In my experience, FRG has always been a hit or miss thing. I have known some that were awesome and others that were nonfunctional or even counter-productive and the reason for either good or bad was always based on the personalities of the wives involved. There Army has created classes and lectures and killed a lot of trees to try to make FRGs into universally functional organizations but none of that matters if the right people are not involved or if the wrong people are. Expecting the commander's wife to always be the head of the FRG is a huge mistake that I have seen over and over. I have seen too many who thought that they wore their husband's rank or didn't have time to run the FRG because of their own career or family or simply just weren't cut out to lead any organization. I have also seen FRGs that had good leaders but were so poorly supported by the other spouses as to be useless. A well functioning FRG is an absolute asset to any unit but a dysfunctional one creates nothing but drama and more problems than it solves.