A difference in DNA

The Boy Scouts of America is fundamentally different than the Girl Scouts of the USA — and not because of gender. Chartering organizations have shaped the BSA in a way that has lasting impacts.

When I was a youth in Scouting, I had no idea what a “chartering organization” was. This is probably because my Boy Scout troop was chartered by a parent-teacher association that, as far as I could tell, had virtually no role in troop operations.

As I got older, I learned that the vast majority of troops were chartered by churches, which often had a much more active role in the program. It piqued my curiosity, and soon became clear that churches had a big influence on the BSA, especially as the gay membership debates played out.

So the more I learned about chartering organizations and their role in the Boy Scouts of America, the more I wanted to know: What would Scouting look like without them?

It turns out the answer was hiding in plain sight: the Girl Scouts of the USA. Indeed, the lack of chartered organizations in the Girl Scouts is one of the fundamental differences between the programs, especially as gender is no longer one of them.

To learn more about this, I spoke with Randy Cline, a friend and lifelong Scouter who has deep knowledge of both organizations. Cline grew up in the BSA, has volunteered at a national level for decades and, at the same time, spent nearly his entire career working as a Girl Scout council executive.

The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Randy Cline

MD: I would love to learn more about your experience in the Girl Scouts. How did that become your career, and what roles did you have?

RC: I started out of high school, and college, working at a Boy Scout camp during the summer, and summers of college, and decided to make a career out of it. So I went to work for the Boy Scouts, initially. And I worked in the Miami Valley Council in Dayton, Ohio. For I don't know, two or three years maybe, first as an associate district executive. And then I got my own district. So I was a district executive.

One morning, somebody brought in a newspaper ad from the the newspaper in Dayton and said, look at this. And he read the ad, there was a little classified ad, and it sounded like it was like one of our jobs. The scout executive was pretty intimidating and threatening at the time. And we're like, I wonder who's gonna get fired, you know, if he finds somebody better than us. And [the ad] said: youth serving organization seeking community organizer to give leadership to serving youth in the community. And I was dumb enough to pick up the phone and call. And that person said it was for the Girl Scouts. And I was like, well, I don't know that I'm all that interested. I knew nothing about the Girl Scouts.

Well, that person followed up and called me back and said, it's the Girl Scouts. And it's in Richmond, Indiana, not here in Dayton. And the starting salary is X number of dollars, and it was like 50 percent more than I was making. The person talked me into going for an interview. And they offered me the job, and I took it. So I became the scout executive, the equivalent of the scout executive, the title was executive director at the time. So I took that position and got more than a 50 percent increase in pay. I thought I was on top of the world.

And I moved three times, I moved to Richmond to take that job, moved to South Bend, Indiana, to take the job of the Girl Scout council there, and then moved to Harrisburg, here, where I am now. And spent my whole career working for the Girl Scouts, and retired successfully.

So how do chartering organizations differentiate the structure of the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts?

All of the councils in the BSA are chartered by the Boy Scouts of America, and all the units that are organized by the local councils are chartered as well. And all of the units in the BSA, whether Cub Scout packs or Boy Scout troops or venturing crews, all of them are owned and operated by the chartering organizations. There's not anything that isn't chartered. And so all the members are a part of units that are chartered and those units have all signed an agreement with the BSA to be a chartered organization. And the Boy Scouts say, and believe, that the units that are owned and operated by those organizations.

And when we get to talking about the Girl Scouts, the distinction is quite obvious. In the Girl Scouts, the Girl Scout organization owns and operates its own program for girls. And there is no such thing as a chartered organization. Sometimes units are sponsored, Girl Scout units are sponsored, by a church, which basically means we give you permission to meet in the church. And occasionally there'll be money or people from the church who are active in the unit, but not necessarily. So that's the that's the primary distinction.

How does this difference play out, practically speaking?

