Membership Dues and Percentage Points

Every three years, the National Council of Girl Scouts gathers together and deliberates upon proposals aimed at the betterment of Girl Scouting. This year, the National Council Session will be held July 20 – 22, 2026 in Washington D.C., and there are three proposals on the agenda. One is about everyone’s favorite topic: membership dues.

Yes, membership dues. The topic that never goes away. If you’ve followed my blog for some time, you’ll know that this is something that I’ve been writing about for many years in different iterations. But hey, what’s one more time? Let’s do this.

The proposal in question is sponsored by the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana (GSGCWI) council. You can read the full text of the proposal on GSG. Currently, the National Board can raise membership dues no more than 25% above the set amount within the three-year national cycle called the triennium. This language is found in the Blue Book of Basic Documents within the Credentials section (pg. 23). It’s possible for membership dues to be raised more than 25% within a triennium, but it takes a decision by the National Council. GSGCWI’s proposal wants to lower the percentage from 25% to 15%.

You might be wondering, how did we get here? Why is there a threshold on dues increases? Why doesn’t the National Board have full control over dues? If you’re not wondering this, just skip over the next few paragraphs to save yourself some time. Some of us governance nerds like to mull over history and go over the whys and why nots, but I realize that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

Prior to 2020, the National Board did not have the authority to raise membership dues. But in previous years, it overstepped its bounds and raised them twice after the National Council voted to in 2008. A lawsuit broke out and things were messy. I’ll just leave it at that. If you REALLY want to go down that rabbit hole, read this saga. GSGCWI, in an attempt to keep the peace, introduced a proposal for the 2020 NCS that would have given the National Board the ability to raise dues, but no more than 25% within a triennium without a vote from the National Council. This proposal put the brakes on another 2020 NCS proposal introduced by the National Board which would have given it full authority over dues with no limitations. Both proposals passed. At the time, membership dues were $25, and it was believed that the National Board & GSUSA would raise dues on their own from there on out. And eventually, perhaps the percentage could be revisited as the total amount of dues grew over time.

But in 2024, GSUSA made it known that it REALLY needed money (and a lot of it), and it claimed that raising membership dues by a significant amount was necessary. Since the amount it was looking for was over the 25% threshold, a special session of the NCS was called, and it was held virtually. After deliberating for twelve long hours over Zoom, the National Council decided that dues for girls would go up to $65 with a proviso that they would start at $45 for the 2026 Membership Year (MY) before moving up to $65 for the 2027 MY. Adult dues went up to $30. And here we are today.

Really, this proposal boils down to whether you believe the National Board should be able to raise dues after 2029 by a little less than $10 ($65 x 15% = $9.75) or a little over $16 ($65 x 25% = $16.25), and the amount goes up after that. The National Board gives its response to GSGCWI’s proposal in the NCS Alert, and surprise! It’s not in favor. It believes the 25% threshold set by the National Council in 2020 is fine and that lowering it would “unnecessarily hinder the organization’s ability to meet future challenges.” The National Board also insinuates in its rationale that because the National Council decided the matter in 2020, it considers it settled, and therefore, we should stick with 25%.

Well, if we never revisited decisions made by the National Council, we’d still have 50 cent membership dues. And there’s this motion in parliamentary procedure called Amend Something Previously Adopted that allows an assembly to do just that. So I hate to break it to the National Board, but calling it settled doesn’t hold water. Circumstances change, and the significant raise in dues from 2020 to 2025 prompted GSGCWI to tweak its original proposal. And during the NCS proposal writing process, enough councils endorsed GSGCWI’s proposal to force it onto the NCS agenda,* so it wasn’t just GSGCWI thinking there should be a change.

I’m in favor of lowering the percentage, but there’s something that nags at me about this proposal. It’s something that bothered me even back in 2020. As dues continue to increase in the future, we’re possibly going to have to come back to this over and over again. Would a flat dollar amount be a better solution versus a percentage? I believe this would be what’s called “within scope” (in other words, allowable) by a motion to Amend while the proposal is on the floor as long as the flat dollar amount fell within 15% and 25%, but would we face the same dilemma in future years as inflation continues to creep up? I’m not sure.

Back in 2020, I argued against the National Board’s proposal to give it shared authority over membership dues. I believed it wouldn’t work because there would always be tension between the National Board and the National Council. While the 25% limit set by the 2020 GSGCWI proposal was a compromise on the membership dues mess at the time, it inadvertently set up future skirmishes. But that can’t be avoided now, and it’s the right of the National Council to revisit the decision when it feels it’s appropriate. While I still don’t agree with the decision of the 2020 National Council to give authority over membership dues to the National Board, I respect the decision-making process of the NCS and accept it. And likewise, so should the National Board.

When it boils down to it, I agree with GSGCWI that significant membership dues decisions should be heard in the arena of the NCS and debated in a deliberative assembly. The question is how the word “significant” is defined in a dollar amount, and that’ll also be up to the National Council to decide.

I’ll review the other two proposals in a future blog post.

P.S. If you want a full history of the membership dues saga since 2008, visit this timeline.

* Per the GSUSA Constitution, the National Board determines which items are placed on the NCS agenda, but proposals that receive 15% of council endorsements are automatically placed on the agenda. This does not apply to proposals that involve Constitutional amendments as the National Board is the sole determinator of whether they are placed on the agenda (Article VI / Proposals to the National Council/ §1b).