsuit, the Middle TN lawsuit, GSUSA’s spending, and the IT platform boondoggle saw major increases the past two months. But where were these people for the past five years? What this told me is that as long as membership dues were cheap, nobody cared about GSUSA’s spending habits. But when it hit them in the wallet, finally folks sat up and paid attention. But it was too little, too late. Now it’s time to clean up the mess.

Speaking of the astronomical spending on IT, what this all boils down to is that ten years ago, we hitched our wagon to the most expensive CRM platform out there and found out the hard way that customizing it was extremely costly and integration with other components didn’t come easy. There’s a reason why a lot of companies have jumped ship from SalesForce the past few years. And now we find ourselves in a position where we’re stuck with it unless we ditch it completely and migrate to another solution which would be another costly endeavor. It pains me to think that 40% of our budget is invested in IT development when we’re not getting a good ROI as evidenced by our membership declines over the past 10 years. To me, low membership dues weren’t holding us hostage financially – it’s our decision to use SalesForce as an IT platform foundation that’s doing it. But I guess there’s nothing we can do about it at this point.

With this membership dues increase (for girls) extending into the next triennium, this means GSUSA and the National Board will not be able to raise dues again until FY2029. This was confirmed by Diane Tipton, National Board Treasurer, during Saturday’s session. But from what I can tell, it IS possible for adult dues to be raised over the next triennium (within 25%). If girl dues had been raised straight to $65 for MY2026, the National Board would have been able to raise dues another $16.25 over the next triennium, so easing in with $45 could have possibly saved us another bump via the National Board. I’m not saying they WOULD have done it – just that they COULD have.

How will this affect lifetime memberships and extended year memberships? The National Board is authorized to raise dues within 25%, so I would expect that lifetime memberships will see an increase for MY2026. Twenty-five percent of $200 is $250, and $400 could jump to $500. Or they could come up with something completely different. It’s all within the National Board’s authority thanks to the 2020 NCS vote. With the passage of the latest Blue Book (Sept 2024), the extended year membership changed from a static number to 1.4 times the annual membership rate, so girl extended year dues will be $63 for MY2026 and $91 for MY2027.

And last but not least, did I mention that Georgia beat #1 Texas 30-15 Saturday night in Austin? Go you Hairy Dawgs!