How does Girl Scouts work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread has been an interesting read. What I come away with is that there is something fundamental about the membership and program business model that does not work quire right. I am not informed enough to venture a guess, but I suspect it has something to do with not recognizing or enforcing the need for adult involvement. Or, maybe there is something off-putting about the adult volunteer experience that discourages participation or retention. Is this a rational observation?

It works fine as a model, but people are so overworked at their office jobs now that many don't want their kids to participate in things that require additional effort from them as parents. Which is a perfectly reasonable way to organize your kids' schedule - throw some money at it and get them off your hands for a few hours a week - but it gets ridiculous when those parents start demanding that GSUSA cease to exist so their kid won't know there's an extracurricular they're not signed up for.

I'm a PP and see this happening more broadly, not just in Girl Scouts. See many of the summer swim threads with parents complaining about volunteering and asking why the team can't just pay for people to run concessions or serve as timers. Our neighborhood for years has had events that were organized by parents, and they aren't happening as much because newer families with young kids want to attend but not plan them. Our church has tons of families sign their kids up for Sunday school but it's already September and they still can't find enough parent volunteers to teach all the grade levels.

It's a model that has worked and does work for many families. However, it culturally appears that at least in this area of the country families have the resources that they'd rather give of their money than their time for children's extracurriculars. This becomes a personal decision for each family whether they prioritize a particular activity enough to make it happen.

I am the OP. I am fine paying money and also volunteering. I just don’t want to be the troup leader and be responsible for training and monthly meetings. I would be happy to be involved and organize activities. My daughter is five and eager to make friends.

Yep. I think most people feel that way and that's why the Girl Scouts model is so hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread has been an interesting read. What I come away with is that there is something fundamental about the membership and program business model that does not work quire right. I am not informed enough to venture a guess, but I suspect it has something to do with not recognizing or enforcing the need for adult involvement. Or, maybe there is something off-putting about the adult volunteer experience that discourages participation or retention. Is this a rational observation?

It works fine as a model, but people are so overworked at their office jobs now that many don't want their kids to participate in things that require additional effort from them as parents. Which is a perfectly reasonable way to organize your kids' schedule - throw some money at it and get them off your hands for a few hours a week - but it gets ridiculous when those parents start demanding that GSUSA cease to exist so their kid won't know there's an extracurricular they're not signed up for.

I'm a PP and see this happening more broadly, not just in Girl Scouts. See many of the summer swim threads with parents complaining about volunteering and asking why the team can't just pay for people to run concessions or serve as timers. Our neighborhood for years has had events that were organized by parents, and they aren't happening as much because newer families with young kids want to attend but not plan them. Our church has tons of families sign their kids up for Sunday school but it's already September and they still can't find enough parent volunteers to teach all the grade levels.

It's a model that has worked and does work for many families. However, it culturally appears that at least in this area of the country families have the resources that they'd rather give of their money than their time for children's extracurriculars. This becomes a personal decision for each family whether they prioritize a particular activity enough to make it happen.

I am the OP. I am fine paying money and also volunteering. I just don’t want to be the troup leader and be responsible for training and monthly meetings. I would be happy to be involved and organize activities. My daughter is five and eager to make friends.

Yep. I think most people feel that way and that's why the Girl Scouts model is so hard.

Yes, all of the mandatory trainings and rules (especially with Covid STILL) and receipts and whatnot. Its a LOT. My friend (a former troop leader) joked she was going to start a non-sanctioned troop and just run how she wanted apart from GS. She never actually did though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread has been an interesting read. What I come away with is that there is something fundamental about the membership and program business model that does not work quire right. I am not informed enough to venture a guess, but I suspect it has something to do with not recognizing or enforcing the need for adult involvement. Or, maybe there is something off-putting about the adult volunteer experience that discourages participation or retention. Is this a rational observation?

It works fine as a model, but people are so overworked at their office jobs now that many don't want their kids to participate in things that require additional effort from them as parents. Which is a perfectly reasonable way to organize your kids' schedule - throw some money at it and get them off your hands for a few hours a week - but it gets ridiculous when those parents start demanding that GSUSA cease to exist so their kid won't know there's an extracurricular they're not signed up for.

