The other night I read a letter to the editor on-line about the need for Girl Scouts to change. (It wasn’t from Oklahoma.) The letter ranted about the need to stop doing crafts and camping and address really meaty issues for girls like science, technology and environmentalism. (Her daughter was 7 so I imagine she hasn’t gotten into much of the GS experience yet.) As an organization, Girl Scouts relies on volunteers – they are the voice and the face of Girl Scouts to girls. We are in the process as an organization of changing the way we recruit, retain, train and retrain our volunteers. We have a new set of program activities which are focused on leadership experiences for girls. It seems as though, while it is changing, I know sometimes it just doesn’t seem fast enough. As the CEO of another Council suggested in a national meeting, it is hard to turn a big luxury liner out on the high seas around quickly.
One of our challenges is to become more nimble. As a smaller Council, we have an advantage, but we are still grappling with this same issue. The merger brought us four camp properties. With 14,000 girls and about 1000 campers, we need to let go of tools that are no longer serving the needs of our customers (girls). I saw an article in a fundraising journal recently from the CEO of a large Boys and Girls Club. She and their board had a strategy to purge themselves of properties as they were too costly. Their new focus was to be on collaborations in which they could address the needs of youth, without spending so much money on maintenance and the physical upkeep of aging buildings.
If the core of our business at Girl Scouts is leadership development for girls, what role does the outdoors play? We have a legacy for taking girls outside and connecting them with the land for the purposes of teaching them leadership skills. We know there are many ways to do that. Yet, we have yet to have a national discussion as Girl Scouts around the role of the physical environment. Our legacy volunteers would like us to keep our camp properties as they remind them of their wonderful youth experiences there. But our legacy volunteers don’t have deep pockets and for many residential camp properties across the country, the difference in what men make and what women make an hour is no more obvious than the physical condition of our camps.
Becoming more nimble, building collaborations, documenting and then sharing our outcome data, these to me seem to be important for us as a movement as we go forward. There are many ways to connect girls to the land. In order to achieve agility as an organization to keep up with the changing needs of girls, we may need to decide that camp properties are not critical to our overall mission and the future for girls, for Girl Scouts.
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I find it a little condescending to say that your "legacy volunteers" want to keep camp properties because they remind them of their own youth. Perhaps that is an enjoyable part of visiting camp, but the reality is that long-time Girl Scouts recognize the value attending camp has had in their lives, and they want to make sure those opportunities are available for girls today. I have heard so many young women say that summer camp has had a profound influence on who they have become, as they moved from regular camper to counselor-in-training to counselor. There are few, if any, jobs available to 18-year-old girls that require the level of commitment and responsibility that being a camp counselor does--and that's a goal that many girls work toward from their first camp experiences.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether you attended summer camp when you were a girl. I've seen two common attitudes among Girl Scout leadership: there are the people who never went to camp and simply don't understand what the fuss is about, and the people who went to camp for a couple of years and think they know all about it because of that. I've yet to hear women who were able to grow and have leadership experiences at camp take a position that camps may not fit the Girl Scout mission anymore.
You have 14000 girls and only 1000 campers: do those numbers adequately reflect the numbers of girls who are using the properties, or only the ones who go to resident camp? Are there ways you could increase capacity and usage of the camps? Are the other 13000 girls getting adequate outdoor experience? The properties you own are a tremendous asset; why not look at new ways to make them serve your 14000 girls instead of writing them off as a liability that only provides benefits for 1000?
Many of us believe there is no better place than the out of doors to do the leadership development programs our girls need and desire. Any number of studies show that one of the biggest factors in getting people to understand the need to care for our environment is whether the individual simply spent some pleasurable time outside as a youth. And our own experiences in our council show the value of using our camps to meet our mission of building girls of courage, confidence, and character.
ReplyDeleteSo, for both our own mission-driven reasons and for much larger ones that have to do with caring for our global environment, we need a "safe place" for our girls to be outside, in an all girl environment, experiencing nature and learning to live and lead in an environment which is a bit beyond their comfort zone, at least initially. Collaborations with other organizations are unlikely to give us access to the all girl environments we need.
As a board member of my own council, I am concerned that our resident camp programs are very expensive--for participants and for the council--and serve too few of our girls. I wonder what we can do to increase our participation rate and reduce expenses, and I'm not convinced we have operated our resident camp program smartly.
