Founded in 1912 by Julliette Gordon Low and chartered by the United States Congress in 1950, Girl Scouts of the USA is a youth organization for girls living in the United States and American girls living abroad. A member of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), Girl Scouts serves 1.7 million girls annually.
According to girlscouts.org, “more than 50 million women in America today enjoyed Girl Scouts during their childhood—and that number keeps growing as Girl Scouts of the USA continues to inspire, challenge, and empower girls everywhere.”
Girl Scouts of Central Maryland (GSCM) is one of 112 regional councils. This council alone serves over 20,000 girls every year, boasting 53 staff members and over 10,000 volunteers. They also own four camping properties, with 26 individual sites that can be reserved by any of their 2,000+ troops.
“I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight!”
– Julliette Gordon Low, AKA Badass Who Was Not Messing Around
on founding the first Girl Scout troop in 1912
A Big Problem
With more than 2,000 troops vying for 26 three-season campsites, managing registrations, collecting fees, and making sure campsites were ready for guests was a monumental task…and it all fell to one person. Her name is Connie.
Connie is a dynamo. She’s really, really good at what she does. But she was overwhelmed by manually processing applications and communicating all the details to the troops on one end and the property caretakers on the other. Not to mention processing all those credit cards, checks and even cash payments.
Click to enlarge
Our Solution
The council’s website, gscm.org, was built on the WordPress platform. In order to fold campsite reservations into the council’s existing data flow, we recommended combining an existing property management plugin, WP-Property, with a custom plugin that would handle reservations.
Using an existing plugin for the basic functionality of storing campsite details allowed us to keep the price down while giving GSCM exactly the functionality they needed.
WP-Property
The WP-Property plugin allows GSCM to update and display:
- Property descriptions and directions
- Campsite photos and details, such as amenities, capacity, fees, and seasonal availability
- Filtering of campsites by amenity
- But it does not handle individual reservations!
Custom Campsite Reservations Plugin
The custom plugin did the heavy lifting:
- Campsite availability and reservations
- Collecting troop information
- Payment processing
- Confirmation emails sent to troop leaders
- Detailed reports for both management and on-site staff
Campsite Reservation GO!
The campsite reservation system has been active or more than five years with only minor upgrades. In fact, when the Council decided to migrate its website to another platform, this application stayed put.
As for Connie? She’s still at the helm, making girls’ camping dreams come true. Only now, instead of suffocating under mountains of paperwork, she breezes through camping season with the confidence that her campsites are booked correctly, all fees have been paid, and the on-site staff is ready for those shiny faces. She might even have time for a s’more or two.
