Organizational responsibility for development of the National Association program and program materials was especially fluid during the first twenty-five years of the YWCA of the USA. Initially, the Association divided its staff into a Home Department (concerned with work in the U.S.) and a Foreign Department (concerned with U.S. staff working abroad.) By 1909 the Association added a Department of Territorial Work to facilitate establishment of a single cohesive national organization out of the array of local, state, and regional organizations that made up the two predecessor organizations.

Though the National Association incorporated in 1907, the Home Department did not have its first meeting until November of 1909. This meeting brought together representatives of the Department's three committees--City, Student, and Association Extension-"to consider the questions of common importance." One of the first topics of discussion was a change of the Department's name to something that would better describe its responsibility for "developing and perfecting" YWCA methods. The group decided to change the its name to Department of Method at its second meeting in January 1910. Also in 1910 the Department of Territorial Work was re-christened the Department of Field Work and charged with responsibility for communication between the National Association and Community Associations on "standards, policies, finances, and work desired and contemplated." In theory, these two departments had quite separate responsibilities, but in practice, the staff seems to have been extraordinarily aware of the big picture needs of the Association and to have participated wherever and however they were needed. From its earliest staff configurations, the National Association seems to have remained unsure about whether or not it was desirable to divide responsibility for "method" and "services."

The Method Department's duties included making studies "to reveal the needs of young women in different localities and groupings," making "continuous study of the Association as a cooperative instrument of service in any community," and testing the "adaptability of its policies to different localities by a series of experiments conducted by expert secretaries." By 1913 those "expert secretaries" included specialists in city, and small town and country association work; in economics, education, physical education and hygiene, and religion; work in college and universities, Indian schools, secondary schools, church schools, "colored" schools; and work with "colored" women, girls, women in industry, and new immigrants. Method Department staff traveled the country visiting Associations and reporting on their area of expertise, but also on any other aspects of YWCA program they felt warranted comment.

The post-World War I staff reorganization and reduction placed specialist "subject" and "constituent group" staff in the newly-created Education and Research Division. The intent was for staff of the Division to act as a resource "to their colleagues at headquarters," but not to work so much with staff of local Associations. They were to carry out research; maintain the library and other resource files at headquarters (such as files on legislation and a clipping service); develop program materials and training courses on "girls as growing personalities," citizenship, general and vocational education, religious and social education, "constructive" health; and to correlate all material related to the educational work of the Association.

As the National Association's financial challenges continued, and the emphasis on national-level development of program decreased, the size of the program staff and its placement within the administrative structure changed every few years until 1960. It was sometimes part of the office responsible for services to Community Associations, sometimes explicitly part of Training, and sometimes a department of its own. Staff overseeing the National Association's public advocacy (which originally emerged from the Method Department) was often linked with program staff, but almost as often under the supervision of General Administration.

The establishment of the Bureau of Research and Program Resources in 1960 brought staff responsibility for research, program materials development, and public advocacy back together-though on a much-reduced scale. These activities remained linked, though under a succession of different names, through the end of the Twentieth century.