But my concerns about resident camp specifically does not make me believe that camp properties have no place in Girl Scouting, We serve far more girls at our camps through day camping, troop camping, camporees, etc. than resident camp. All of these are volunteer led and, unlike resident camp, are inexpensive for participants to attend.
Our statistics also show significant usage of our camps which have modern amenities available for our girls and volunteers, so we have continued to invest in making our properties appealing--sometimes against the objections of traditionalists who believe "roughing it" is the only way to cap.
We are monitoring and will continue to monitor usage figures and whether we should keep all the properties we have, but we would definitely reject any notion that we should get rid of all of our outdoor properties. They are far too valuable for our girls and for what we want to accomplish for our girls to conclude that we should not continue to invest in them.
I very much appreciate the sentiment expressed in these two emails. The issue for councils, I think is more about whether or not we need to OWN properties. There are other options. We can still provide resident camp at other locations not our own that would not cost us the amount that these do. Sadly many properties are in disrepair and have been neglected for years. That can't be remedied tomorrow on the dollars we have today. Some shifts will have to occur based on the market. Creative thinking about the value of outdoor education and ways to do it with girls is needed here, I think.
ReplyDeleteIs the issue really whether councils need to own properties, or is the issue whether YOUR council can afford to? Or is the issue whether your council values what the properties can for girls enough to do the work to find the resources needed to provide year-round outdoor program for your girls?
ReplyDeleteIn our council's case, most of our properties are used for Girl Scout program year round. We currently have eight properties, and although we may choose to release some, I honestly do not see how we could possibly deliver the outdoor program we want to deliver without owning (or otherwise controlling as if we owned) our properties. Our two resident camps are used for resident camping most weeks of the summer. I've already indicated I'm concerned about expense and usage for RESIDENT camp, but when we consider the value of these camps we look far beyond just resident camp. These same two camps are used regularly on weekends year round.
A former resident camp, near the largest city in my council, is full of day camps in the summer and also is used regularly on weekends year round--often for large group events such as camporees, leader training weekends, etc.
We own the three camps mentioned above, plus one other. We have a "perpetual" lease on another (also used a lot on weekends and for some day camps and other outdoor programs in summer), a 99 year lease from the Army Corps of Engineers on another lake property (not very heavily used), and a long-term lease (through 2050, I believe) at still another camp. We have still another on a yearly lease, and because we have minimal facilities there and fairly low usage, that camp we are likely to release. But we have at least two other camps within 25 minute drives of that location.
We run a wide variety of programs at our properties, ranging from adventure programming (challenge courses, high ropes, etc.), aquatic activities of various sorts at several of our camps, archery, backpacking, and all sorts of camping ranging from very nice heated cabins furnished with modern bathrooms and kitchens to primitive camping in tents we make available for pitching--with a wide range of options in between those two extremes. These programs help differentiate Girl Scouting from cheerleading, 4-H, sports, church, and school activities. I believe our membership, especially our older girl membership, would plummet if we decided not to be in the business of camp property ownership. We decided years ago that one of the best ways to retain older girls was through specialized programming such as the things I've mentioned, and it has paid off. This is not "sentiment" but fact.
Our properties are NOT in a sad state of disrepair. Obviously your situation is different. Have you tried challenging your membership to help you do repairs on these buildings? Have you tried targeted fund raising for renovations? We are just now finishing extensive renovations of one of our camp buildings with funding from a community foundation in that area, and we are just beginning a targeted fundraising campaign for pool repairs at our most heavily used camp. We have "work days" regularly at most of our camps. We've been the recipients of "volunteer days" by local firms who have come out and helped with maintenance.
We simply do not believe we can do what we need to do for our girls in outdoor program in general--not just resident camp--by "borrowing" properties on an occasional basis. Instead, we are looking into more ways to let others borrow OUR camps during the week when the camps aren't being used by Girl Scouts We've had some environmental programs for schools at one of our resident camps, and we're looking into other ways to host groups who want to have the occasional outdoor experience.
I encourage you to look hard at all options avialable, and think also of the "unintended consequences" if your council were to decide not to own property. The bottom line for us is our camps, and our council, is successful to a large extent BECAUSE we have invested in our properties, not because we've avoided it.
Too many times, corporations look at the "bottom line" and outsource valuable commodities because "it can be done cheaper" by someone else. It is sad that this corporate ideal has made it's way into the Girl Scout movement. Spend a lot less studies on market trends with girls, development of new programming, and get back to the basics. Pick up a copy of Juliette Low's first Girl Scout publications, gather your volunteer leaders and run with it!
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