What do Girl Scouts get out of selling cookies online?
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What is the history behind Girl Scout cookie sales?
A look at an iconic door to door fundraiser in the digital age. For American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Stephanie Hughes.
Girl Scout cookie sales started back in 1917. Tree foils, my personal favorite, are one of the classics.
How are Girl Scouts adapting to online cookie sales?
In addition to raising money, cookie selling is also meant to make the girls more business savvy. The Girl Scout states the largest girl-led entrepreneurial program in the world. And now some of that entrepreneurship is happening online. Wendy Liu oversees the cookie program as the chief revenue officer at the Girl Scouts of the United States of America. She says last season, digital transactions accounted for more than 40% of cookie sale revenue.
What business skills do girls learn from selling cookies online?
Girls set up their own individual or troop sites. And as part of that, they go through a process of identifying what is their goal. How many boxes of cookies do they want to sell? They put together marketing materials that could be a video about their goals. you know, trying to convince their digital consumer to buy. And then within that platform, they actually have customer relationship management tools to be able to send emails to their customer list, to be able to share their QR code to social media through text. So it's really expanded her ability to grow her business and, of course, sort of replicate the real-life experience business skills that are needed to succeed in a commercial environment or retail environment today.
Yeah, yeah. Say a little bit more about that. What kind of skills do you think girls gain from selling online? Well, certainly they learn digital literacy skills, how to conduct themselves online, how to be safe and have good interactions, but we also want them to learn digital marketing tools skills. You've sent an email out, take a look, who hasn't ordered yet? Do you need to reach back out to them? Do you need a different message to reach that person? Would you find maybe a different channel? Of course, the younger girls do this with their caregivers, but as the girls get older, they can really start to navigate this themselves. Kids tend to be super tech savvy. Are there any opportunities for the scouts to suggest new kinds of technology or new online platforms to sell on?
Yeah, I would say that our girls are usually ahead of us in terms of, you know, so we get inspired by them all the time.
What challenges do girls face when selling cookies online?
But we also have the girls help us, you know, understand what we need. We have different cohorts of girls who, you know, we will bounce ideas off of, get some suggestions from. And, you know, we see what they're doing. If we hear, oh, please make the digital checkout faster. I'm standing at a booth. I need this payment process to move quicker. Okay, we're on it. We're trying to solve their real business problems that they're experiencing. And that helps us prioritize what to enhance on the platform. Yeah.
How does online safety play a role in cookie sales?
I will say I do get a number of texts from friends who are parents of Girl Scouts asking me if I want to buy their daughter's cookies. And then I get sent a link to the website and the girls are nowhere to be seen in this transaction. I wonder what is the danger that adults kind of take charge and girls miss out on developing these entrepreneurial skills? The girl is definitely involved. So even the link that you might get because the parent is, you know, the one maybe with the phone to be able to share the QR code, the girl and her parent work together to set up that site. I have a daughter, she's been doing this since she was five, and those learnings are real. You had to sit down with her. Okay, we're going to, you know, think about how much do you want to sell?
What are you going to do with the money? What are the reasons why someone should buy from you? She's in the process 100%. One of the options for checkout is instead of having your cookies shipped to you, if it's a local Girl Scout and one that the parent knows and approves the delivery, you can actually choose for the Girl Scout to deliver the cookies to you. So it really is a beautiful combination of online and offline and intentionally building in those touch points for learning and personal interactions.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the history behind Girl Scout cookie sales?
0:00–0:25
2
How are Girl Scouts adapting to online cookie sales?
0:25–0:47
3
What business skills do girls learn from selling cookies online?
0:47–2:32
4
What challenges do girls face when selling cookies online?
2:32–3:05
5
How does online safety play a role in cookie sales?
3:05–4:58
6
What is the timeline for Girl Scout cookie season?
4:58–5:51
7
Can cookies be purchased year-round or only during the season?
5:51–7:59