It’s that time of year! I’ve published the Badge, Journey, and Award summaries for all levels for the 2024-2025 membership year. These PDF files are a combination of what you’ll find in GSUSA’s Badge Explorer, except that I streamlined the designs to make them more printer-friendly and added the additional awards found in each level.

Note that these aren’t meant to be replacements for the badge requirements. These only give a brief summary of each step, and I created it so that girls and leaders could easily browse through the badges and awards all in one place to get an idea of what they wanted to work on. To find the actual badge requirements, you’ll have to reference either the badge pamphlets or Volunteer Toolkit (VTK) activity plans. Continue reading

Mo Money Mo Problems

National Governance, National Operations 3 Comments gsg, gsusa, membership dues, money, volunteer systems

“Money is a mirror. It shows you a magnified image of who you are within. If you are good, it makes you better. If you’re not, it makes you worse.” – Anonymous

For the past few years, I’ve been putting together a very simple summary of GSUSA’s financials over on GirlScoutGovernance.com (GSG). Usually I don’t leave any commentary when I post the link and let those who are interested come to their own conclusions, but I felt compelled to comment with this recent one because there’s talk about raising membership dues out there. I’m not opposed to raising membership dues, but I do feel like GSUSA needs to answer for some of its recent decision making, and we need to make sure what’s been going on the past few years isn’t what’s in store for the future. Continue reading

July 1 2024

It’s OFFICIAL Scarf Time Again, Y’all!

Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me No Comments girl scout universe, gsusa, OFFICIAL scarf, university of georgia

If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a rabid Georgia Bulldogs fan. One of our historical rivals is Clemson University, home to one of the more unique color schemes in college football consisting of orange and purple. Clemson’s athletic department has a donor program called IPTAY which stands for “I Pay Ten a Year.” Since Clemson was a hated rival of Georgia, I grew up with the joke that IPTAY really stood for “It’s Probation Time Again, Y’all!” referencing Clemson’s bout with NCAA probation in the early 80s. Hence how I came up with the title of this post. And now you’ve caught a glimpse of the strange inner workings of my mind.

And now on to why you’re reading this post! A few weeks ago, I realized I hadn’t received a Lifetime Membership newsletter from GSUSA in quite some time. I must have sensed a shift in the Girl Scout Universe, because a couple of days later, an announcement from GSUSA to LTMs showed up with this news: Continue reading

June 15 2024

Last Girl Scout in the Woods

Opinions No Comments badges we don't need no stinkin badges, camps, core business strategy, councils, gsusa, outdoors, patches, volunteers

Right before my seventh birthday, my family moved from Tampa, Florida to Athens, Georgia. I remember my parents telling me about our new house in a subdivision called Cedar Creek and how much bigger the new house would be compared to our current one, but it didn’t make much sense to me. I remember pulling up to the house in the van for the first time after the very long drive from Florida, stepping out in amazement, and then promptly puking in the yard due to car sickness. Continue reading

June 3 2024

Summer of 2024 Patch Programs

Troop Leader Resources No Comments patches, volunteers

As SUM for my new SU, I recently put together a list of patch programs that girls can earn over the summer and thought I’d share it here too. If you’d like to download this list as a PDF, you can find it here. You don’t need a Dropbox account to download it. Just click on the X for the pop-up box and then click on the download icon next to the Share button. If you have one to share, feel free to add it below! Continue reading

May 7 2024

My Adventure with the Adventurers!

Experiences as a Leader, Hikes & Outdoors 6 Comments gsusa, mrs. vickers, OFFICIAL scarf, outdoors, swaps, trailblazers, volunteers

If you’ve followed me for a couple of years, you’ll know about my journey with getting a Trailblazer troop/program underway. To give you a brief recount of this story, in the summer of 2019, GSUSA relaunched the Trailblazer and Mariner programs to much fanfare among those of us who were hoping our national organization would invest more in the outdoors. A guidebook and a Trailblazer membership pin were released at the time, but since then, there’s been no further acknowledgement from GSUSA about the program. With all of the turnover and turmoil that’s happened at GSUSA since 2019, I have to wonder if the folks up in NYC even realize that it’s still out there? But really, it doesn’t matter, because volunteers took the idea and ran with it – and I’m one of those folks. Continue reading

April 19 2024

10 Years of GSWAC (Not a Council)!

Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me 5 Comments 2017 NCS, 2020 NCS, 2023 NCS, blue book, camp mary elizabeth, camp wabak, democratic process, farthest north council, friends of camp wabak, governance

When I first started as a leader back in the fall of 2010, I told others about the crazy adventures I had as a Girl Scout growing up. At one point, someone suggested I write these stories down and perhaps they could be in the form of a blog. I gave the idea some thought, and eventually I took the time in April of 2014 to set up a WordPress site on my web account. I would love to give you an inspiring explanation of why I picked the name “Girl Scout with a Cause,” but honestly, I don’t remember why I chose it.

Initially, I wrote about very random subjects that suited my mood at the time, but as I started getting more involved in Girl Scouts, I became curious about why things were the way they were. Meaning, why was everybody so up in arms and why was our organization so out of sorts? I participated in Facebook conversations with folks all over the country and began to piece together the upheaval that Girl Scouts went through right before I started my volunteer journey. And in October of 2015, there was a big online hullabaloo due to a white paper that Suellen Nelles, CEO of the Farthest North council at the time, published and sent to the National Board. I read the paper and became even more curious about the thought process of what was known as the “Core Business Strategy.” To try to make sense of it from the viewpoint of a volunteer, I wrote a summary of the white paper with my thoughts on it. I published it and went about my day. Later that evening, a volunteer in my service unit stopped me at church and said that my blog post was going viral on Facebook. When I got home, I couldn’t believe the response it was getting. Continue reading

March 2 2024

Toxic Leadership

Opinions 4 Comments board of directors, core business strategy, councils, delegate, governance, gsusa, volunteers

I haven’t written much lately for a variety of reasons. For one, it’s been a busy few months for me with a handful of big projects that are just starting to get off the ground. For another, some of my focus has changed, and I’m not as plugged in and engaged as I used to be. I also think I’ve said my piece when it comes to where things stand with the state of Girl Scouts, so there’s no use rehashing it. However, there is one topic that I’ve wanted to write about for quite some time, but I wasn’t sure where to start or how to discuss it. And that subject is toxic leadership. Continue reading

February 15 2024

A Grant for Camp Mary Elizabeth

Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me No Comments camp mary elizabeth, camps, money, tina, wildflowers

Back in 2016, I researched the history of Camp Mary Elizabeth (CME) in the GSSC-MM council and wrote a series of blog posts about it. CME is located on 56 acres in the middle of Spartanburg, SC’s urban sprawl and was originally dedicated in 1947 as a memorial to Dr. W.S. Zimmerman’s mother, Elizabeth Simpson Zimmerman, and her daughter, Mary Zimmerman Ward (Dr. Zimmerman’s sister). As an entry in this series, I wrote about CME’s wildflowers. Most of CME’s wildflowers are found along a trail that runs throughout the camp while partially following Holston Creek which splits the camp. There are a few very rare varieties found at CME including the federally-threatened Dwarf-flowered Heartleaf and Oconee Bells. Both of these wildflowers are only found in a few areas within the Upstate of South Carolina and Western North Carolina. Continue reading

December 26 2023

My More Honest Thoughts About Governance in 2023

National Governance 7 Comments 2017 NCS, 2023 NCS, blue book, delegate, democratic process, governance, gsg, gsusa, national board, national council, national delegate, roberts rules, volunteers

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. Continue reading