I'm a PP and see this happening more broadly, not just in Girl Scouts. See many of the summer swim threads with parents complaining about volunteering and asking why the team can't just pay for people to run concessions or serve as timers. Our neighborhood for years has had events that were organized by parents, and they aren't happening as much because newer families with young kids want to attend but not plan them. Our church has tons of families sign their kids up for Sunday school but it's already September and they still can't find enough parent volunteers to teach all the grade levels.

It's a model that has worked and does work for many families. However, it culturally appears that at least in this area of the country families have the resources that they'd rather give of their money than their time for children's extracurriculars. This becomes a personal decision for each family whether they prioritize a particular activity enough to make it happen.

I am the OP. I am fine paying money and also volunteering. I just don’t want to be the troup leader and be responsible for training and monthly meetings. I would be happy to be involved and organize activities. My daughter is five and eager to make friends.

Yep. I think most people feel that way and that's why the Girl Scouts model is so hard.

Yes, all of the mandatory trainings and rules (especially with Covid STILL) and receipts and whatnot. Its a LOT. My friend (a former troop leader) joked she was going to start a non-sanctioned troop and just run how she wanted apart from GS. She never actually did though.

+1

As a leader, I used to sit through service unit meetings that lasted 90 minutes. They easily could have happened in 15 minutes plus a follow up email. It was painful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the biggest surprises dual working parent families seem to have when their oldest hits school age is that all these activities they hear about kids doing require huge amounts of parent volunteer time. Its not like daycare, where you pay a fee and drop off. Almost every single activity your child does will involve a small amount or a large amount of volunteer time.

I send emails for our rec league every season begging for volunteer rec soccer/basketball/softball coaches and every season, without fail, a parent emails me to ask why we don't just hire some coaches. Every season.

Laughing but I totally understand those parents. I am an active volunteer in scouts and other groups .. but I would love to put money in the hat to hire an expert leader for some activities DD does. Some people (me) just do not have the personality or talent for certain activities (sports and theater). So I get it. If $500 would induce someone to coach, me and 4 other parents would have our wallets out already.

I have 3 kids. We pay a lot for tennis - clinic, private lessons and team.

The only activity that we know going in requiring time commitment is science Olympiad. We knew we had to coach.

I did not know or expect scouts was similar.

It sounds like you do private $$$ tennis. Rec sports need volunteers to run everything.

I guess it is private. They have played at the local pool and tennis, local rec center, racquet club and now country club. None of them required parent volunteers minus the pool and tennis club would ask for help organizing parties. It was more a potluck type sign up. Same with soccer. My kids have played both rec and travel soccer. They only asked for snacks.

It is hard enough just getting my kids to practice and games.

That's because you were lucky and those teams had coaches step up and they didn't need to beg the parents. I coached my son's U8 team one season because no one volunteered. That was experience.

Right? Talk about oblivious! That rec soccer team almost certainly had a volunteer parent or four coaching it. It sounds like you were lucky and happened to have a kid the same age/grade as parents that were enthusiastic and volunteered to coach before the organization needed to send out the annual "if we don't get a volunteer you don't get a team" email.

I am a Girl Scout leader. My girls pay $35 per year registration and that's it. Other than that, cookie sales and the volunteer time of an awesome group of parents cover everything. If you want your kid to go hiking and camping and do robotics and participate in democracy and you *don't* want to volunteer, you can do that. You can sign them up for paid courses at REI and the local art center and Pongos and Girls Inc. That will amount to several thousand dollars a year.
Or you can help out and volunteer to be part of a Girl Scout troop.

