Comment #516 from a recent blog about GS... So I was CFO for a council for 15 years and have watched the organization go from the premier organization for girls to what it is now, a severely mismanaged organization with senior management that does not know or understand the foundational aspect of GS. I left when I saw where things were headed and was unable to sway anyone that the managerial direction was wrong. So to the pension issue: from 2007-2011,GSUSA decided to consolidate councils from 340 separate corporate entities to 120 nationwide. When the pilot was announced I reached out to everyone I knew at GSUSA saying it was a mistake. Prior to this effort, annual pension liability was about 3% of salaries. Now with merging and closing 220 councils, that also meant termination of over 200 CEOs, CFOs,And other senior management that in most cases had over 15 years and up to 40 years of service as professional staff. These were the highest paid beneficiaries of the Defined Benefit Pension plan that was in place. To streamline the closures, in many cases GSUSA allowed early retirements and with all of those retiring from the closed councils, the pension moved from having a well timed funding plan to bring severely overextended. So the following year pension expense rose to 15% of salaries and has continued to rise to fund the retirement of people that were forced out to “save on redundancy” of positions. Now about 55% of expenses for councils is direct labor costs, and approx 65% of the operating income comes from product sales (cookies, nuts, calendars). So with the pension cost being tied to what a council pays for staff, a huge burden has been grown and revenue is not scaling with it, so cookie prices are escalating at an extreme rate. But commodities needed to make cookies are also increasing and councils are not paying the two bakeries with increases, so the bakeries are shrinking the size of the boxes and giving less cookies per box. This is turning people off to buying more boxes, so councils are losing revenue and are selling assets to keep the doors open. GSUSA senior management (there are approx 400 employees at GSUSA in their offices at 420 Fifth Ave two blocks from the Empire State Building in Manhattan, swank!, with over 40 people sporting “Chief xxxx Officer” titles that are abdurd) has spent over $10 million replacing a membership system that didn’t need replacement, is bleeding reserves on stupid and vapid directions, and even spent over $100,000 remodeling Anna Chavez’s executive bathroom. This so called “CEO” prior to coming to girl scouts in 2009, had never run a business, hired or fired staff, created a budget, developed a plan of work, or anything related to managing an institution like GSUSA. But she was the right “minority” as was related to me by Bob Peradeaux who led the search committee. Anna was the legal council to our esteemed Director of Homeland Security when she was Governor of Arizona. So Anna never had to make a budget. Now, she has no F***ing idea what she is doing and is driving this org into the ground, with what I believe is a plan to step off the bus before it goes over a cliff sending Girl Scouts to the same fate as Camp Fire Girls, and sliding into a lobbyists job in DC. She is what is wrong with the organization and has surrounded herself with only people that affirm her “brilliance” and has terminated anyone at GSUSA that argued against her for the better of the organization. She also has hand picked the board of directors, so no one is there to police her as she kills this wonderful organization. I now know what it looks like to see a institution die. Thank you, Mrs. Chavez for that. thebloggess/2014/12/an-open-letter-to-the-girl-scouts/
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 16:59:04 +0000
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