In the Boy Scouts there is an entity called the council, and the bylaws of the organization say that the members of the council consist of one representative from each of the charter organizations up to and including at least 100 people. And then the bylaws say that the members can also include the executive board, a minimum of 25 and a maximum of 50. There is a statement in the Boy Scout documents that say that the members of the chartering organizations — the total members of the chartering organizations — must constitute a majority of all the people who have votes.

So what that means is, truly, that the chartering organizations, if they can get their act together, they're like the Democrats: They have the majority of the votes. So they can decide to do whatever they agree to: Buy a camp, sell a camp, increase the profit from the popcorn sale, lower the cost of paying to go to summer camp. They could potentially do all of those things. Now, in reality, most of the chartered partners don't care. And some of them don't even know that much, to know that they have the majority of the votes and they could do whatever they wanted to do.

My troop growing up was chartered by a PTA, and I don’t think they even knew they had that power.

And they probably didn't want all that responsibility. But that's how it works. That's the primary difference and distinction that sets the Boy Scouts apart from the Girl Scouts. The units are managed by the the chartered organization, and that is not so in the Girl Scouts. The Girl Scouts own and operate their own programs, and wouldn't want to have it any other way. The leaders in a [Boy Scout] pack or a troop are technically selected by the chartering organization. In reality, it's almost the same everywhere: Who can we get to do it? Being realistic about it, who's willing to step up and do it or not? And that's true in both the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts. In the Girl Scouts, they say, we'll decide who the leader is, and we'll appoint them and train them. In the Boy Scouts, the Boy Scouts say you're the chartering organization, it's your responsibility to appoint the leader, and that's that's essentially out how it works and what the difference is.

What other impacts does this distinction have on both organizations?

I only wish that in the Girl Scouts we had the kind of community contacts and outreach into the community the way the Boy Scouts do with their chartered partner contacts. Because the Girl Scouts don't have those kinds of contacts with all those churches. One hundred percent of the LDS churches [were formerly involved], and the Catholics and the Methodists, they're all involved. And that's just, that's tremendous. I think it's great.

On the flip side of that question, the Boy Scouts don't really control who the leaders are. The Girl Scouts can say, we pick you to be our leader. And we're inviting you to do that and to serve in that capacity, we will train you. In the Boy Scouts, it doesn't work that way. The guy from the LDS church called me up [when I was working for the Boy Scouts] and said, "I'm the new leader, I've been appointed by the church. I have no knowledge of the program or interest in the program, but for the next two years, I'm who you get. And your job is to make me successful. And tell me what I need to know to do my job." So it's kind of a double-edged sword. And the Boy Scouts for a long time, given all the youth protection issues, they hid behind that, saying that, well, the church appointed the leader. The leader may not have been very good and may have been abusing the young people in their charge, but they picked him, we the Boy Scouts did not. And that's the downside of it.

Do do you think that the charter structure is a part of the reason that BSA had such a hard time with membership issues and the Girl Scouts didn't?

For sure. The Girl Scouts could choose to be inclusive decades before the Boy Scout did. When I left the Boy Scouts and got introduced to the Girl Scouts — and that was in the 70s — we were focused on inclusion and diversity years before, decades really, before the Boy Scouts ever were, in terms of race and gender and sexual orientation. I think the Girl Scouts were always interested, because girls were getting pregnant and the Girl Scouts wanted to be able to talk about those issues and address them directly with girls. And did. And the Catholic Church took exception to that, the LDS church certainly did, to this day.

I think there’s a perception that Girl Scout troops fold more often than Boy Scout troops as a result of a lack of charters. Do you think that’s true, and is it a downside of that structure?

I don't think it's true at all. If you listen to Boy Scout people talk about the Girl Scout organization, you're probably being misled by them. The Girl Scouts are not bankrupt. They're not fighting a bunch of lawsuits. They're a better managed organization generally. And they tell the truth about their membership rather than fib about it like Boy Scouts typically do. And I can say that because I've worked for both organizations.