Well, another year has passed, and we’re about to hit summer now. Last summer was a weird one. I was in a boot for a few weeks due to wearing shoes that didn’t have enough support at the beach which caused me to eventually develop a Morton’s Neuroma or something along those lines. It still bothers me from time to time, but I just ignore it and move on. It was also the Summer of *NSYNC. What will this summer bring?

Anyway, I just wanted to pull together a recap of the second year of our Trailblazer troop. It was a very different experience than our first year, so we’re still finding our way. So how was it different? Continue reading

GSUSA’s FY2021 Financials

National Governance No Comments gsusa, money

I just wanted to give you a heads-up that a summary of GSUSA’s FY2021 financials has been published on GirlScoutGovernance.com. There are a couple of interesting things to note, but you’ll have to read it to find out what they are!

April 27 2022

I Wrote a Sternly Worded Letter

National Governance, National Operations 6 Comments blue book, circlearound, councils, gsusa, money, national board, strongly worded letter

Yesterday, I opened my mailbox to find a letter from GSUSA Headquarters! I thought at first that it was the long-expected Cease and Desist, but then I spotted the words “Invest in Girl Scouts. Change the World” on the front, and I realized it was a solicitation for donations. A business reply envelope was included. I decided then that this would be a good opportunity to send a sternly worded letter up to NYC. I’ve tried to communicate my message via this blog and email, so why not snail mail? Maybe I’ll attempt sky writing next. I realize this letter will probably go no further than the intern who opens up the envelope, but perhaps they’ll enjoy it at the very least.

Notice that I didn’t write a strongly worded letter but a sternly one. There is a difference. Sternly isn’t quite as high on the nuclear scale.

Here’s my letter. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, there’s nothing new in it other than some legal dollar amounts. Continue reading

April 18 2022

The Emphasis on Network Alignment

National Governance, Opinions 2 Comments 2004 restructure, blue book, core business strategy, councils, democratic process, gsusa, kathy cloninger, national board, national council

When I first started writing the Tough Cookies Revisited paper, it originally contained much more integrated commentary throughout the text. I eventually decided to go a more formal route and instead presented an objective timeline and survey results with a small section dedicated to my personal thoughts at the end. So now that a few months have passed since I published it, I wanted to flesh out a couple of topics. Because you know, forty pages wasn’t long enough to explore everything. 😉

If you haven’t read the paper yet, you may want to in order to give this post a little more context. But I know not everybody is down with reading a forty page paper, so I’ll try to summarize things as I go.

The Core Business Strategy was a plan to completely overhaul and redefine Girl Scouting from top to bottom and included parts such as council mergers, a streamline of governance, a new volunteer onboarding and support system, and a major shift in the national programming model. Its development began in 2004 with implementation starting soon after that. Changes happened quickly. Continue reading

March 27 2022

A Smorgasbord of Updates

Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me No Comments delegate, friends of camp wabak, governance, gsg, middle tennessee council, OFFICIAL scarf, sofia chang, trailblazers

LUCKY SEVEN YEARS! EXACTLY EIGHT

In April of 2014, I started this blog, and here we are ~~seven~~ eight years later! Happy birthday GSWAC (Not a Council)! It’s been a fun ride. Frustrating at times, but overall, it’s been entertaining and educational on my end. Like finding out that it’s spelled “smorgasbord” and not “smorgasborg.” Addendum 4/16/22: Apparently I can’t do math and nobody else picked up on it either! It hit me while waking up this morning.

It’s been pretty slow around here since I published my paper, and I have a feeling it will stay that way for a while. I feel like I’m slowly transitioning to a different phase of my GS volunteer “career,” so my perspective is changing. Where this leads to – who knows! Continue reading

March 12 2022

Flashback to the 75th Anniversary!

Traditional Stuff 2 Comments ann robertson, history, national center west, OFFICIAL scarf, patches, the 80s

In light of the 110th anniversary of our organization, Ann Robertson has been taking a look back at past decades of Girl Scouting on her GS History blog. Recently, she published one for the 1980s, which brought me back to my childhood and the era of when I was a Girl Scout growing up.

This made me wonder what I was going to do to celebrate our 110th anniversary on this blog since I make it a priority to publish something on March 12 and October 31 for obvious reasons. Admittedly I hit writer’s block even as I scoured through past Leader Magazines and handbooks to figure out what the heck I was going to cover. Eventually I decided to do a look back at past anniversaries, but I wasn’t having much luck with inspiration. Maybe I am still burned out from celebrating the 100th back in 2012! I was still a relatively new leader at that point (started the Fall of 2010), and I have to admit the 100th celebration was a little overwhelming because I was still trying to navigate my way through this new world of Girl Scouting that was challenging from the vantage point of being a leader and one where the programming was very different than what I remembered. Oh, who am I kidding? I am still struggling navigating it and figuring out where to go from here. Continue reading

Girl Scout with a Cause

Trailblazers – The Second Year