My father is a lifelong Boy Scout, and when I was a child he insisted that I join scouting, too. As a budding feminist, I insisted on becoming a Boy Scout, which seemed rebellious and cool. My parents told me that I couldn’t be a Boy Scout but I could be a Girl Scout instead, which was basically the same thing. “If they’re the same thing,” I said, “why is one called the Boy Scouts and one called the Girl Scouts?”
But I joined anyway and was soon won over. The meetings were relaxed and the uniforms optional. In the Girl Scouts, we learned how to change tires, cook basic foods, use computer programs, organize events, wield tools, ride horses, plant trees, volunteer our time, talk to people on the phone, hike in the cold, count money, pitch a tent, look for ticks, avoid bears, orient ourselves in the woods, and we learned that you should never, ever sing a song about a girl’s dead hamster to her face. (Sorry, Brittany.)
I remained a Girl Scout until I graduated from high school. My brother was a Boy Scout throughout his whole childhood as well, and when I compared my experience to his they didn’t seem that different to me, aside from the mandatory uniform that he donned dourly each week.
In my mid-twenties, I drove sixteen hours to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the Girl Scout founder Juliette Gordon Low, in Savannah, Georgia. During the tour, I learned that Low had been good friends with a British military officer named Lord Baden-Powell, who had founded the Boy Scouts. Low was so inspired by his vision that she created the Girl Scouts after returning to the United States. The American branches of both organizations were founded only two years apart; they recently celebrated their respective centennial anniversaries.
Since their foundings, though, the two organizations have diverged in significant ways. For a long time, the Boy Scouts of America rejected gay and atheist members, a policy that’s often tied to the large number of faith-based groups, including Mormons, United Methodists, and Catholics, that charter individual scouting units. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in 2000, that they could continue discriminating against gays; the Boy Scouts reaffirmed this policy in 2012. Only last year, in the face of mounting pressure, did the Boy Scouts reëvaluate and then scale back the policy slightly, permitting gay Scouts but still forbidding gay leaders.
Late last month, Disney informed the Boy Scouts of America that it would no longer support the organization via its VoluntEARS program, which permits Disney employees to volunteer their time in exchange for financial donations from Disney to an organization of their choosing. (A Disney spokeswoman directed me to the company’s philanthropy policies, which state that groups that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation are ineligible for charitable donations.) Disney is not the first company to withdraw money from the Boy Scouts, but it is one of the most high-profile; the decision was especially notable because it came after the Boy Scouts’ decision to permit gay scouts (but still exclude gay adults and atheists). The Boy Scouts declined my request for an interview about Disney’s decision, but a spokesman, Deron Smith, wrote in an e-mailed statement, “We believe every child deserves the opportunity to be a part of the Scouting experience and we are disappointed in this decision because it will impact our ability to serve kids.” Deena Fidas of the Human Rights Campaign told CNN that Disney’s choice “carries a unique weight.” “When you think about brands that exemplify childhood, you think of Disney,” she continued. “Their dissociating with B.S.A. speaks volumes of where we are with the views we want to send to young people.”
Many other corporations have also abandoned support of the Boy Scouts. The giant defense contractor Lockheed Martin—hardly a company with a liberal reputation to defend—has also parted ways with the group, saying in a statement that “funding an organization that openly discriminates is in conflict with our policies.” Other organizations that have distanced themselves include Merck, Intel, U.P.S., and several chapters of United Way, including the Cleveland chapter, which had been partnered with the Boy Scouts for ninety-nine years.
The companies that still support and partner with the Boy Scouts are mostly smaller organizations—a series of racing teams, a West Virginia resort—or those that have conservative customer bases, like Bass Pro Shops, a retailer of hunting and fishing gear. A spokesman for one of the Boy Scouts’ larger sponsors, ExxonMobil, said that the company’s corporate policy forbids “any kind of discrimination,” but that this policy applies only on ExxonMobil property and in its workplaces. (ExxonMobil’s C.E.O., Rex Tillerson, served as National President of the Boy Scouts until 2012.)
The Boy Scouts have yet to publish their 2013 annual report, but in 2012—the year they publicly reaffirmed their anti-gay policy—donations dropped from more than sixty-one million dollars the previous year (about thirty per cent of the organization’s operating revenue) to twenty-seven million dollars (just under twelve per cent). The Boy Scouts declined to disclose how much of its funding came from corporate donors versus individual ones, but a treasurer’s note in the 2012 report indicated an uptick “in individual giving and in estate gifts.” (Despite the decrease in over-all donations in 2012, the Boy Scouts’ total operating revenue increased, between 2011 and 2012, from about two hundred and four million dollars to two hundred and twenty-nine million, mostly because of investment gains.)
Even if the decline in corporate donations isn’t making much of a dent in the Boy Scouts’ finances, it might have an indirect impact, Dwight Burlingame, a professor of philanthropic studies at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, told me. Nonprofits, like businesses, have healthier finances when they maintain diverse revenue streams, he explained; that way, if a single source of funding falls through, the repercussions aren’t as extreme. Plus, having more revenue streams “increases awareness of the nonprofit’s mission,” Burlingame said. “It naturally creates greater P.R.”
The Girl Scouts, meanwhile, have been assertive about their inclusiveness. The organization doesn’t discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and often takes up feminist causes, like the recent “Ban Bossy” campaign. “We are super proud to be an inclusive organization,” Danny Boockvar, the chief customer officer of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., told me. The organization regularly receives a smaller sum of donations, and brings in less over-all revenue, than the Boy Scouts. But the Girl Scouts continues to acquire and maintain a wide portfolio of corporate donors, and, according to Boockvar, it hasn’t lost any. In contrast to the Boy Scouts’ troubles, donations to the Girl Scouts climbed from less than seven million dollars in 2011 (five per cent of operating revenue) to nearly ten million dollars (seven-and-a-half per cent) in 2012. A spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts told me that sixty per cent of donations since 2011 have come from corporate donors.
Large, publicly traded companies must contend with a simple economic equation: public support for gay rights is consistently climbing, which means that gay people’s buying power—not just their own, but that of their friends, families, and allies—is growing. When it comes to gay rights, Burlingame said, “it’s good for businesses to be more to the left.” By extension, the same appears to be true of nonprofits.
If progressive social policies are becoming common among corporations and nonprofits, in other words, capitalism is responsible. Bill Marriott, the conservative, teetotalling chairman of Marriott International, has said that he doesn’t support same-sex marriage. But last year, he told Diane Brady, of Bloomberg Businessweek, that the company had no interest in supporting causes that alienated gay employees, stockholders, or customers. “We have to take care of our people,” he said, “regardless of their sexual orientation or anything else.” Not long ago, Marriott—and a number of other large companies, including Apple—spoke out against a proposed Arizona law that would have permitted companies to discriminate against gays. When Jan Brewer, the Republican governor of Arizona, vetoed the bill, she cited its conflict with Arizona’s business interests.
Beyond the bottom line, there’s something else that the Boy Scouts should be considering: some formerly devoted members are pulling away from the organization they once loved. My father and brother’s relationship with scouting, like so many others’, has become deeply complicated as a result of the discriminatory policies. While serving in the Peace Corps, and after the Boy Scouts doubled down on their position, my brother returned his Eagle Scout award and publicly renounced his membership. As for my father, he still silently watches the news, waiting for the Boy Scouts to become something he can feel completely proud of.