No, it’s not “$35 per year and that’s it,” that’s like saying breastfeeding is free. There’s the value of your time, the other volunteers’ time, the ways that volunteers end up subsidizing troop activities (buying up surplus cases of cookies, donating supplies to meetings, time spent selling cookies to your colleagues to supplement the cookie sales, hours and hours on largely pointless trainings, etc). And let’s be clear—most of the Girl Scout volunteer duties fall to the moms. The GS organization makes it more difficult for dads to volunteer, dads aren’t allowed to sleep in the same tent as their own daughter on the GS camping trips. I was a GS leader when my daughter was in grade school, so I know from experience how much effort it takes to make it work. I think it’s disingenuous to say it’s simply a $35 investment. It’s not. And sometimes the GS experiences are a bit contrived despite everyone’s best intentions. The most fun and most rewarding GS badges we did were through partnerships with museums or similar organizations that provided specialists to lead the girls through activities. Our troop had to raise a lot of cookie sale money to pay for those experiences (and have parent volunteers subsidize other expenses to preserve the troop budget). The bare bones budget meetings are often the least inspiring ones.

So much wrong in your post. Dads absolutely can sleep in a tent or space with their daughter. I’m a leader and my coleader is a dad. He goes on every camping trip and has slept with his kid. We frequently have dads on campouts when the girls were younger. You don’t like the bare budget meetings? Raise your troop dues. We keep ours to $35 per year so families can afford to participate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is just something about the GSUSA business model that makes its program more impacted by these factors. Other programs are challenged by similar things, but I don’t see the same level of operating difficulty and volunteer membership churn. I know we are especially busy people in the DMV, but we are probably not as unique as we think we are. Organization program and business approaches need to adapt in order to thrive, and with the exception of the cookie finance strategy, GSUSA volunteers just appear to be trudging an uphill path — and being told everything is okay. Well, enough from me, as I am not informed enough to say much more.

Girl Scouts only allows female adult leaders, right? All other programs/activities that I can think of (including boy scouts) allows for both male and female adult leaders. By limiting themselves to female only, it cuts the number of potential volunteers in half.

WRONG. Anybody can volunteer!! I’m the leader with male coleader and multiple dads who have been registered and are involved!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the biggest surprises dual working parent families seem to have when their oldest hits school age is that all these activities they hear about kids doing require huge amounts of parent volunteer time. Its not like daycare, where you pay a fee and drop off. Almost every single activity your child does will involve a small amount or a large amount of volunteer time.

I send emails for our rec league every season begging for volunteer rec soccer/basketball/softball coaches and every season, without fail, a parent emails me to ask why we don't just hire some coaches. Every season.

Laughing but I totally understand those parents. I am an active volunteer in scouts and other groups .. but I would love to put money in the hat to hire an expert leader for some activities DD does. Some people (me) just do not have the personality or talent for certain activities (sports and theater). So I get it. If $500 would induce someone to coach, me and 4 other parents would have our wallets out already.

I have 3 kids. We pay a lot for tennis - clinic, private lessons and team.

The only activity that we know going in requiring time commitment is science Olympiad. We knew we had to coach.

I did not know or expect scouts was similar.

It sounds like you do private $$$ tennis. Rec sports need volunteers to run everything.

I guess it is private. They have played at the local pool and tennis, local rec center, racquet club and now country club. None of them required parent volunteers minus the pool and tennis club would ask for help organizing parties. It was more a potluck type sign up. Same with soccer. My kids have played both rec and travel soccer. They only asked for snacks.

It is hard enough just getting my kids to practice and games.

That's because you were lucky and those teams had coaches step up and they didn't need to beg the parents. I coached my son's U8 team one season because no one volunteered. That was experience.

Right? Talk about oblivious! That rec soccer team almost certainly had a volunteer parent or four coaching it. It sounds like you were lucky and happened to have a kid the same age/grade as parents that were enthusiastic and volunteered to coach before the organization needed to send out the annual "if we don't get a volunteer you don't get a team" email.

I am a Girl Scout leader. My girls pay $35 per year registration and that's it. Other than that, cookie sales and the volunteer time of an awesome group of parents cover everything. If you want your kid to go hiking and camping and do robotics and participate in democracy and you *don't* want to volunteer, you can do that. You can sign them up for paid courses at REI and the local art center and Pongos and Girls Inc. That will amount to several thousand dollars a year.
Or you can help out and volunteer to be part of a Girl Scout troop.

