Cancellation and Refunds

All event fees are non-refundable.

While we understand that life can be unpredictable, we must be Honest and Fair and Use Resources Wisely.

As a non-profit we strive to run all our events at or even below cost. Often events require up-front, fixed fees (such as property rental) that are non-recoverable. Events can also have limited space, so your registration may have prevented another girl from being able to register.

If you are forced to cancel your registration due to circumstances beyond your control (illness, death, fire, etc), you may request a refund from the event coordinators. That request will be evaluated based on the event budget and our ability to recover or offset costs related to the cancellation. If the money has already been spent based on your commitment, it would be fiscally irresponsible for us to provide refunds.

If you are unable to attend an event due to ineligibility (insufficient adult supervision, unregistered/uncleared adults, unregistered girls, etc), no refund will be offered. It is your responsibility to ensure that all attendees are properly registered with GSHPA. GSHPA often does not return rosters to us until a few days before the event, giving us very little time to respond to an unregistered participant.

If you choose to not attend an event, no refunds will be offered. For example, if camp is cold and rainy and you decide to not stay the night, your rates will NOT be converted to a day rate.

We commit to delivering an event and expect all registered participants to commit to attending.

Adult Supervision, Ratios, and Unaccompanied Minors

Unless explicitly stated in an event description, all minor children must be accompanied by responsible adults. A responsible adult is someone who is legally responsible for the minor child: a parent, guardian, or a troop leader with accompanying permission forms.

Troops

If your scout is attending with a troop, the troop needs to meet GSHPA mandated adult/girl ratios. Troops that do not meet ratio requirements will be combined by event coordinators, or may have their registration canceled (see cancellation and refund policy). It is the troop’s responsibility to ensure that they will have adequate adult/girl ratios before registering.

Individuals

If your scout is not attending the event with a troop, she must either be accompanied by a parent or find a troop to accept responsibility for her.  State College Girl Scouts can help you find an ‘Event Troop’ if needed. Please contact the event coordinator before registering if you do not have a troop for your scout and are unable to accompany her yourself.

Event coordinators will not accept registrations for unaccompanied girls.

Tag-A-Longs

Tag-a-longs are minor children who are not registered members of GSHPA.

Not all events permit tag-a-longs (check with event coordinators), but if tag-a-longs are permitted, they must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. Some events (camporees) may permit a child to register as a tag-a-long only if they are not eligible to be registered with GSHPA (boys and pre-school girls).

Troop leaders cannot assume responsibility for children who are not troop members.

Additionally, tag-a-longs need to be supervised by their responsible adult at all times and must follow the directions of all troop leaders. While we want tag-a-longs to have fun, we need to recognize that the primary focus of the event is on the girls. We also expect all tag-a-longs to follow all rules the girls abide by.

Water Activities

All swimmers (including adults) must either pass a swim test or have documentation related to swimming ability (lesson completion certificate). Participants who cannot complete any parts of the swim test are classified as Non-Swimmers and will be kept in the shallowest swimming area.

Note: the entire swimming area at Blue Diamond is classified as “shallow”.

Beginner

To qualify as a Beginner:

1. Dunk their head under water
2. Swim one length of the pool on their stomach

Beginners will be restricted to shallow/middle pool/lake areas.

Swimmer

To qualify as a Swimmer a scout must either

1. Complete the Beginner test
2. Swim one length of the pool on their back
3. Tread water for 2 minutes.

OR have a level completion certificate for:

• CRR levels: 4 or 5

Overnights

Adults

All adults staying overnight at a State College Girl Scout event must be registered with GSHPA and have all their state-mandated child protection background clearances on file with GSHPA. No exceptions.

All rosters are sent to GSHPA in advance of the event to be checked against GSHPA’s records and any adult who is not registered and cleared will not be allowed to spend the night. If removing the uncleared adult from the troop roster puts the troop roster below the GSHPA mandated adult/girl ratios, the entire troop’s ability to spend the night will be in jeopardy.

It is your responsibility to ensure you are properly registered and cleared with GSHPA before registering. See our cancellation and refund policy.

Daisies

Any Daisy (girls in grades K-1) staying overnight at a State College Girl Scout event must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian, unless the event details specifically state otherwise. It is our experience that this policy will help ensure the best overnight experience for both the girl and the troop leader.

If you believe that you have an exceptional situation, you can contact event coordinators to discuss the matter.

Exceptions to Advertised Tickets

Some events may have level restrictions. Some events may not have tag-a-long tickets.

If you want to bring someone to an event and there is not an appropriate ticket type available (i.e. you want to bring a Daisy to a Brownie+ event), please contact the event coordinators BEFORE registering. It is possible that we did not anticipate your request when creating our tickets. It is also possible that the event would be inappropriate or full for that type of participant.

We strive to be both Honest and Fair and Considerate and Caring and will do our best to work with you to come to an appropriate solution, but this needs to happen before you submit your registration. If you register a tag-a-long as a scout or a Daisy as a Junior without approval from the event coordinators, you will risk your registration being canceled.

Photos

We ask for a media release on all our registration forms and rosters.

If you request we not publish photos of yourself or your daughter, we will do our very best to honor your preferences. Please realize that when looking at photos of a hundred or more girls and adults, we may not always correctly identify all individuals.

We will do our best to disseminate information regarding photographic releases to all group leaders, but ultimately, we cannot control what photos other event participants may take or distribute. Additionally, we can put your name on a list, but at an event with over a hundred people participating, it is likely that many people will not know who you are.

We reserve the right to publish any photos where the subject is not recognizable (no faces shown, blurry, dark, etc).

If you see a photo of yourself or your child on our site that you want taken down, please contact us and we will remove the photo as quickly as practical.