The 8-year-olds in Jessie Wurzel’s Girl Scout troop will still sell cookies, earn badges and meet in the living room of her Waunakee home.

Their troop number has another digit, going from 411 to 2411, but the Brownies in Wurzel’s troop are unlikely to notice that the troop’s Black Hawk Council has merged with two others or that the new chief executive officer is the former lieutenant governor of Ohio.

“Because my girls are so young, it’s going to be fairly seamless,” Wurzel said of her nine-member troop.

Girl Scout leaders say combining the Madison-based Black Hawk Council with the Riverland Council in La Crosse, Badger Council in Beloit and part of the Green Hills Council in Freeport, Ill., will mean more camps and programs for girls while streamlining operations and reducing expenses by 10 to 15 percent.

The Girl Scouts of Wisconsin-Badgerland Council began operating as one entity June 1 and serves more than 14,000 girls in 21 Wisconsin counties plus northern Winnebago County in Illinois, Houston County in Minnesota and Allamakee County in Iowa.

The merger is part of a national effort that began in 2006 to shrink the number of councils from 312 to 109. The number of Wisconsin-based councils has been reduced from 13 to four, based in Madison, Sheboygan, Milwaukee and Green Bay. Small portions of the state are also served by councils based in Minnesota.

Wisconsin–Badgerland service centers in Madison, La Crosse, Beloit and Platteville remain open, and the camps operated by the former councils are now open to all girls in the newly formed council.

“You have programs that are successful that can be brought into other areas,” said Bonnie Wetter, who chairs the 15-member Badgerland board of directors. “We saw the positives for having a more high-performance council than we had in the past. This is a big business and we realize to serve today’s girls and provide the best programming, we have to move with the times.”

Overseeing the new council’s $4 million budget is Jennette Bradley, a three-term Columbus, Ohio, city councilwoman, who also served four years as Ohio’s lieutenant governor. Bradley, 56, spent almost two decades working in the private sector in finance and is the former executive director of the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority.

Her experience in politics also includes fundraising, a key component to her new job with the Girl Scouts.

“I think one of the biggest challenges I have now is to get us out and involved in raising money, and I did that in politics,” Bradley said. “We don’t want to turn children away because they can’t afford it.”

Bradley said she wants to invigorate the council, increase its visibility and serve as a role model for girls, especially those of color.

Bradley, who married her high school sweetheart, Michael Taylor, a communications consultant, said she was looking for a career change and the Girl Scouts provided the ideal opportunity. They now reside on Madison’s West Side.

“It was just the perfect blend of getting to build female leaders for the future and the Girl Scouts’ reputation,” Bradley said.
Bradley’s father had a career in the Army, but she said her leadership skills come from her mother, a longtime community volunteer.

Wetter said Bradley’s background will mean good things for Girl Scouts in the council.

“She’s a visionary,” Wetter said. “She sees the global view of what we’re trying to accomplish. She’s been successful in her career and she’ll bring success to us.”

Prior to the merger, the three councils had 56 full- and part-time employees. All were offered positions with the new council but 12 took early retirement and three declined positions, said spokeswoman Barbara Wiers. Among those taking the retirement offer was Loretta Himmelsbach, who spent 33 years with the Girl Scouts and the last 15 years of her career with the Black Hawk Council as its executive director.

Beth Seebach has been a Girl Scout leader in Holmen, north of La Crosse, for the past seven years. She was initially worried that troops could get lost in a larger organization but she said the transition has been smooth.

“Most of the leaders I know, they were pretty worried at the beginning, but it looks like it will work as intended and provide more opportunities,” said Seebach, a professor of psychology at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota in Winona.
But the local Girl Scouts are not alone in their reorganization efforts. 

Stephen Heck, executive director of the Madison-based Glacier’s Edge Boy Scout Council, said the 2005 merger of the Madison and Janesville Boy Scout councils has been effective, but communication has been essential for the organization that serves 11,000 boys.

“Communication is always a challenge,” Heck said. “It just becomes increasingly important to get information out in ways that people understand it.”

Wurzel, the Waunakee troop leader, is looking forward to taking her girls to an introductory camp near La Crosse that wasn’t available to her troop before the merger. She’s hopeful the lines of communication from the council to the troop leaders remain solid.

“The communication has been fantastic in the (former) council, so I’m hopeful,” Wurzel said. “It’s a huge area and I want to be sure that everybody feels a part of the council.”