No, it’s not “$35 per year and that’s it,” that’s like saying breastfeeding is free. There’s the value of your time, the other volunteers’ time, the ways that volunteers end up subsidizing troop activities (buying up surplus cases of cookies, donating supplies to meetings, time spent selling cookies to your colleagues to supplement the cookie sales, hours and hours on largely pointless trainings, etc). And let’s be clear—most of the Girl Scout volunteer duties fall to the moms. The GS organization makes it more difficult for dads to volunteer, dads aren’t allowed to sleep in the same tent as their own daughter on the GS camping trips. I was a GS leader when my daughter was in grade school, so I know from experience how much effort it takes to make it work. I think it’s disingenuous to say it’s simply a $35 investment. It’s not. And sometimes the GS experiences are a bit contrived despite everyone’s best intentions. The most fun and most rewarding GS badges we did were through partnerships with museums or similar organizations that provided specialists to lead the girls through activities. Our troop had to raise a lot of cookie sale money to pay for those experiences (and have parent volunteers subsidize other expenses to preserve the troop budget). The bare bones budget meetings are often the least inspiring ones.

So much wrong in your post. Dads absolutely can sleep in a tent or space with their daughter. I’m a leader and my coleader is a dad. He goes on every camping trip and has slept with his kid. We frequently have dads on campouts when the girls were younger. You don’t like the bare budget meetings? Raise your troop dues. We keep ours to $35 per year so families can afford to participate.

That's great! It didn't used to be that way. Or maybe the rules on this have differed by council. When I was a leader, it was a rule that dads could not share a tent even with their own daughters. And no, my post isn't "wrong" - I wrote it based on my actual experience. Sounds like you have a different view and experience. Good for you!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread has given me a lot to think about. I was a GS from kindergarten through high school, even getting involved when I went abroad as an exchange student. My mom, a SAHM, was my leader through elementary school. It was a really positive experience for me, in particular when it came to gaining confidence in myself and my ability to just get things done by communicating with people. It’s not time yet, but this is something I would really like to give my daughter assuming she is interested — the organization truly has a place in my heart. That said, I am a biglaw attorney. I just can’t lead a troop the way my mom did (and before anyone comes at me, I will definitely contribute because I understand how much work goes into it).

I wonder if it’s time for the model to be updated, especially in HCOL areas where dual-working couples make up the majority of parents of scouts. I wonder how such changes could work in a way that keeps the program reasonably accessible to girls of all income levels.

We have lots of parents with "important" DC jobs in our troop. We schedule meetings for every other weekend and one school day a month and rotate parent volunteers so that each family can just have one person take off work early one afternoon all year and one weekend. It's a lot for the leaders and cookie people, but chaperoning one or two meetings a year is really not that much for most members.

[Anonymous]

Just venting that my daughter would love to be a Girl Scout and I’d totally be a leader but she was the only one at her school that signed up. We were offered to join a neighboring schools troop, but she would be the only one that didn’t attend that school. Feels like I’d be setting her up to be the outcast. I’m so sad about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the biggest surprises dual working parent families seem to have when their oldest hits school age is that all these activities they hear about kids doing require huge amounts of parent volunteer time. Its not like daycare, where you pay a fee and drop off. Almost every single activity your child does will involve a small amount or a large amount of volunteer time.

I send emails for our rec league every season begging for volunteer rec soccer/basketball/softball coaches and every season, without fail, a parent emails me to ask why we don't just hire some coaches. Every season.

Laughing but I totally understand those parents. I am an active volunteer in scouts and other groups .. but I would love to put money in the hat to hire an expert leader for some activities DD does. Some people (me) just do not have the personality or talent for certain activities (sports and theater). So I get it. If $500 would induce someone to coach, me and 4 other parents would have our wallets out already.

I have 3 kids. We pay a lot for tennis - clinic, private lessons and team.

The only activity that we know going in requiring time commitment is science Olympiad. We knew we had to coach.

I did not know or expect scouts was similar.

It sounds like you do private $$$ tennis. Rec sports need volunteers to run everything.

