How Do You Lose That Many Girls?
IN June 2010, there was an article about the GSNEO camps in the Akron Beacon Journal which included a quote from a council spokesperson claiming that only 10% of the membership camped. This was the accepted figure at the time. But I had just spent a lot of time working on the Vision 2012 information ---- and having seen the numbers, 10% seemed really off. So I went through it all again.
The council had not included troop weekend camping in its calculations. And troop weekend camping is the largest program in the council!!!
So after checking with some mathematically-minded friends to make sure I wasn't crazy, I sent a message out to everyone on the Vision 2012 committee, the board, CEO, and senior staff. I thought they'd all be happy. We had a lot more girls participating in camping than we thought we did. I thought the staff would be embarrassed about the oversight, so I didn't harp on it. It was fixed. We could work with accurate numbers. We didn't have to get rid of any more camps. In fact, we should look into getting back the ones that had already been closed.
But strangely, the revised figure was NOT exactly met with joy and acclimation. At the Vision 2012 meeting the following month, business rolled along as usual. Still, I was pretty hopeful. It was significant new information
In March, 2011 we heard the astounding news that the board planned to sell off 5 camps. Then I began to wonder if the 10% HAD been an oversight after all. The newly revised Girl Scout programing emphasizes math skills. Isn't the council adept at basic counting? It would have been pretty hard to lose 40% of the girl population - even if the council office was focused on their own programs. Had it been intentional?
There is no way to know.
But it was very interesting that following the announcement, Brent Gardner was again pitching a low ball percentage in an interview. Only he went even lower and claimed it is only FIVE per cent of the girls who camped!!!!!! The June15, 2011 edition of The Macedonia News-Leader ran a story on the first Macedonia "camp-in". Brent Gardner was quoted as saying only 5% of the membership uses the camps. (See photocopy below. Brent's statement is in the second paragraph of the second part of the article) .
Here are images of the original article, as printed on June 15th, 2011. These are scans of the article. The on-line version of this article has since been changed to say 50%.
Helen Bergmann, a former member of GSLEC's Board of Directors, questioned the reporter about the 5% number. Here's the reply she got:
"It was not a typo. The exact numbers he gave were 1,000 girls, or 2.5 percent, took part in residential programs and 1,452, or 3.6 percent in day programs. He said many of these girls took part in both and were counted twice. "
This left the council office having to come up with an excuse for the wild swing in numbers - without being able to claim that they were mis-quoted.
"The numbers reported by GSNEO separates the use of our properties into categories. (resident camp, troop camp, programs etc.). Often, we are asked very specific questions by the media and others, which may or may not align to our categories. We strive to answer the question and sometimes have to query the data set differently to answer the question than we normally report. "
In other words, according to the council office, reporters aren't simply asking basic questions. But in this case, the same reporter that talked to Brent Gardner had also talked to me at the camp in. He didn't have any detailed, insider information about about different types of camps that would have involved "querying the data set differently". He wanted to understand the issue. Period. For Brent Gardner to have claimed only 5% of our Girl Scouts use our camp, was, once again, a lie.
A deliberate, intentional lie.
Below is the E-mail Lynn Richardson sent to GSNEO board members and others bringing the omission of troop camping numbers to their attention:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: lynndragonwing@roadrunner.com
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:28:19 -0400
Subject: Vision 2012: statistics recalculation
I have been pondering the statement that only 10% of GSNEO girl membership use the camps - especially since it was again repeated in the Akron Beacon Journal recently. It just does not seem realistic, and in fact it's not. The true percentage is around 50%
The 10% figure is the members who participate in GSNEO-sponsored camp programming.
The survey results indicated that the greatest camp usage was in troop camping. Among the materials we were given in the vision 2012 process is a document showing the actual counts. The title is "Non council sponsored site usage Oct 2008 - Sept 2009" This is the most recent data possible.
The total is 15,606 girls out of a total membership of c. 37,000. which is about 42%
ADD to that the 10% of council sponsored camp activity and you get 52%
SOME VARIABLE FACTORS:
1. For whatever reason, there was no listing for Wintergreen cabin. (The document does show the rest of the relinquished properties, since girls were still using them at the time.) But although this would have raised the number, it would only be by a small amount.
2. From this document, there is no way to tell how many of the girls camped more than once. I do not have access to this data, but it would lower the total number of individual girls.
3. Also not included were girls who camped at NON-GSNEO owned sites because they couldn't get into GSNEO camps. These represent an unknown quantity. Based on my experience of hearing leaders complain about the unavailability of space at camp (as well as snarky comments from boy scouts complaining about too many girl scouts camping on their turf), I believe this would represent a statistically significant number.
Without complete records we cannot know the impact of factors 2 & 3 . But for the sake of making life simple, let's assume they cancel each other out.
Of the remaining 50% of the TOTAL girl membership - roughly 18,500 - about 8,000 of them are Daisies who are too young to be doing much camping. Of the entire girl membership, Camp appears to be far and away the most utilized program component. In addition, it is the "flagship" program of Girl Scouting: what parents expect when they sign their daughters up; the one that we know has had a deep, lasting impact on former girl campers, now adults; the one that can encompass financial literacy, STEM, and other program elements GSUSA espouses; and what makes us different from "just another class".
