Are Cookies Worth It?

 Its that time of year again--Cookie Season, and despite the pandemic, Girl Scouts are out selling cookies (but in a socially distant way).  As regularly as Cookie Season comes around, so do the complaints that the girls and troops don't get enough for selling them.  Are Girl Scout Cookies good for girls and troops, or just for the adults running the organization?

How the Cookie Crumbles

Many council websites have pages that tell "how the cookie crumbles" -- how the price of the cookies is allotted between the baker, the council, and the troops. Let's take a look at a few: (click council name to be taken to their breakdown). My research consisted of googling "how the cookie crumbles" girl scout and going down the results list until I got tired of it.  I make no claim that these are representative across the country, though they do seem pretty close to each other 

Girl Scouts Heart of Michigan

The baker gets 35%, council 49% and troops 16%.

Girl Scouts Nation's Capital

$0.98 troop proceeds, $1.25 product, transportation, promotion and awards, $2.77 services to girls (a/k/a council proceeds).  This means troops get 19.6%. 

Girl Scouts Heart of Central California

For a $5.00 box, $1.04 goes to troop proceeds and girl rewards. The cost of cookies is $1.00 and the rest goes to council, though they break down how they use it a bit more. The troop and girls get 20.8%.

Girl Scouts Eastern Missouri

21% is troop proceeds and girl awards, 29% is the cost of the program, including paying the baker, and 50% supports the council.

Girl Scouts of Gateway

22% troop proceeds and girl rewards, 24% cookie program and baker costs, 54% to council (further breakdown provided). 

Girl Scouts of Kentucky's Wilderness Road

19% troop proceeds and awards, 29% cookie vendor and program costs, 52% to council (further breakdown provided). 

Girl Scouts of Western Ohio

23% cookie vendor and program costs, 18% troop proceeds and awards, 59% to council (further breakdown provided). 

Girl Scouts of Northeastern New York

25% cookies and promotion, 22 % troop proceeds and rewards, 53% to council (further breakdown given)

Girl Scouts San Diego

Troop Proceeds:  $0.75 to $1.00 per $5.00 box. Cost of cookies: $1.17. So on low end, council gets $2.83 and on the high end they get $3.08 or 61.6%.  Troops get between 15% and 23.4%

Girl Scouts Central Illinois

Troop proceeds and girl rewards:  16.7%, cost of cookies:  22.7%, council: 60.6%

Girl Scouts Historic Georgia

18% troop proceeds, 4% girl rewards, 28% cost of cookies, 50% council 

Girl Scouts Eastern Pennsylvania

5% girl recognition, 26% cost of cookies, 18.8% troop and SU proceeds, 50.2% council (further breakdown provided). 

Girl Scouts Eastern Oklahoma 

22% cost of cookies, 14% troop proceeds, 6% cookie program credit, 2.5% girl recognition, 2% cost of cookie sale support, 53.5% council.  

Girl Scouts Green and White Mountains

24% troop proceeds and girl rewards, 24% cost of cookies and cookie program, 52% council. 

Girl Scouts of New Mexico Trails

28% cookie program and vendor costs, 19% troop proceeds and awards, 54% council (further breakdown provided)

What Can You Realistically Make From Cookies?

Every council and every neighborhood and every troop is different.  Some councils do pre-orders followed by a short booth season.  Others do booths for eight weeks or more and never offer pre-sales.  Some people live close to a cookie cupboard and can pretty much get cookies at will; others live a long way away and have councils that require you to pre-order a week in advance.  Most people are somewhere in between, so what is "normal" for me may not be for you.  Some troops sell a few to friends and family, give every girl one booth and call it good.  Others work multiple booths trying to maximize revenue.  

I am in Girl Scouts Louisiana East.  While this year is different, most years I have no problem booking four booth sales per weekend )(and I can often get more than that) and we do booths for three weekends.  How much you sell depends on location and week but in my area, I'd say that unless you get a bunch of dud booths, you should average 75 boxes in a two hour booth, overall, maybe better.  I reserve booth spots for the third weekend, but my goal is to not need them--I don't want to order a bunch of cookies with the idea of selling the third weekend (when you hear a lot of "I already bought") and then have it rain or otherwise end up not selling out.  So if I do eight booths that sell 75 boxes each, our troop makes $300.  Of course the larger the troop, the less that is per girl.  

We also do pre-orders/direct sales.  This is the bulk of my girls' orders.  On the low end, we have a girl at 40 boxes; on the high end, 400.   We picked up cookies last weekend and booths start this weekend.  Our cupboard is close and we have to order by Sunday night to pick up on Thursday or Friday.  At this point we have ordered an average of 170 boxes per girl, so we'll get $0.50 per box (which seems to be on the low end among councils) so our profit, if we don't order any more cookies, will earn about $85 per girl.  Last year our council average was 179 boxes per girl. 

So, how much work is involved for girls/adults?  Well, when the order sheets go home, girls/parents contact family, friends and co-workers to get orders.  How long this takes depends on personal choice, where you work, and how much Grandma likes cookies.  At my house this phase involved emails to the uncles and aunts and grandparents asking them to buy (and they always did and donated the cookies since they are out of town) and parents taking the sheet to work.  Other girls go door-to-door or call a long list of acquaintances.  