I guess it is private. They have played at the local pool and tennis, local rec center, racquet club and now country club. None of them required parent volunteers minus the pool and tennis club would ask for help organizing parties. It was more a potluck type sign up. Same with soccer. My kids have played both rec and travel soccer. They only asked for snacks.

It is hard enough just getting my kids to practice and games.

That's because you were lucky and those teams had coaches step up and they didn't need to beg the parents. I coached my son's U8 team one season because no one volunteered. That was experience.

Right? Talk about oblivious! That rec soccer team almost certainly had a volunteer parent or four coaching it. It sounds like you were lucky and happened to have a kid the same age/grade as parents that were enthusiastic and volunteered to coach before the organization needed to send out the annual "if we don't get a volunteer you don't get a team" email.

I am a Girl Scout leader. My girls pay $35 per year registration and that's it. Other than that, cookie sales and the volunteer time of an awesome group of parents cover everything. If you want your kid to go hiking and camping and do robotics and participate in democracy and you *don't* want to volunteer, you can do that. You can sign them up for paid courses at REI and the local art center and Pongos and Girls Inc. That will amount to several thousand dollars a year.
Or you can help out and volunteer to be part of a Girl Scout troop.

No, it’s not “$35 per year and that’s it,” that’s like saying breastfeeding is free. There’s the value of your time, the other volunteers’ time, the ways that volunteers end up subsidizing troop activities (buying up surplus cases of cookies, donating supplies to meetings, time spent selling cookies to your colleagues to supplement the cookie sales, hours and hours on largely pointless trainings, etc). And let’s be clear—most of the Girl Scout volunteer duties fall to the moms. The GS organization makes it more difficult for dads to volunteer, dads aren’t allowed to sleep in the same tent as their own daughter on the GS camping trips. I was a GS leader when my daughter was in grade school, so I know from experience how much effort it takes to make it work. I think it’s disingenuous to say it’s simply a $35 investment. It’s not. And sometimes the GS experiences are a bit contrived despite everyone’s best intentions. The most fun and most rewarding GS badges we did were through partnerships with museums or similar organizations that provided specialists to lead the girls through activities. Our troop had to raise a lot of cookie sale money to pay for those experiences (and have parent volunteers subsidize other expenses to preserve the troop budget). The bare bones budget meetings are often the least inspiring ones.

So much wrong in your post. Dads absolutely can sleep in a tent or space with their daughter. I’m a leader and my coleader is a dad. He goes on every camping trip and has slept with his kid. We frequently have dads on campouts when the girls were younger. You don’t like the bare budget meetings? Raise your troop dues. We keep ours to $35 per year so families can afford to participate.

We just had campout/encampment the last weekend of August and were told Dad's needed to sleep in their own tent and away from the other tents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just venting that my daughter would love to be a Girl Scout and I’d totally be a leader but she was the only one at her school that signed up. We were offered to join a neighboring schools troop, but she would be the only one that didn’t attend that school. Feels like I’d be setting her up to be the outcast. I’m so sad about it.

We have a "school" troop with a few girls from different schools and its no big deal at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the biggest surprises dual working parent families seem to have when their oldest hits school age is that all these activities they hear about kids doing require huge amounts of parent volunteer time. Its not like daycare, where you pay a fee and drop off. Almost every single activity your child does will involve a small amount or a large amount of volunteer time.

I send emails for our rec league every season begging for volunteer rec soccer/basketball/softball coaches and every season, without fail, a parent emails me to ask why we don't just hire some coaches. Every season.

Laughing but I totally understand those parents. I am an active volunteer in scouts and other groups .. but I would love to put money in the hat to hire an expert leader for some activities DD does. Some people (me) just do not have the personality or talent for certain activities (sports and theater). So I get it. If $500 would induce someone to coach, me and 4 other parents would have our wallets out already.

I have 3 kids. We pay a lot for tennis - clinic, private lessons and team.

The only activity that we know going in requiring time commitment is science Olympiad. We knew we had to coach.

I did not know or expect scouts was similar.

It sounds like you do private $$$ tennis. Rec sports need volunteers to run everything.