Given the importance of camping in our council, our question should not be "which camps are expendable?", but "how can we make ALL of our camps even more attractive and accessible to all of our members? "
Lynn Scholle Richardson
The council had not included troop weekend camping in its calculations. And troop weekend camping is the largest program in the council!!!
So after checking with some mathematically-minded friends to make sure I wasn't crazy, I sent a message out to everyone on the Vision 2012 committee, the board, CEO, and senior staff. I thought they'd all be happy. We had a lot more girls participating in camping than we thought we did. I thought the staff would be embarrassed about the oversight, so I didn't harp on it. It was fixed. We could work with accurate numbers. We didn't have to get rid of any more camps. In fact, we should look into getting back the ones that had already been closed.
But strangely, the revised figure was NOT exactly met with joy and acclimation. At the Vision 2012 meeting the following month, business rolled along as usual. Still, I was pretty hopeful. It was significant new information
In March, 2011 we heard the astounding news that the board planned to sell off 5 camps. Then I began to wonder if the 10% HAD been an oversight after all. The newly revised Girl Scout programing emphasizes math skills. Isn't the council adept at basic counting? It would have been pretty hard to lose 40% of the girl population - even if the council office was focused on their own programs. Had it been intentional?
There is no way to know.
But it was very interesting that following the announcement, Brent Gardner was again pitching a low ball percentage in an interview. Only he went even lower and claimed it is only FIVE per cent of the girls who camped!!!!!! The June15, 2011 edition of The Macedonia News-Leader ran a story on the first Macedonia "camp-in". Brent Gardner was quoted as saying only 5% of the membership uses the camps. (See photocopy below. Brent's statement is in the second paragraph of the second part of the article) .
Here are images of the original article, as printed on June 15th, 2011. These are scans of the article. The on-line version of this article has since been changed to say 50%.
Helen Bergmann, a former member of GSLEC's Board of Directors, questioned the reporter about the 5% number. Here's the reply she got:
"It was not a typo. The exact numbers he gave were 1,000 girls, or 2.5 percent, took part in residential programs and 1,452, or 3.6 percent in day programs. He said many of these girls took part in both and were counted twice. "
This left the council office having to come up with an excuse for the wild swing in numbers - without being able to claim that they were mis-quoted.
"The numbers reported by GSNEO separates the use of our properties into categories. (resident camp, troop camp, programs etc.). Often, we are asked very specific questions by the media and others, which may or may not align to our categories. We strive to answer the question and sometimes have to query the data set differently to answer the question than we normally report. "
In other words, according to the council office, reporters aren't simply asking basic questions. But in this case, the same reporter that talked to Brent Gardner had also talked to me at the camp in. He didn't have any detailed, insider information about about different types of camps that would have involved "querying the data set differently". He wanted to understand the issue. Period. For Brent Gardner to have claimed only 5% of our Girl Scouts use our camp, was, once again, a lie.
A deliberate, intentional lie.
Below is the E-mail Lynn Richardson sent to GSNEO board members and others bringing the omission of troop camping numbers to their attention:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: lynndragonwing@roadrunner.com
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:28:19 -0400
Subject: Vision 2012: statistics recalculation
I have been pondering the statement that only 10% of GSNEO girl membership use the camps - especially since it was again repeated in the Akron Beacon Journal recently. It just does not seem realistic, and in fact it's not. The true percentage is around 50%
The 10% figure is the members who participate in GSNEO-sponsored camp programming.
The survey results indicated that the greatest camp usage was in troop camping. Among the materials we were given in the vision 2012 process is a document showing the actual counts. The title is "Non council sponsored site usage Oct 2008 - Sept 2009" This is the most recent data possible.
The total is 15,606 girls out of a total membership of c. 37,000. which is about 42%
ADD to that the 10% of council sponsored camp activity and you get 52%
SOME VARIABLE FACTORS:
1. For whatever reason, there was no listing for Wintergreen cabin. (The document does show the rest of the relinquished properties, since girls were still using them at the time.) But although this would have raised the number, it would only be by a small amount.
2. From this document, there is no way to tell how many of the girls camped more than once. I do not have access to this data, but it would lower the total number of individual girls.
3. Also not included were girls who camped at NON-GSNEO owned sites because they couldn't get into GSNEO camps. These represent an unknown quantity. Based on my experience of hearing leaders complain about the unavailability of space at camp (as well as snarky comments from boy scouts complaining about too many girl scouts camping on their turf), I believe this would represent a statistically significant number.
Without complete records we cannot know the impact of factors 2 & 3 . But for the sake of making life simple, let's assume they cancel each other out.
Of the remaining 50% of the TOTAL girl membership - roughly 18,500 - about 8,000 of them are Daisies who are too young to be doing much camping. Of the entire girl membership, Camp appears to be far and away the most utilized program component. In addition, it is the "flagship" program of Girl Scouting: what parents expect when they sign their daughters up; the one that we know has had a deep, lasting impact on former girl campers, now adults; the one that can encompass financial literacy, STEM, and other program elements GSUSA espouses; and what makes us different from "just another class".
Given the importance of camping in our council, our question should not be "which camps are expendable?", but "how can we make ALL of our camps even more attractive and accessible to all of our members? "
Lynn Scholle Richardson
