How Much Did Covid Hurt?

There is no denying that there are fewer Girl Scouts today than there were pre-Covid.  The question is how much of that decline can be blamed on Covid, and how much would have happened anyway.  

My Council

I got my 20 year pin this year  and I've seen the numbers in my area decrease substantially over that time.  Part of it is demographics. Most Girl Scouts are between 5 and 9 years old.  In 2019, there were 9.87 million girls that age in the US. Five years earlier, there were 10.18 million and five years before that, 10.31.  The cohort before that had 11.5 million girls. In short, in fifteen years, the number of eligible girls in the target age group has dropped about 14%.

The oldest numbers I could find for my council were from 2009, using the Wayback Machine to look at the council's website.  At that time they claimed to serve over 16,000 girls and 5500 adults.  In 2014 our annual report said that we had 14,100 girls and 5800 adults.  In 2019, we had 10,281 girls and 3425 adults.   Our council Annual Report for 2022 says we served 5,300 girl members plus 563 were served in the outreach program.  This past year we had 1/3 the girls we had thirteen years ago when my college-aged daughter started in the program.  

According to the IRS, in 2014 my council had revenue of $3,777,635 and expenses of  $3,729,300.  That means we collected about $267.91 per girl and spent about $264.48 per girl.  In 2019 we had revenue of $3,699,939 and expenses of $3,704,124.  On a per girl basis we were earning $359.88 per girl and spending $360.28 per girl.  Our revenue in 2021 was $3,546,139 and our expenses were 2,397,113,  We were in the black but we spent $408.85 per girl.  74.2% of our revenue was product sales.  We serve 57% of the girls we did in 2019.  In between those years, my council sold the offices of its two legacy councils as well as one of the camps.  We are in the process of building a new Experience Center/headquarters which is a prototype being pushed by GSUSA (and which I was told was about half paid for by a grant). 

Other Councils

I took a look at a few other councils.  I looked for geographic diversity and an easily accessible annual report with membership numbers.  Here is what I found:

• Girl Scouts of Citrus:  New-style website.  No annual reports shown on search
  
  
• Girls Scouts Eastern Missouri:  New-style website.  No annual reports shown on search
  
  
• Girl Scouts River Valleys:  Old-style website.  2020 Annual Report says 17,050 girls sold cookies in 2020 before the sale was suspended.  In 2022, 11,450 girls sold cookies. 2020 is the earliest report easily accessible. 
  
  
• Girl Scouts Greater Mississippi:  Old-style website.  Easily found old annual reports but nothing between 2020 and present.
  
  
• Girl Scouts of Northern California:  New-style website.  Its called an Impact Report rather than an Annual Report.  In 2019 there were 38,699 members. In 2022 15,000 girls sold cookies. 
  
  
• Girl Scouts Heart of Central California: New-style website. Only 2019 Annual Report shown.
  
  
• Girl Scouts Historic Georgia:  New-style website.  2019-2020 showed 11,368 girls.  2021-2021 listed 6,989 girls.  Oldest Annual Report I could easily find was 2014-2015.  It showed 12,616 girls. 
  
  
• Girl Scouts Western Oklahoma:  Old-style website. No search box.  No Annual Report on menus.
  
  
• Girl Scouts Eastern Oklahoma: Old-style website.   In 2015, 3872 girls sold cookies.  The 2022 Annual report showed 4183 girl members.  
  
  
• Girl Scouts Greater New York. New-style website. 2020 Annual Report shows 38,000+ girls served. 2022 Annual Report says 25,000+.  The oldest report I found was 2015 and it showed 29,242 girls. 
  
  
• Girl Scouts of Wyoming and Montana.  New-style website.  No recent Annual Reports.
  
  
• Girl Scouts Central Indiana.  New-style website.  No Annual Reports.
  
  
• Girl Scouts Middle Tennessee.  Old-style website with no new graphics/fonts etc. 2021 report is the only one I could find.
  
  
• Girl Scouts Farthest North: Their own style website.  Only Annual Report I found was from 2016. 

My Comments

Interesting the things you find, or wonder if you find.  I started looking for numbers and noticed the two different website formats and wondered if that correlated to the availability of Annual Reports, as I was running into more trouble than I expected. Of the councils I looked at, including mine (GS Louisiana East) of the six with old-style websites, three gave me some ability to compare before and after Covid.  Of the eight with the new style, only three gave me that ability.  Most of my council choices were somewhat random, but I specifically looked at our two rebel councils, Middle Tennessee and Farthest North. 

I started this post about two years ago, when my council announced that one of our camps was being sold.  I looked up our membership numbers to get some context for the size operation we were running vs the number of girls served.  I hate that we lost our camp but I get it.  

Hopefully we can build back some of the numbers but I suspect there are a couple of years of girls who we will never see in Girl Scouts.  On the other hand, I see my council really stepping up older girl programming.  

Do these numbers look like yours?