To: Girl Scouts of West Central Florida (GSWCF)
Volunteers, Girls, Parents and Lifetime Members

From: Jody Johnston
Chief Executive Officer

Date: July 8, 2008

GSWCF IMPLEMENTING FOUR-DAY WORK WEEK

The current economic picture is affecting all of us, including Girl Scouts of West Central Florida. We’re all making decisions to keep our costs to a minimum – traveling with coworkers, planning vacations closer to home, making smarter purchases, etc. GSWCF is feeling the impact by experiencing increased operating costs and cuts to our revenue stream.

While your support and enthusiasm drives us to provide outstanding service to girls, we’ve been notified that we’ll receive approximately $45,000 less than we budgeted from our United Ways, and our cookie program came in approximately $300,000 under budget. We also know the mileage reimbursement rate will increase again shortly and we can expect that other expenses will follow. We must now identify tangible ways to reduce expenses to make up for the known shortfalls.

After careful consideration and a cost-savings analysis, Girl Scouts of West Central Florida will be closing the service center and branch offices one day a week resulting in most full-time staff moving to a four-day work week.

The advantages and potential disadvantages of a four-day work week for volunteers, girls, parents and those in our communities were carefully considered before making the decision.

Our service to girls and volunteers is our number one priority. Moving to a four-day work week will help keep our operating costs low so we can continue to deliver high-quality programs and activities to our membership. This will have no impact on our planned summer camp opportunities as our camp properties will continue normal operations.

Beginning Monday, July 14, 2008, the service centers will be open Monday – Thursday from 7:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. and will close on Friday. Most staff members should still be available by phone on Fridays if their services are needed but we will save energy and money by having the offices open only four days a week. This new four-day schedule applies to full-time exempt and non-exempt staff (other than camp rangers); camp properties will operate as normal. The four-day work week is not only applicable to the summer months and will remain in place as long as it meets the needs of our membership, staff and surrounding communities. For more information regarding our 4-day work week, please contact us or visit our discussion board.

Thank you for your understanding and support!

Sincerely,

Jody Johnston
Chief Executive Officer
Girl Scouts of West Central Florida