I guess it is private. They have played at the local pool and tennis, local rec center, racquet club and now country club. None of them required parent volunteers minus the pool and tennis club would ask for help organizing parties. It was more a potluck type sign up. Same with soccer. My kids have played both rec and travel soccer. They only asked for snacks.

It is hard enough just getting my kids to practice and games.

That's because you were lucky and those teams had coaches step up and they didn't need to beg the parents. I coached my son's U8 team one season because no one volunteered. That was experience.

Right? Talk about oblivious! That rec soccer team almost certainly had a volunteer parent or four coaching it. It sounds like you were lucky and happened to have a kid the same age/grade as parents that were enthusiastic and volunteered to coach before the organization needed to send out the annual "if we don't get a volunteer you don't get a team" email.

I am a Girl Scout leader. My girls pay $35 per year registration and that's it. Other than that, cookie sales and the volunteer time of an awesome group of parents cover everything. If you want your kid to go hiking and camping and do robotics and participate in democracy and you *don't* want to volunteer, you can do that. You can sign them up for paid courses at REI and the local art center and Pongos and Girls Inc. That will amount to several thousand dollars a year.
Or you can help out and volunteer to be part of a Girl Scout troop.

No, it’s not “$35 per year and that’s it,” that’s like saying breastfeeding is free. There’s the value of your time, the other volunteers’ time, the ways that volunteers end up subsidizing troop activities (buying up surplus cases of cookies, donating supplies to meetings, time spent selling cookies to your colleagues to supplement the cookie sales, hours and hours on largely pointless trainings, etc). And let’s be clear—most of the Girl Scout volunteer duties fall to the moms. The GS organization makes it more difficult for dads to volunteer, dads aren’t allowed to sleep in the same tent as their own daughter on the GS camping trips. I was a GS leader when my daughter was in grade school, so I know from experience how much effort it takes to make it work. I think it’s disingenuous to say it’s simply a $35 investment. It’s not. And sometimes the GS experiences are a bit contrived despite everyone’s best intentions. The most fun and most rewarding GS badges we did were through partnerships with museums or similar organizations that provided specialists to lead the girls through activities. Our troop had to raise a lot of cookie sale money to pay for those experiences (and have parent volunteers subsidize other expenses to preserve the troop budget). The bare bones budget meetings are often the least inspiring ones.

So much wrong in your post. Dads absolutely can sleep in a tent or space with their daughter. I’m a leader and my coleader is a dad. He goes on every camping trip and has slept with his kid. We frequently have dads on campouts when the girls were younger. You don’t like the bare budget meetings? Raise your troop dues. We keep ours to $35 per year so families can afford to participate.

We just had campout/encampment the last weekend of August and were told Dad's needed to sleep in their own tent and away from the other tents.

Yes, the preference is that men sleep separately and even moms are not recommended to share tents with girls. The ideal is that the girls will buddy up in tents and female chaperones sleep nearby but not in the same tent. For overnights men also have either a separate bathroom or a sign that they can put on a shared bathroom door to alert people when it's in use by men.

Cub scouts does more family camps where a whole family will be together in a tent.

Men and women are welcome to help lead both boy and girl scouts, they just handle it differently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the biggest surprises dual working parent families seem to have when their oldest hits school age is that all these activities they hear about kids doing require huge amounts of parent volunteer time. Its not like daycare, where you pay a fee and drop off. Almost every single activity your child does will involve a small amount or a large amount of volunteer time.

I send emails for our rec league every season begging for volunteer rec soccer/basketball/softball coaches and every season, without fail, a parent emails me to ask why we don't just hire some coaches. Every season.

Laughing but I totally understand those parents. I am an active volunteer in scouts and other groups .. but I would love to put money in the hat to hire an expert leader for some activities DD does. Some people (me) just do not have the personality or talent for certain activities (sports and theater). So I get it. If $500 would induce someone to coach, me and 4 other parents would have our wallets out already.

I have 3 kids. We pay a lot for tennis - clinic, private lessons and team.

The only activity that we know going in requiring time commitment is science Olympiad. We knew we had to coach.

I did not know or expect scouts was similar.

