<p>I was a girl scout troop leaded. Cookie sales in our city got to be a nightmare with regards to hot locations. You needed to reserve the spaces ahead of time. Not every troop knew that or followed the rules. Yesterday I saw what can happen if the leaders aren’t aware, like new leaders. Busy corner, leaders of troopA had set up, with young scouts. Seems troopB had reserved the corner, and kicked out troopA. One girl about seven started crying, she was so upset. TroopB was highschool girls with fancy table, sign, etc and were kind of snotty. I made a ten dollar donation to troopA who were very classy moms. They had no idea you needed to reserve. If this had been my troopB, I would have said lets share and split the sales. In true girl scout tradition.</p>
<p>I will buy the cookies, it not for the cookies, it’s to support the little girls who used to be my little girls</p>
<p>It’s not just the troop you are support with cookies sales. It is the local council, which, on average, counts on product sales for 50+% of its revenues. These funds are used to subsidize camps (most of which are not profitable on a standalone basis), other programs, provide subsidies for low-income girls that cannot afford GS, pay for the paid council staff, etc. The national organization does not make anything from the local council cookie sales. </p>
<p>This article (from 2010) notes the approximate breakdown of the proceeds for Nassau County NY. Each council makes its own deal with the baker, taking into account prior sales levels, delivery, restocking, time of year for the sale, payment dates, etc. Surprisingly, adjacent councils can sign fairly different contracts. </p>
<p>Yes, seahorsesrock, it can be very competitive for spots. It should have been explained how to sign up for booth sales to the younger troop, or maybe it was and they ignored it. I was in charge of cookie sales in my area for several years, and had to schedule those booth sales for the local Wal-Mart and grocery store, not only for the 30+ troops in our area, but the 2 neighboring areas who did not have any good locations. Also, sometimes the troops of older girls need the income for more expensive trips, and everyone only wants to buy from the cute Brownies. I had troop leaders calling Wal-Mart to complain about my schedule if they didn’t get their desired spot, which is ultimately why I quit.</p>
<p>I can’t bring myself to complain about the price of GS cookies. I benefited tremendously from the program throughout the years of my youth. As I see it it’s still a wonderful program. I bought several boxes from the daughter of a colleague, at one box and froze the other for a ‘rainy day’.</p>
<p>As a side note, I sold my share of Thin Mints back in the day for…brace yourselves…FIFTY cents!! To quote a previous poster–Oh, the horrors!</p>
<p>Me too…sold cookies from 1958-1962 for 50 cents a box. There were only a few kinds to sell…thin mints, peanut butter sandwich cookies (I miss those), regular sandwich cookies…a box contained one sleeve of chocolate and one of vanilla with white filling, and shortbread cookies.</p>
<p>We still have PB sandwich cookies around here, as far as I know, no one came to my house selling and it is a few weeks until they hit the stores selling.</p>
<p>I was a girl scout for a very, very short period of time before my school shut down our troop. It was a nice year while it lasted but I never had the drive to look for another troop. I remember very few things but I do remember sitting in the stores for hours begging people to come buy cookies. Because of that, I always drop a few bucks on the table for them (though I rarely carry cash so it’s usually a small amount). I really don’t like cookies but I want to support the troops :)</p>
<p>Me too…sold cookies from 1958-1962 for 50 cents a box. There were only a few kinds to sell…thin mints, peanut butter sandwich cookies (I miss those), regular sandwich cookies…a box contained one sleeve of chocolate and one of vanilla with white filling, and shortbread cookies. </p>
<p>This was me too, except went a year longer! I loved the Thin Mints, but devoured the PB cookies. Sooo delicious. Why did they go? </p>
<p>This thread is making me hungry. Wish I had that Giredelli (sp?) Brownie mix cooking in my oven.</p>
<p>I’m a troop leader and have been for 11 long years and I refuse to sell GS cookies only because the effort put on leaders and parents to do so is far too much work for my willingness to do so…</p>
<p>Yes, to answe your question the product or amount of what you get continues to shrink in oz weight… </p>
<p>Who decides on price? Believe it or not each individual neighborhood decides the price. You can pay anywhere from $3.00
To over $5.00 depending on where you live.</p>
<p>The area where I live charges $4.00 per box and .75 cents goes to the troop per box for the sale. The rest is a breakdown of product cost, incentives (patches and prizes for selling)… Beyond that the rest of the money goes to scholarships for kids whom cannot afford scout and for running the campgrounds etc.</p>
<p>I sold cookies for 2 years with a troop I was the leader for.
The kick in the pants is, each parent is responsible for the orders of the girls. If your daughter sells cookies on her street and the bum later does not answer, you the parent has to buy that order. It is a rule of GS to never collect money in advanced of an order, so if the person does not take their order your out the cash. I had $48.00 worth of non picked up cookies one year which was more that the amount of money my kid made for her troop selling them. This is only 1 reason why I now refuse to sell them.
Here’s the breakdown of why.
Girls go and pimp out (err unm i mean sell) the cookies
Troop order.
Wait for cookies to arrive and be given a 72 hour on call window, when you get the call in that 72 hour window you must drop everything to go pick up your cases for your troop.
Go to the pick up location and you first spend 4 or more hours unloading a semi truck full of 5000 or more cases of cookies. These cases must be put in flavor order piles.
Once all cookies off semi, 3 or 4 cookie ladies will count these 5k (or more) cases 3 times to be sure nothing is missing.
After count, you go fetch your troops cookies and sit them in a pile.
Now your cases have to be counted 3 times… Yeah let’s add another hour for counting.
Get cookies to your house and now organize each Girl Scout on your troops order. Lets not forget the hours that takes.
