If it's so important to you, YOU do it!

The BBQ Pit
21

I used to hear this, too, when I was a Girl Scout. Then I got involved in Girl Scouts on the business side, and found out that it isn’t.

In our council, 80% of money from cookie sales and donations goes to funding girl activities. Some goes to troops; some goes to girls (in the form of Cookie Dough), and some goes to the council. The council puts on programs that your daughter may or may not participate in, but they are usually very educational for the children who do. Our council does anti-bullying programs, outreach to girls with mothers who are in prison, and a large event every year called Believe In Girls where all sorts of educational and civic groups come to expose girls to various interests that they might not otherwise get to learn about.

Yes, some cookie sale money is spent on staff salaries. In our council, about 20% goes to administration. Most of them are working very hard for that money. They run Girl Scout camps, create and deliver the programming I mentioned above, and do fundraising to outside organizations, trying to get money from groups like the United Way and corporations and others (so that girls selling cookies is not the only way to fund programming and operations). They do the budgets and monitor troop accounts. They coordinate the cookie sale. They make sure parents and girls find out about the activities available to them in the council.

These are real jobs, and these people deserve to be paid. In our council, the wages our employees receive are below the market average for the jobs they do.

But this does not mean that the majority of the money is not spent on activities for girls.

The transition to modern technology in Girl Scout councils is greatly hampered by the fact that they are working with relatively limited budgets, and try to spend most of the money they do have on girl activities.

These transitions are happening now. However, it is difficult. Most councils have areas that are very rural and have limited service. A lot of Girl Scouts come from poor families. Access to a PC is definitely NOT easy for a sizeable minority of parents and girls we serve. So councils are adopting new technology AND maintaining old-fashioned methods, to serve everyone. It’s expensive.

Thank you, for your volunteer time, and for recognizing that it is important to volunteer when your daughter is enrolled in Girl Scouts.

22

Scoutmaster here and former Den Leader. First rant is pitiful.
Scouting (Cub, Boy or Girl) is not baby sitting service. Some parents have obligation but considering how much time and money the other adult volunteers spend on YOUR kids you need to do something. Maybe the OP can’t bring cookies but have you ever brought snacks for the meeting or stay and help supervise/participate with the girls? If you do fantastic and we love you. If not get off your ass and help out in some way. And that goes for the other parents as well who you should have pitted instead of the leaders. I guaranty at least 3 of them could do cookies.

Second rant. Ditto the love for your dad.

23

Yeah, OP, you’re pretty scummy. What do you pay for the Girl Scouts in dues? Our troop was $6 a month. Think about it. $6 a month. That buys glue and some paper for the activities, and leaves nothing for badges and snacks and glue sticks and fabrics and all the things you need to run a troop.

I did it for four years, and the only good part was when I was with the girls. All of the rest of it was time consuming and expensive. Who do you think paid for everything above that $6 a month and the paltry sum we got from cookie sales? We had meetings twice a month, where I was expected to plan and execute a 2.5 meeting, with badge work. That was hard work - do you have any ideas on how to demonstrate “honesty” to a bunch of third graders using hand puppet materials and craft sticks?

I was out lots of money and tons and tons of time. I got ZERO help from the other parents, including one stellar time when I coordinated a float for our town Christmas parade, and talked my dad into letting us use his pole barn for setup. The girls came at 6pm…and all of the parents DROVE AWAY. Who do you suppose helped - no one. My co-leader and I, and my DAD, put together a float including such things as electric lights and taping 400 cookie boxes to a playhouse.

Why did I do it? Because if I didn’t decide to lead the troop, it would have folded. There would have been no Girl Scouts for grades 1-5 at that school, because no other parent would step up.

You should get down on your knees and thank that leader for allowing you to be a lazy, entitled piece of shit. Girl Scouts is a great organization, and the moms do it out of a sense of love for the girls involved. My troop girls are 16 now, and I did a double take when I saw one of them driving a car last week. Yes, they are still “my girls” and I am thankful that I got the chance to be a leader to them, on everything from sewing T-shirts to talking about drugs.

There is no “view” on how important cookie sales are - without them, the troops would cease to exist, because Girl Scouts USA would cease to exist. That’s not a “view”, that’s a fact. I never got a “Cookie Mom” to help me - not only did I do my own troop’s cookies, I helped with other troops who’s leaders had “other obligations” on that day.

I don’t care what other volunteer work you do - if you are unwilling to give the time and/or money to your daughter’s troop, then they need to quit. It’s unfair and so, so rude. The parents of that troop should pitch in to send the leader to a spa day or something - it’s the least you could do to make up for your entitled attitude and nasty worldview.

24

In regard to Councils -

Our council sucked, sucked, sucked, for us. We are the south half of a county that has a north end made up of Gary, Indiana. You can imagine how much of the resources we brought in that went to that area. I’m good-hearted, generally, but the balance was so far off it was ridiculous.