When the cookies come in, they have to be delivered, and again, how much time this takes depends on the number ordered and who gets them.  We sold most of ours at my office so delivery was easy.  I also used to order and extra 40 boxes or so and do a wagon pull around the neighborhood with my daughter, which took a couple of hours.

Booth sales are two hours each here, and the most I've ever done was 6 on a weekend when my daughter was earning money for a New York trip.  Most troops don't do that many, and most girls, especially the younger ones, only do one or two.  

As I said, our cupboard is close so between initial pick-up and supplemental orders, we probably make the 40 minute round trip five times for the troop.  Of course the Cookie Mom has to count and sort all those cookies and collect all that money.  So, yes, cookies are work but they can be big earners if your troop decides to make them big earners.  

What are the Alternatives?

World's Finest Chocolate

In deciding if cookies are worth it, you have to look at some alternatives.  First of course, if we were allowed to do so, which we aren't, would be selling other fundraising products.  World's Finest Chocolate is a favorite of schools around here, so let's take a look at it.  According to their website, a case of 60 candy bars that sell for $1.00 each is $36 and you have to order a minimum of eight cases.  Minimum freight costs is $95.00. 

Our school used to ask every family to sell two cases and about half did (middle class Catholic school), so let's call that a reasonable goal.  I have 16 girls in my troop, so I'd order 32 cases which would cost me $1,247.00 (and I've have to pay for them before we got them). Then we'd sell them for $1920, for a profit of $673 or $42.06 per girl.  While out profit is about twice what we get from cookies, someone had to front that $1,247.00--and if we don't sell out, we don't make that much.  

I know WFC shows up regularly in the kitchen at work and people buy it.  I also know that a lot of it ends up in the bellies of my family when the boxes show up here.  I don't know how typical my family is, but I have to wonder how much of that WFC money comes from family and how much from folks with little connection to the ones raising money.  In other words I view a fundraiser's success at least partly on how much money you get from uninvolved people--if families are the ones buying most of it, then you might as well charge dues.  

Bake Sales

Bake sales are easy quick money.  Last time we did one, we earned $400 by selling after 4 Masses one weekend.  Of course, we really didn't earn $400--our parents bought/made the stuff we sold and since we had 10 girls our profit was only $40 per girl, minus the cost of the donation.  The other thing is that while we did make that $400 that weekend, we can't do it again this year.  Now, if my girls' parents had connections at other churches, maybe we could do one next month over there, but the number of places allowing such sales definitely isn't what it once was.  

Egging 

With these fundraisers you advertise to deliver Easter Eggs and hide them in the yard as requested.  I've seen troops charge $20 to $30 per yard, and I suspect the materials cost them about $10.  Obviously the amount you can earn on this depends on how many girls you have and how many people you can get to buy.  If every girl in a ten girl troop can "sell" two yards, and you net $20 per yard, that's not bad money, but you can't do it next month too.  

Garage Sale

The most successful and easiest garage sale we ran was one in which we rented  tables.  Each girl's family got one free table and each girl could then sell as many tables as she was able.  We set up in the church parking lot and everyone who had rented or been given a table set their own stuff on their table.  At the end, everyone was responsible for clearing out their own stuff.  The troop sold refreshments and between the refreshments and the tables, the troop earned about $200, but families made money too.  

Programs

Older girl troops can put on programs for  younger girls.  How successful they are depends on how good your reputation is, how interesting the program sounds, where you have it, and a host of other factors.  If you can earn, after expenses, $20 per participant and  have 20 girls participate, that's $400.  The question of course is how many girls participated in putting on the event, how much time was involved, and whether you can do it again next weekend.  I wrote this post about a Coding For Good workshop I did.  I charged $10 per girl, and ended up with 11 paying.  I do a religious program for Daisies, and I've ended up with as few as four girls and as many as forty.  In short, you can end up putting a lot of work into a program that doesn't make much or you can end up with a popular program you can repeat for different groups with little effort after the first time. 

Labor

If you live in an area where there is a regular seasonal chore that the girls are capable of performing well, you can offer things like leaf raking.  For older girls, this can pay well; for little ones, no. 

In short, there are a lot of ways of earning money that will give you more dollars for less work than a two hour cookies booth, however when you look at cookie season as a whole there are few fundraisers that will give your troop as much money per girl, with most of it coming from outside your house, than cookies will.  

Don't Forget the Bigger Picture

One common complaint about cookies is that troops can make more money doing other things, but that they aren't allowed to do so because Council didn't think they sold enough cookies.  I know that most councils do require troops to participate in cookies before they can do other money earning.  I do not know how different councils define "participate", but I know my daughters' troops never had problems getting approval, but on the other hand, they always sold plenty of cookies.  

As noted above, most of the cookie money goes to the councils, but they are the entities that own and maintain our camps and for the councils that provide breakdowns of how their share of the money is spent, camps are a big line item.  I suppose troops could be given a larger piece of the cookie pie, but then councils would have to charge council dues, and frankly, I'd rather have them collect via cookie sales than to have to hit new parents up for $25 national dues, $25 council dues and $50 in troop dues.