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?

Anonymous wrote:Five pages keeps circling back to the same fundamentals of Girl Scouts:

1. It is run by parent volunteers. Without parents, there are no troops. The more committed the parents, likely the better the experience will be for the girls.

2. The activities are selected by the parents and girls, which circles back to #1. Parents really invested in Girl Scouts will identify lots of fun badges and experiences for the girls whether those are outdoorsy, cultural or museum-type things, or community service. As they get older, the girls will be the ones to make those choices.

3. Troops that are more laid back end up being more of a social setting with some easy badges or activities to provide the baseline structure for a meeting. This works great for some girls and their parents, but others find it really boring.

Anonymous wrote:

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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.you’ve never been asked to volunteer at a swim meet?

I did not know or expect scouts was similar.

Similar. My 3 kids do swimming and tennis. They are completely organized and ran by paid professionals. I’ve never had to volunteer for anything. Maybe the end of year party..but that’s it

Anonymous wrote:i thought i would have wanted to be a troop leader, but the amount of training and rules you have to follow is unsustainable for me.

the way troops are usually organized is that they have a round up at the school at the beginning of school. you are seated by grades. they then say, look around. this is your troop. which one of you wants to be a leader? of course we all know there needs to be a leader, but i didn't really like how they did this.

parents are barely willing to help at all. it is annoying.

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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.

I'm not sure why you felt the need to go on that rant. I agree with you and was making that same point. "Other than that, cookie sales and the volunteer time of an awesome group of parents cover everything."
So either OP needs to pay thousands of dollars, or she needs to be part of the volunteer apparatus to make it work.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to describe a more nuanced perspective as a rant. OP is obviously not facing a binary choice of either pay thousands to do those activities or dollars or do Girl Scouts. One can pursue the activities you mentioned through various other ways AND one doesn't need to spend thousands to do it. One doesn't need to buy expensive REI gear or lessons to go on a hike. Having personal experience with Girl Scouts, I can say that you are definitely overselling it, so I was attempting to provide some more realism. I think Girl Scouts can be a worthwhile experience but it comes with costs.

Anonymous wrote:

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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.

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.

I'm not sure why you felt the need to go on that rant. I agree with you and was making that same point. "Other than that, cookie sales and the volunteer time of an awesome group of parents cover everything."
So either OP needs to pay thousands of dollars, or she needs to be part of the volunteer apparatus to make it work.

Anonymous wrote:Five pages keeps circling back to the same fundamentals of Girl Scouts:

1. It is run by parent volunteers. Without parents, there are no troops. The more committed the parents, likely the better the experience will be for the girls.

2. The activities are selected by the parents and girls, which circles back to #1. Parents really invested in Girl Scouts will identify lots of fun badges and experiences for the girls whether those are outdoorsy, cultural or museum-type things, or community service. As they get older, the girls will be the ones to make those choices.

3. Troops that are more laid back end up being more of a social setting with some easy badges or activities to provide the baseline structure for a meeting. This works great for some girls and their parents, but others find it really boring.

Anonymous wrote:I just wish GS would fade away. They make a big push at the beginnging of elementary and get all the girls hyped up. I didn't want to be the parent who said "no we aren't doing girl scouts its dumb" but it is. The activities are boring and lame and I can't wait for DD to agree on her own.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just wish GS would fade away. They make a big push at the beginnging of elementary and get all the girls hyped up. I didn't want to be the parent who said "no we aren't doing girl scouts its dumb" but it is. The activities are boring and lame and I can't wait for DD to agree on her own.

YOU don't like it, so you think that it shouldn't even exist? Even though millions of others get something positive out of it? That's a disgusting sense of entitlement.

There is a set of people out there who will just never be happy with Girl Scouts. They will always think it is lame or inferior, or they'll get snide about cookie sales, or if they can't think of anything else they'll say that girl groups have too much drama. Girl Scouts just attracts a level of vitriol that other activities don't -- I'm sure you won't find PP complaining about the existence of skating lessons or whatever Suzie is doing that her DD wanted to do also.

There is nothing you can do with these people but let it roll off. They are their own punishment.

I guess I just got really unlucky then. I have two DD’s and both their troops were not very active (infrequent meetings and activities) and when they did meet, activities were boring and/or poorly planned. Neither girl’s troop leader request help running the meetings, but I did volunteer in the ways that were requested. I am aware that there are other more activity troops in other grades, but at our school you join the troop for your grade and not some other grade. So it’s a crapshoot. It’s really inconsistent.

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.

Anonymous wrote:Seems harmless enough but it is some Cold War nonsense. Teaches girls to love God and the USA. No thanks.