Your council is a 501©(3) charity, and as such, should have their taxes available to the public. I found our council taxes online after a little searching, and was quite surprised to find out that the Council President made $84K a year. Quite a shock, and the beginning of my break with the Council. Our Service Unit was great, but I refused from that point forward to add any value to Council from my troop.

25

12 bucks. 12 bucks???
Heck - here in my area it’s $175 for the year, and I think that’s cheap!
We have at least 22 meetings a year - 22 hours of “babysitting” for $175 is still rather inexpensive. Only it’s not just babysitting. We’ve gone to the firehall. We went to the Dairy Queen, we are going to the petstore, the library and skating. We had a first aid course, aimed at their ages (5 and 6) We had a sleepover. We are going to camp. All for that $175 bucks a year. (well, we charge an extra $20 or so for the sleepover and camp - we’re housing and feeding them after all…)
And, they sell cookies. Cookies is how we fund our operations, period.
For my Sparks (youngest of the Girl Guides) the parents are expected to sell 2 cases of cookies (24 boxes, total) Or they could buy them themselves. Or they could just give me money, and I would donate the cookies to the food bank.
And those cookies practically sell themselves - I can sell a case at work in about 5 minutes. This fall, I sold 13 cases.
And it is a lot of time, and planning if you are the leader. A LOT of time. This year I have two useful co-leaders, and it is going well. Last year I did not, and it was a nightmare.
Some parents baffle me. They don’t read emails. Ever. I had one mom drop off her kid for a sleepover without any stuff. No pyjamas, sleeping bag, toothbrush, nothing. Two other parents, despite being reminded FIVE times, still dropped off their 5 year olds off with no hats, mitts, boots or snowpants. Heck - I don’t travel in winter without those things for my kids, no matter where I am going.
A lot of the time I regret getting involved. But a lot of the time I see how happy the girls are, and I grit my teeth, and plan another meeting.

26

I should have said only a small portion DIRECTLY benefits the troops – about 42 cents per box when I was cookie mom. A much larger percentage, about triple what we made, INDIRECTLY supports the girls via the local council and camps. It’s very difficult motivate people to work their butts off for some obscure indirect benefit.

For example, our average booth sale, which lasted 3 hours, netted $75 for the troop. With 12 girls in the troop, that meant each girl only raised $6 towards her individual account. The council, on the other hand, netted almost $200 on the same sale. Sorry, but that’s a tough pill to swallow, especially when you sat out for 3 hours in the cold selling those cookies. Oh, and if you don’t sell out your cookies, the troop has to buy them.

Truly, I think that the Girl Scouts was a great program, especially as they got older. But they have lots of improvement areas, and moving away from the 1950’s model of doing things is one way they could move in the right direction.

27

My wife was a troop cookie mom for one year and then (her term) the cookie general for the western part of our county. She dealt with 72 troop cookie moms.

For those two years my family (three daughters all told) counted out cartons of cookies from a semi-trailer load parked at a local high school and stacked them in separate piles for each troop.

The troops were given appointments 15 or 20 minutes apart and we had to keep careful watch on inventory since if there was a shortage we were responsible financially. The process took pretty much an entire Saturday both years.

After the cookie distribution, my wife had to collect funds and make bank deposits.

After those years we retired from being Girl Scout volunteers.

I don’t regret the experience at all.

28

How do they move away from the 1950s model? What do you mean?

29

  1. Cookie Sale - As I mentioned before, everything is still done by hand, and I guarantee you that it hasn’t changed significantly in decades, with the possible exception of moving from black & white forms to colored forms. The 60-page user manual is still printed on paper and handed out. The forms require you to handwrite in the same information over and over again, including troop name, number, each girls’ name and how many cases they ordered, blah blah blah. Then you have to manually add up columns and rows, etc. It is ridiculously cumbersome. They should hire a programmer, or even ask a university to create a website as part of its IT curriculum, so that the 1950s process can enter the 21st century.

  2. Sashes and Badges - I realize that sashes and badges are icons of Girl Scouts, but it’s time to move on. Very few moms sew anymore, and girls past a certain age would rather quit Scouts than to have to walk around wearing uniforms. Plus, the badges are expensive. The first year we moved from Brownies to GS, half of our troop’s funds went to buying the sashes and numbers, logos, and badges.

  3. Lack of SAHMs to be leaders - The leader system worked great when you had a bunch of stay-at-home moms who could spread the labor out. The job force has changed significantly in the past several decades, and more moms are working. Asking them to make such a time commitment is asking a lot. That is why it is getting harder and harder to find troop leaders. They should consider moving to other models, perhaps consolidating into mega-troops and/or having paid troop leaders.

  4. Camps - fewer girls in Scouts and skyrocketing property taxes are making the camps more and more difficult to justify. Plus, a good portion of the camps are in climates that make them only usable in the warmer months. My girls loved the GS camps, but it may be time to consolidate or move the camps farther out to more rural, less expensive areas (as they used to be, at least in our district, before suburban sprawl).

30

You got MPD, or is there a eugenics branch of the Society of Individualists?