It sounds like you do private $$$ tennis. Rec sports need volunteers to run everything.

I guess it is private. They have played at the local pool and tennis, local rec center, racquet club and now country club. None of them required parent volunteers minus the pool and tennis club would ask for help organizing parties. It was more a potluck type sign up. Same with soccer. My kids have played both rec and travel soccer. They only asked for snacks.

It is hard enough just getting my kids to practice and games.

That's because you were lucky and those teams had coaches step up and they didn't need to beg the parents. I coached my son's U8 team one season because no one volunteered. That was experience.

Right? Talk about oblivious! That rec soccer team almost certainly had a volunteer parent or four coaching it. It sounds like you were lucky and happened to have a kid the same age/grade as parents that were enthusiastic and volunteered to coach before the organization needed to send out the annual "if we don't get a volunteer you don't get a team" email.

I am a Girl Scout leader. My girls pay $35 per year registration and that's it. Other than that, cookie sales and the volunteer time of an awesome group of parents cover everything. If you want your kid to go hiking and camping and do robotics and participate in democracy and you *don't* want to volunteer, you can do that. You can sign them up for paid courses at REI and the local art center and Pongos and Girls Inc. That will amount to several thousand dollars a year.
Or you can help out and volunteer to be part of a Girl Scout troop.

No, it’s not “$35 per year and that’s it,” that’s like saying breastfeeding is free. There’s the value of your time, the other volunteers’ time, the ways that volunteers end up subsidizing troop activities (buying up surplus cases of cookies, donating supplies to meetings, time spent selling cookies to your colleagues to supplement the cookie sales, hours and hours on largely pointless trainings, etc). And let’s be clear—most of the Girl Scout volunteer duties fall to the moms. The GS organization makes it more difficult for dads to volunteer, dads aren’t allowed to sleep in the same tent as their own daughter on the GS camping trips. I was a GS leader when my daughter was in grade school, so I know from experience how much effort it takes to make it work. I think it’s disingenuous to say it’s simply a $35 investment. It’s not. And sometimes the GS experiences are a bit contrived despite everyone’s best intentions. The most fun and most rewarding GS badges we did were through partnerships with museums or similar organizations that provided specialists to lead the girls through activities. Our troop had to raise a lot of cookie sale money to pay for those experiences (and have parent volunteers subsidize other expenses to preserve the troop budget). The bare bones budget meetings are often the least inspiring ones.

So much wrong in your post. Dads absolutely can sleep in a tent or space with their daughter. I’m a leader and my coleader is a dad. He goes on every camping trip and has slept with his kid. We frequently have dads on campouts when the girls were younger. You don’t like the bare budget meetings? Raise your troop dues. We keep ours to $35 per year so families can afford to participate.

That dad is not following Girl Scout rules if he is doing that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just venting that my daughter would love to be a Girl Scout and I’d totally be a leader but she was the only one at her school that signed up. We were offered to join a neighboring schools troop, but she would be the only one that didn’t attend that school. Feels like I’d be setting her up to be the outcast. I’m so sad about it.

How old is your daughter and can you ask the service unit if you can talk to the troop leader? With luck they are moms who will work to integrate your daughter, especially if they are Daisies or Brownies and might not know each other yet. When my daughter was in K her troop was all at the same school but those 14 girls hadn't all met one another by the time the first meeting happened. If she is that young, you can also work out some playdates or depending on where meetings are suggest a few minutes on the playground afterwards.

I totally understand why you're stressed and disappointed but if you're willing to be open-minded it could work out well. From experience, I'll say that especially with girls having multiple friend groups is so good as they get older that way all their friendship eggs aren't in one basket if there becomes drama in upper elementary or middle school.

[Anonymous]

GS USA collects this national fee from everyone, imposes all the rules, but then does nothing to actually help structure what the program should look like. “Girl-led” is just code for, we are lazy, do what you want, we don’t care. I’m glad some troops are having fun. Most of the ones in our neighborhood are pretty pointless.

[Anonymous]

Don't do it. Its a bunch of parent work, drama, and dumb activities. It isn't at all how I remember it in the 90s.