<p>Girl scouts rang my doorbell yesterday in upstate NY. They were selling directly from an assortment of boxes they were carrying. I bought 3: thin mint, tagalong and the peanut butter sandwich (I forget the name) for $3.50 per box, cash. I was a girl scout for many years, loved it, and always buy cookies when I have the chance.</p>
<p>Our area also has pre-orders and when the cookies are picked up for the troop, it includes whatever the troop pre-ordered for booth sales. I’m glad it has been positive for some troops & girls, but never felt it was that way for me/us. Wish there were better, higher quality products the girls/troop could sell instead, and still support the organization. I do like scouting and was a member, as were both of our kids. I was heavily involved in both their troops.</p>
<p>Girl Scout cookies are equivalent in price & weight to Pepperidge Farm cookies which are probably comparable in quality.</p>
<p>Considering a gallon of gas is 3.89, $4 for Girl Scout cookies doesnt shock me.</p>
<p>Id like to see gluten free cookies though.</p>
<p>What galled me about being cookie Mom is that our local council treated the cookie Moms like potential criminals. They begged for help and then had all these ridiculous rules designed to make things even more inconvenient for the volunteers. No, I am not giving you my social security number, bank account number and credit card number.</p>
<p>lizard, this year for the first time, the girls in my daughter’s troop were required to get the money upfront. D is in high school now, so she doesn’t like to sell cookies anymore. The troop makes much more money (like $600 more!) by holding an annual father/daughter dance around Valentine’s day.</p>
<p>I may be mistaken but I think I’ve paid up front for my cookie orders. It only makes sense.
Every other organization does. I know the school takes money first!
Back in MY day (LOL) I filled my bike baskets with cookie boxes and just went door-to-door down the street selling what I had. The only second trips I made were for people who had specific requests that I could handle. And cookie sales was definitely not the long drawn out process it is now. we sold calendars too–do they still do that?</p>
<p>Well… Going to a week long camp on cookies is not by any means a normal feat, and not can it be for the average kid. If every child’s goal was to go to camp for a week free off cookies it would never happen for any of them because it would be impossible to saturate the market with that many cookies.
Troops today get .75 cents per box sold, but again whatever you cannot sell you eat in the profits of your sales. Preordering was smart from the gal whom posted that and just sell them once you have them… But again, you eat (in profit, but pun intended) what you cannot sell…
Our troop sold an average of 100 boxes per girl, we only ended up with a profit of $188.00 for 10 kids after everything. In my area, low income or not, that’s simply not worth it especially after I had to pay $48.00 for cookies that were ordered that people didn’t pay for. That was out of my own pocket and I am a single mom on the low income side. There was only financial depletion for my selling cookies.
Yes the grand scale of supporting camps etc is great, but, the GS organization can start supporting themselves in other avenues. The organization forbids most fund raisers, in effort to get more sales with its cookies/magazines or nuts… They charge $12 for the enrollment fee every year, seriously? Raise it! Charge $50, people whom are low income can easily do a fund raiser themselves for that… For an entire year to belong that isn’t much… With those extra funds they can provide more, offer more to the troops more of the funds from cookies sales etc…
The organization as a business is dying and eventually will be no more. Having been involved from every level to troop leader up to neighborhood leader for the district, the mismanagement of the GS company is wide spread.
They continue to try new things, but more ofter than not those changes fail…
It can only be as good as the volunteers who serve it…</p>
<p>Valentine’s dance sounds fun!<br>
the cub scout troop has had an auction of cakes–but only sons and fathers can do the baking and planning–NO moms allowed to help! They are SO much fun–cheeseburger in paradise, an Iraq cake with toy soldiers, army tanks, pick up trucks, just about everything that mom doesn’t consider a great “cake” idea!</p>
<p>It’s against GS policy to collect upfront… They train all volunteers to absolutely NOT take money ahead… It’s forbidden…
However, any smart parents with a selling kid who has had to pay out money for pursers not picked up takes the funds ahead of time anyway…
If council gets word of that, your troop would loose the “privilege” to sell cookies…
If someone ever offered me money ahead, I took it… However after 2 years of months of work and countless hours, I now refuse to sell cookies.</p>
<p>I would echo Cavebear. My D was in GS only a couple years before it was decided it wasn’t worth the time. Half the year was spent in cookie sales. Not interested.
And I will say that GS was a big part of my growing up. We sewed, camped, traveled, had great experiences–but cookie selling was maybe two weeks max. If you went to GS sanctioned week long camps parents paid for it. We did our own camping. And we were lucky with very generous leaders who were willing to take us places (I don’t remember too many permission slips back then)
I (and a friend) ran cub scouts for our sons and we had a great time. But we avoided the popcorn fundraiser like the plague. Our focus was on cheap activities, games, skills and any camping opportunities we could come up with. Nothing like sinking a canoe in your pool and teaching kids to get it back upright!</p>
<p>Former GS leader here-for ten years with 2 troops for two of those years. I was cookie mom for many years and grateful for the years when I had someone volunteer to do it. Some of these problems with people reneging on purchases are crazy! It must be a regional thing because we never had to use trip funds to pay for cookies. It certainly never took up most of our year-we used part of one mtg to explain the sale, handed out order forms and collected them 3 weeks later, usually had a troop goal of 100 boxes per girl but no one was required to sell that many. Yes, when cookies arrived it was a hassle to unload, count, and distribute. We ordered some cookies to do two 4-hour booth sales. Girls who wanted to up their individual sales could volunteer for booth sales as we credited the boxes sold at sales to individual girls. Never were we stuck with cases of cookies because we would err on the side of underestimating needs for booth sales. The council always had more cookies that we could get if we ran out. Never had a girl who didn’t sell at least a box to get her patch. They really liked “cookie credit” to spend on camp or at the Girl Scout shop. Profits from cookies were always used for a weekend trip- camping or an adventure to Chicago. My biggest issue was the small portion of profit awarded to the troops; at the time it was $0.30 per box and they were selling for $2.50.</p>
<p>In our council, troops had to obtain permission to do alternative fund raisers and one of the stipulations was that a troop could only receive permission for their own fundraiser if it had participated in both of the official council fundraisers- cookies and nut sales (I think it was nuts but am not sure because I never wanted my troops to do another sale for the council).</p>