Advocate Charitable Foundation: Randy
Varju, former executive development officer at
Advocate Health Care
Alaska Conservation Foundation: Ann
Rothe, former deputy director
Alta Bates Summit Foundation: James H.
Hickman, founder of Hickman Strategies
The California Wellness Foundation:
Diana M. Bontá, former vice president of public affairs for the Southern California Region at
Kaiser Permanente
Dallas Museum of Art: Maxwell L. Anderson, former chief executive officer of the Indianapolis Museum of Art
L.A.’s Promise: Veronica Melvin, former
chief operating officer at Communities for
Teaching Excellence
Leader Dogs for the Blind: Sue Daniels,
former chief financial and administrative
officer
Malaria No More: David Bowen, former deputy director for global health policy and advocacy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Museum of Florida Art: George Bolge, former executive director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art
National Kidney Foundation: Bruce Skyer,
former chief operating officer
Pets Are Wonderful Support: Kevin Kosik,
former vice president and chief development officer at the YMCA of the Central Bay Area
Wider Opportunities for Women: Donna
Addkison, former program director of the family
economic-security program
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Girl Scouts’ Outgoing CEO
Previews Drive for $1-Billion
Girl Scouts of the USA is one
of the most successful charities in the nation. But as Kathy
Cloninger, the chief executive
who is retiring this month,
writes in a new book, Tough
Cookies: Leadership Lessons
From 100 Years of the Girl
Scouts, the organization has
had to struggle to prove its relevance in the last decade. In an
interview with The Chronicle,
Ms. Cloninger discusses how
the group is overcoming the
problem and its plans for a $1-
billion fund-raising drive.
Why did you write this
book?
I want more awareness for
the issues we have in this country due to a gender imbalance
in leadership. When we look at
any industry in the U.S., from
government to finance and media, less than 20 percent, and
often much less, of the top leaders are women.
Why is Girl Scouts still relevant?
Even though a lot of people
say we’re kind of done with
single sex—there are fewer and
fewer single-sex spaces for girls
or boys—there is still compelling data that says when women have some of their social
time in an all-girl setting, it
is very empowering and gives
Grant makers, says
Ms. Cloninger, avoid
“recognizing that
girls are not doing
well” here or abroad.
girls a chance and a safe environment to try stuff out that
they would not do in front of
boys. We don’t advocate at all
that the entire world should be
single sex, we just believe that
there is a huge need for some of
girls’ growth and development
time to be in a single-sex environment.
How has the organization
moved beyond its primary
image of girls selling cookies?
We’re the largest organization for girls in the country;
we have about 3 million girls
and a million volunteers, so
the brand has been very successful. Where we fall short is
that we’ve not been able to
convey the real story of who
Girl Scouts are, so we still get
associated with the cookie
sale, which we believe is the
strongest entrepreneurial and
business-skills training program for girls in America.
But people don’t think about
it that way. So we’ve not done
Kathy Cloninger has
worked to make the Girl
Scouts brand relevant.
a good enough job describing
what the brand really is, but
we have huge brand recognition.
What progress has the organization made so far toward an overhaul?
Through the nationwide
merger of our local affiliates,
we went from 315 to 112. We
wanted to create stronger,
more regional entities, each
of them with a CEO and chief
funding and marketing officers. So now that we’ve put
that in place, we are just on
the brink of the launch of our
first unified campaign for girls
in which every single local affiliate and the national organization will be joined together
in a case for girls. We’re
launching a 100th-anniversa-
ry campaign with a very high
number goal. We’re looking at
a billion dollars for girls, and
that would be over a five-year
period. There’s not ever been
in the U.S. a campaign of that
size for girls specifically, and
certainly it is charting new
territory for Girl Scouts of the
USA.
You’re critical of grant
makers for not working
more for the cause of women and girls. Why?
There’s an avoidance in recognizing that girls are not doing well either in the U.S. or
internationally. Women are
still stalling in terms of economic success and top leadership. I think foundations and
corporate donors and individual philanthropists have to ask,
Why is that a problem? Men
leading alone are not doing so
well. They need to get better
educated about the issues facing girls and the impact of not
paying attention to girls.
