Get ready to be disappointed.
To begin, let’s talk about what Girl Scouts of America is.
To get a member's view (of 10 years) on this... The Girl Scouts of America is a non-profit organization for girls that teach them core values like hard work and community service. Girls join a troop near them that meets once a week and completes activities for badges. Most troops go on multiple camping trips where they earn more discovery badges. To earn money for their troop members and trips, each troop sells boxes and boxes of cookies. And guess what...
It’s Girl Scout Cookie season!
The tag-alongs, the Samoa’s, the thin mints, the s’mores.... they’re all so delicious. Even though you are paying $4-$5 per box, you know it's going for a good cause.... and they're delicious.
What if I told you that only 60-85 cents per box is profited by the troops that sell them?
These girls work so hard to sell these cookies. They take turns at local businesses, they carry these ordering slips around with them every where they go, they get bombarded by people who LOVE these (only once a year) cookies... All for them to only be able to collect 60-85 cents for their troop. That means around $3.15-$3.40 is going somewhere else. Of course these cookies aren’t made for free. Baking and transporting these cookies takes up 27% of the 4 dollars. If we do the math, that’s only $1.08.
After further investigation, the rest of the money goes towards remodeling camps and training volunteers. This is understandable but what if I told you that the CEO of Girls Scouts of America takes home $393,380 per year.
To me, thats crazy!
How do these relate? Cookies count for 60% of their income and last year, scouts sold around 200 million boxes.
Math quiz: that means these girls are only making a possible 120 million out of possibly 800 million? So it takes 680 million dollars to redo these buildings and train people? Lets not forget there is another 40% of their income missing from this picture.
Talking to some parents of troops, it amazes me that some scouts still have to pay almost $70 just for the sash/vest, let alone the rest of their uniform. Although sometimes, things like their badges are included in their yearly dues, its not like that for every troop. Scouts may only go one BIG trip a year. Parents are dishing out money for their kids to participate (just like they do for sports) in an organization that only wants to let a troop profit 60-85 cents per box that they work hard to sell and make parents spend hundreds of dollars on things they may or may not be able to afford.
You can buy your Girl Scout cookies. I will too! But donating a dollar directly helps the troop more than buying boxes and boxes of cookies.
Instead of putting almost $400k into the CEO’s pocket, try donating a dollar to the girl who can barley afford her uniform.
