Girl Scouts of the USA Orr Group provided interim leadership during the Chief Development Officer’s maternity leave, taking direct responsibility for the 25-person team as it took on a goal 44% larger than its prior best year.
Situation The Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) has an over 100-year history of building girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place. With 3.2 million active members in more than 100 councils nationwide, GSUSA is a vibrant force for good in the communities it serves. A strategic planning exercise conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) identified individual philanthropy as a key growth opportunity for GSUSA.
Solution Orr Group has partnered with GSUSA in various capacities to support its development infrastructure and grow philanthropic revenues. As Chief Philanthropic Strategists, we partnered with GSUSA to develop an actionable plan based on BCG’s hypothesis that individual philanthropy had the greatest growth runway for the movement. To accelerate the pace of GSUSA’s $1 billion comprehensive campaign for girls, we refined the case for support to attract transformational philanthropy and trained both the Board and executive leaders on their role in building a philanthropic culture and a pipeline of major donor prospects. Orr Group undertook a comprehensive assessment of the national fundraising team that resulted in a realignment of the staff structure, redefinition of roles and new accountability metrics for frontline fundraising staff.
Impact We have also partnered with GSUSA to provide embedded leadership. We provided interim leadership during the Chief Development Officer’s maternity leave, taking on direct accountability for the 25-person staff team as the team took on a goal 44% larger than its prior, best fundraising year. In this leadership role, we provided support both at the national level and to GSUSA’s 112 local Councils raising over $100 million annually. During our time providing leadership as the organization’s Chief Development Officer, we outperformed prior year fundraising by 54%. We supported GSUSA’s corporate partnerships team as it repositioned assets and expanded its horizons. Work included coaching and training, designing processes of work for the team and building a pipeline of prospective companies capable of 7-figure investments in girls, and designing the strategies to approach them. In addition, we provided interim support for foundation and government fundraising during transitions. Our interim support ensured the foundation’s fundraising goals continued to be met and created a smooth handover of responsibilities when new staff was hired.