31

Our council’s CEOs (during my tenure, we have had 2) make around $120K. These women have MBAs, and decades of executive experience in business. They run a council with 55 employees and $10 million in assets. They work about 60 hours a week, on average. If you want to hire someone competent to do that, you need to pay a competitive wage. I’m a donor, a volunteer, and I sold cookies myself as a girl. I think they’re well worth the money. I don’t want my time and money squandered by an underqualified, underpaid incompetent.

To be clear–the $12 fee is the only one that is mandatory for all Girl Scouts everywhere. It is paid to the Girl Scouts of the USA, the national organization. Some councils and troops charge fees or dues on top of that. Our council doesn’t. It varies a lot by region and troop, but I think fee hikes are inevitable if the organization is to survive and modernize.

32

QFT. Won’t someone think of the consumers?

33

I feel the same way about doing the dishes, the laundry, bathing my kid, taking out the trash, etc. (so does my wife, so we got a housekeeper/nanny)

With that said, if there aren’t enough volunteers to keep the troop going then maybe the troop just doesn’t have enough parental support to really sustain itself.

34

That’s exactly what the high school that my kids attended did. Instead of popcorn/wrapping paper/gift coupon/car wash/you name it fund raisers, every kid who participated in a sport was charged a $50 fee. In exchange, the kid got into other sporting events for free. There were scholarships available for kids whose parents couldn’t afford the $50 (they were equally unlikely to have the time to help their kids raise money). It was wonderful.

35

If I recall correctly, I sent in a $175 check at the beginning of the year, followed by sending in snack stuff and craft supplies for meetings. I’m happy to send in money for activities, supplies, and even help out myself from time to time. I simply can’t handle managing a bunch of inventory, money, and red tape at a time in my life when I give myself a high five for getting over my mental health issues enough to pay all my bills on time. And I don’t appreciate someone trying to manipulate me into crossing those boundaries, especially since if I succumbed to the high-pressure guilt trip it would probably be disastrous for everyone involved, especially the girls.

So why don’t you climb down off your caramel-coconut cross and go fuck yourself.

36

So how much would it cost a parent to simply donate as much money as his or her scout should be contributing via fundraising? If (as someone else said) my kid is expected to sell 24 boxes, how much money is that actually raising? Fifty bucks? Can a parent just write you a check for that amount?

37

You know what- you probably shouldn’t be the cookie mom. But in your OP , it sounded like this was not a person trying to “manipulate you into crossing those boundaries” in a one-on one conversation but rather a person speaking to a group. Maybe you’re taking it too personally - and in any event, I doubt the leader knows anything about your issues, so the boundaries thing is a little unfair.

38

If the girl scouts get very little profit from it, and it’s such a major hassle, why do it? I’m sure Wal Mart will be glad to carry the girl scout cookie brand in their stores year-round for quite the hefty premium. Wouldn’t that boost revenue and liberate scouts and their moms from something that they don’t really want to do?

Added money and decreased responsibilities. That way the girls can go to firehouses and museums like they’re intended?

I quit cub scouts the year after they made me sell popcorn. It was so much fun up until that point. Historical reinactments at forts. Aquariums. Police stations. Parks. Hikes. Pocketknives. Fires. Knots. Scary stories. Meeting Tuskeegee airmen. Pro sports games. Skiing. All out of pocket from the parents. I’m guessing it was a la carte and would come out to be ~$30/mo, which is more than double what you gals have said but still… a much more enjoyable experience.

39

Oh no, it was a one-on-one conversation. Looking back on my OP, I see that I didn’t make that clear at all. It was just the one leader talking to me as I dropped my kid off.

Her: We need to talk about people taking on the Cookie Mom responsibilities.
Me: I’m sorry, I won’t be able to do any of that.
Her: Oh, but the cookie sale is such a great experience for the girls! [Other leader] and I were really hoping they could do it, but they’re going to miss out if no one volunteers (etc., ad nauseam).

That’s what annoys me - I gave a firm, polite, and very clear answer, but she wouldn’t take it and tried to pressure me. If she merely said, “OK, but I want to make sure you realize that we’ll have to cancel the cookie sale if no one volunteers,” that would have been one thing, but this was beyond that.

40

Cookie sales are not just for fundraising, or at least that’s the Girl Scout cant. They teach the girls valuable skills, including goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics. Unfortunately, this also requires [del]a human sacrifice[/del] a “cookie mom” to do the paperwork, especially for the younger girls. But if you can’t do it, then don’t do it, and try not to get your panties in a twist about it.

ETA: I see that you posted just before me, Unauthorized Cinnamon. Personally, I’d be very tempted to say, “Oh yes, it would be so terrible if no one agrees to do it,” and completely pretend not to notice the passive-aggressive pushing to volunteer. (And before anyone gets on my case about this, I am cookie mom for my daughter’s troop this year, and also just agreed to be Service Unit Manager, so you can just suck it if you think I don’t do enough.)