Are You Making Cookie Sales the End All and Be All of Your Leadership?
Updated December 2021
I have written about this before, but as cookie season looms ahead of us for most parts of the country, it bears repeating.
In my last post about cookie sales, I shared my opinion on this topic. I have a few more thoughts based on what I am reading in Girl Scout leader Facebook groups.
1.Girl Scout Cookie Selling is Voluntary
You cannot force girls to sell cookies.
According to the Girl Scouts of the USA website:
“Participation in the Girl Scout Cookie Program is voluntary and requires written permission from a parent or guardian. The experience helps girls learn essential life skills while powering amazing troop experiences for girls year-round.”
It’s really very simple. No matter how you feel about it, cookie selling is not required. Expending a ton of mental energy being annoyed, angry or upset about a girl whose parents will not let her participate in selling door-to-door or at a booth, is a waste of your emotional energy. You do not live in that child’s home, so you have no clue the reason behind her not selling.
Cookie selling is a troop effort and not an individual girl effort. These fundraisers are for your troop not your daughter to be able to go on trips. Yes, I understand that it can be frustrating for you as leader to have a child who sells for six straight weeks and has a four digit amount of cookies sold, but that is for her individual goal, not the troop goal.
Think about it this way…for school fundraisers, every child is included in assemblies, school events, and field trips, regardless of if s/he sold any product or not. The same rule applies for your troop.
2. You Cannot Set a Cookie Quota
One girl may only be able to sell at booths, another may have a team of family members waiting to help her achieve an amazing goal. Either way, you cannot make parents take cookies and you cannot make a girl sell a certain amount.
But can you educate your girls and your parents about the experiences selling Girl Scout cookies will earn their child? ABSOLUTELY!
Before you meet with the parents, have the girls make a list of the kinds of experiences they want to have with the cookie money they earn. It is a sleepover at a museum? Is it a weekend of camping? A trip to Build A Bear?
Once you have a list, make a chart of just how many cookies the troop needs to sell and what that amounts to each scout earning in order to make that happen. It can look something like this (numbers are made up for this example):
Trip Amount of Boxes Sold Cost Per Girl
Build a Bear 100 FREE
Build A Bear 50 $10
Build A Bear 25 $20
Do this for every trip idea that the girls want to do. You can rank them on how the girls voted on which to do first. Make this a handout that you can give to every parent at your cookie meeting. Then send it as an email attachment, put on your troop Facebook page, etc. You can even have brochures of each place given to each family so they can see what their daughter wants to do.
This chart may help those parents who do not or have more trouble selling, as it is a visual. Their child may be able to coax them to help; that being said, they are children and are not in control of their parents’ schedule. As a leader, you can offer to take the child to a cookie booth is transportation is an issue or have the girl or the family help in other ways to sell. But you may not set a selling quota on a child.
3. You Cannot Leave a Girl Out of an Activity Based on Her Cookie Sales, Nor Can You Make Her Parents Pay for the Difference Based on Sales
Leaders also need to remember that troop money is troop money. Instead of being upset at a girl who does not sell, focus on the cookies your troop did manage to sell.
Remember that chart you made for your troop cookie goals? (see previous bullet point). That is the monetary reality for your troop. As adults, we should only do what you can afford to do. I would love to fly on vacation with my family to Hawaii, but guess what? It is not in our budget, so we do something that we can afford to do for a family getaway. The same rule applies to your cookie profit.
Let’s say at the end of the season your troop profits $1,000. As the leader, you need to put aside money for the things you purchase as a troop and money you use for community service projects. Whatever is left over goes towards your cookie goal trips.
But wait! In your troop, Jessie sold 85 boxes and Lisa sold 52 boxes. Now you are going to make Lisa’s parents have to pony up the dough to pay for the trip to Build A Bear.
Sorry leader, you cannot do that. If you pay for one, you pay for all. That is the rule.
The girls have incentives for individual goals met, so Lisa’s parents have no say in what their daughter receives from the cookie sale. But a troop trip is for troop goals, and if that goal is met, you pay for each girl in your troop.
In addition, if you have a troop party to celebrate your achievements post cookie season, you should not give special privileges to girls who sold the most. For example, if you sell 300 or more cookies, you get to pie the leader in the face. You also should not give special gifts to these sellers, either. It makes the others who sold less, through NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN, feel badly.
And that is not being a sister to every Girl Scout. That is being a mean girl.
4. No Paper Accounts for Younger Scouts
For those of you still reading and are upset at what I am saying, I get you. It is not fair for those who sell to carry the weight for those who do not sell Girl Scout cookies. Even if it is for reasons beyond the child’s control, it still gets to you. Again, you can recognize the feelings, and then move on.
Maybe this paragraph from the Girl Scout Volunteer Essentials Guide on page 99 will help.
“The income from product program does not become the property of individual girl members.“
There are many leaders who have “paper accounts” for each scout, i.e., they track how much money is earned on a separate spreadsheet so they know how much they will give each child towards paying for events. While separate accounts are permitted for Cadette levels and up, it is a rare Council that permits it for Daisy to Junior Scouts. Check with your Council before doing this.
5. Be Considerate and Caring When Handing Out Girl Scout Cookie Rewards
Jessie has parents who take her cookies to work and sell for her. Her parents also help her work at booths every time there is one and they take her door-to-door to help Jessie achieve her goal.
Lisa is from a single parent family and her mom works two jobs to support them. Her father refuses to spend his weekends with Lisa doing booth sales or taking her out in the neighborhood. She sells at booths when she can.
Of course, Jessie gets more rewards as she had more support. Lisa earned what she could, given she is in elementary school and much of what happens in her life is not in her control. At your meeting when individual earned rewards are handed out, how do you distribute them tells a lot about who you are.
A considerate and caring leader will hand out individual incentives in the same sized stapled shut bag at the end of the meeting. To read more about why that is, you can read this blog post on the topic.
I wish all of you good luck and a successful and fair cookie selling season!
