Girl Scout cookie season does not have to be stressful. Here are 5 tips for selling cookies that will help you avoid the stress and drama.
*Originally published in July 2014 and updated for Cookie Season 2021.
It’s that time of year when girls around the country bundle up, ring your doorbell and ask, “Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?”
You will also find troops of girls standing outside your local supermarket, big box store, or if they are lucky enough, inside a vestibule at your local library, asking the same question.
Girl Scout cookies fund the activities of many troops. Big trips to water parks or the zoo, and even trips that require a train ride are paid for by the girls hard work and efforts, as well as the work of their leader and Cookie Mom.
Images by Hannah Gold and altered by the author in Canva
This business activity, although not a part of the original mission of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scout of the USA, does teach the girls many things. It also gives leaders a great big headache and for many, causes much aggravation and drama.
Yes, drama over selling Girl Scout cookies.
How can leaders avoid the pitfalls and make selling cookies a fun and less stressful activity for themselves?
Girl Scout Cookie Selling Tips
#1 Set Realistic Goals
Part of selling cookies is to teach children business skills. Setting goals, working as a team to create a business plan, setting the plan in motion and then deciding how to spend the rewards of goal setting are all part of cookie selling.
Leaders of younger Daisies and Brownies need to see the kind of parental involvement they have and if the goals the girls set are attainable. You want them to succeed the first time they sell. If the girls think they can sell 1,000 boxes, that is not a realistic goal, especially if they are only six years old! Set smaller goals and as they girls gain experience (and you do too, as a leader), the bar can be set higher.
Girl Scout Cookie Selling Tips
#2 Limit Your Booth Sales
In the Girl Scout leader forums and Facebook pages that I visit, there are many venting posts pertaining to booth sales. A booth sale is when a troop is signed up for a particular location for a time frame of several hours. It is the job of the troop leader to make sure that these slots are filled.
With the hectic schedule of children today, many leaders find themselves at the booth for the entire time simply because no one signed up for all the slots or if they did, they bailed and did not show up.
While booths can be the most lucrative way to sell a lot of cookies in a short amount of time (especially if you are lucky enough to get a high traffic area), by signing up for just a few most girls will want to be there to receive cookie credit towards their badge. Limited opportunities make the handful of slot times more precious.
You can always have more girls at each slot to accommodate everyone, the sales will just get split more ways.
Girl Scout Cookie Selling Tips
#3 Keep in Mind Parents Are Not as Committed as You Are
No parent is under any obligation to sell cookies for their daughter, as this is a voluntary activity that is supposed to be girl led. In my opinion, parents should only be a supervisor with booth sales and with door to door sales. Selling cookies on Facebook, Twitter, via email, or at the office really does not help the girls learn anything. After all, do you go in and take your daughter’s science test for her in school and let her get credit for the grade you earned?
No, you do not.
There will always be gung ho competitive parents who will hustle for their child, and others who do not. It is not fair for a leader to judge a family based on cookie (or lack of) cookie sales. If a family does not sign up for a booth, what can you do about it?
Nothing.
If a family tells you that they will not sell cookies what can you do about it?
Nothing.
Troop money is troop money, and girls cannot be left out of activities simply because they sold no cookies or fewer cookies that the troop goal per girl. Yes it is a harsh life lesson for top sellers to learn, but these are the rules. Are they fair? If you sell cookies, they are not. However, Juliette Gordon Low did not establish the organization so that only a handful of girls benefited.
Plus, you would be penalizing a child who has no control over her parents’ decision to sell or not sell. It is against GSA policy to require a set amount of cookies to sell. If a girl’s parents want to make a donation to the troop in lieu of selling cookies, let them if your Council permits this. You will not change their minds and aggravating yourself will not change things one bit.
Girl Scout Cookie Selling Tips
#4 Do Not Advertise What Each Girl Sells
When my older daughter was a Girl Scout, she had a hyper-competitive leader. Her daughter had to be the top cookie seller, and it was a neck-and neck race between her and the Cookie Mom to see who would come out on top. In fact, the leader, her husband, and her brother-in-law all sold cookies for her daughter so she could win every year. What did this child learn?
Every other week, she would send home a newsletter with each girl’s selling stats. There were a few who sold very little, and I always felt sorry for those who were at the bottom. It was not their fault, but at least they sold something.
If that were my child, I would have been pretty annoyed and would have said something! You may be offending a parent in your troop by publicly embarrassing them, and that creates a lot of ill will. And if you offend the wrong parent, you may find yourself in even more hot water if she reports you to the local Council.
Families have different priorities and circumstances, as well as financial situations. The top selling girl in my daughter’s troop really did not sell all those cookies, yet the child who sold 25 boxes at the booth sale or going door-to-door learned more from selling those twenty-five than the leader’s daughter who “sold” 750 boxes with lots of help.
Girl Scouts is about sisterhood. Creating a competitive environment helps no one and can create animosity in the troop when girls start flaunting “their” sales. Share troop goals and achievements, but otherwise, keep individual sales private.
Girl Scout Cookie Selling Tips
#5 Don’t Sell Cookies
(Update below)
If you do not like drama and extra work, then you can opt out of selling Girl Scout cookies. My troop sold them once, and it was beyond stressful for me, especially since my Cookie Mom was totally unreachable and unreliable.
Since I already do everything for my troop, I made the decision not to sell cookies ever again.
Over the years, I have stood my ground, even though the girls and my co-leader wanted to sell. The bottom line is that I am responsible for everything, and I do not need more work in my life. We pay for things out-of-pocket, and due to this, I became expert in finding free field trips and free or low-cost guest speakers and workshops.
Update 2020
My troop sold cookies as Cadettes for two years when I stepped down as the 01 leader and was an 02 in charge of community service. After two years of selling the girls were bored and got it out of their system. We are down to three girls and have been spending the money on trips and camping. Even in 2020, we still have enough in the bank to do fun outings.
The bottom line is that there is a lot of work involved with selling Girl Scout cookies. Remembering not to stress over things you cannot control, along with setting realistic goals, will help make cookie season a fun one for all involved.
Update 2021
The pandemic really made the Ambassador years a challenge. Down to two girls in 12th grade, between Covid and one scout earning her Gold, plus everything going on during Senior year, it was a challenge to get together and spend the remainder of our cookie money.
We did go on a visit to an alpaca farm, had a few meals out, and went to Michael’s to buy scrapbooking supplies. In the end, we had $80.00 left over, which we gave back to our Service Unit and requested it be given to a new troops.