Make sure you ordered extra cases of cookies for the booth sales in front of grocery store sales and set those aside…
Wait for all the parents to finally come get their kids boxes.
Go back out to every person who ordered and collect money and hope you manage to get close to everyone.
Turn in all the money to leader
13 leader must count all funds and make sure no screw ups.
Spend at least 2 days pimping out cookies in front of stores.
Collect everything together after all sales etc and turn into the head offices.
WHATEVER CASES DON’T SELL INFRONT OF THE STORE YOUR TROOP MUST BUY!!
17place prize orders and wait for those to arrive
18 distribute prizes!</p>
<p>This all takes countless hours! My troop had a goal of selling 100 boxes per girl, back when our troop only got .50 cents per box sold… By the time we were done buying back boxes that didn’t sell we made $188.00 total dollars for our entire troop of 10 girls. That’s $18.00 per girl, yeah, I paid double in bought cookies from shmucks who order and don’t pay.
All these following years I tell the parents what it entails to sell cookies, that 2 of them
Will volunteer as the cookie parents because I’m already the leader or they can take out their checkbooks and write me a $40.00 check
For the year for money for us to use… Needless to say every single person wips out their checkbook faster than I can ask for a vote!</p>
<p>The only cookies I ever buy from GS is from the poor troops infront of store who are clueless that they will be buying what is left over.</p>
<p>Sure some troops really pimp the cookies out and make hundreds per kid, they can take a GS trip with that… Sea World or something, but it’s a full time job for those troops. That’s all they do for months.</p>
<p>I grudingly sold GS cookies when I was a GS and later when our D was also a GS for a few years. The GS Council of the Pacific here set the price and we were never given any leeway. I much prefer donating money than buying any of these over-priced “fund raising” products and now do NOT buy most of them. That’s a good tip, to make a donation to whomever is selling them. I remember how much I appreciated it when someone would make a donation when we were trying to sell those blasted boxes.</p>
<p>I think you can learn how to make sales WITHOUT selling over-priced items, like having a car wash or having a recycle day or other things. The effort never seemed worth the small amount we ever made as a troop, though I guess it did help out the council some. </p>
<p>In HI, you also have to worry about ants, roaches, and melting chocolate due to the heat–always had to keep the chocolate ones in a cooler/ice chest.</p>
<p>My younger daughters girlscout troop leader is an angel.
Not only was she cookie leader for the whole district, but she had two kids with challenges( including mine), she didn’t have a co-leader and it was such a great experience for the kids.
They had great outings and adventures.
My daughter participated for about four years, same leader & girls.
I wish my oldest had the same opportunity.
There are some things you really cant put a price on.</p>
<p>Getting the Girl Scout cookie orders wasn’t too hard…collecting the money later at delivery was the hard job. Some people would deny placing orders when I showed up to deliver cookies and attempt to collect payment. Some people slammed doors on me, one lady let her dog loose on me to chase me away, I’d have to drive across town with my mom looking for people who had moved–one time my mom leaned on our car horn steady in front of a customer’s house until they finally came to door and paid me–it was a workout selling GS cookies! And even with a “quadruple entry” bookkeeping system, we always seemed to somehow come up short on money collected for all the cookies we sold.</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate that the GS troops around here are getting increasingly “cliquish,” so it’s really hard to be a part of a group if you don’t feel “with it.”</p>
<p>I still remember that we sold cookies enough so that we were able to purchase our girls an outing, on a boat that would allow our girls & their families to go out on the boat and then float around. By the time the troop wanted to take the trip, the company (which had taken all our troop funds) was bankrupt and didn’t honor their commitment. Our troop folded shortly after that.</p>
<p>Sorry, never did like selling cookies, from the parent’s or scout’s perspective. Fortunately, no one moved away or chased me away when we tried to collect, but it was not something I found particularly “character building” or enjoyable, for me or anyone else involved.</p>
<p>They still have them in some areas. I bought some last week in NC, along with Thin Mints. I love to support the girls but the quality of the cookies was pretty poor, which is a shame. It’s not even that they’re charging $4.00 a box that’s the issue, it’s that the quality of the product isn’t what it used to be, or what it could be.</p>
<p>In our area, after the selling season is over, you can go to headquarters and buy any cases that have not sold for a significant (I think it was 50%) price reduction. I did that one year when I was a leader, and sent some cases to one of my docs who shared it with his staff. It was one of the things that helped make me really stick in his mind.</p>
<p>Former GS, GS leader, and cookie mom here. It is a lot of work for some very pricey cookies! Now, at least in my region for the last two years, the girls/troops commit to purchasing cookies ahead of ordering (like the booth sales described above). I like that I can get the cookies at order time and that the girls don’t have to go out twice (once to order/once to deliver) in the cold weather. I like all the “business learning” that goes on (and credit to the GS that they do have good age appropriate materials about goal setting, sales, inventory, revenue, etc.). I also like that the girls really EARN their outings. I LOVE that some of the profit that goes to the organization (beyond the troop) funds scholarships for low income girls. However, I do acknowledge many of the criticisms. $4 for a 18 cookies, really? Some parents/leaders just don’t care or cannot take the time or inventory risk, so what then? On balance I think the benefits outweigh the risks, but I wish I had a better solution to offer.</p>
<p>I think many products have declined in quality over the last 30 years, I doubt if it is only that my taste buds have changed.
We didn’t have a problem with collecting money, because we collected at the time of the order.
I didn’t look at it as a fundraiser, but as an opportunity for the girls to practice meeting the public and putting a face on their organization.
We enjoyed it. It was great fun to watch the girls learn to handle money & listen to stories from customers about their own experiences in Scouts.</p>