Its COOKIE time!
Girl scout cookies: Great for the general public. Not so much for the Girl Scout's themselves. During the couple months at the tail end and start of a year, girls of all ages bust their asses selling cookies by going door to door and having booth sales. And for what? Sure, we (the public) get yummy cookies from the deal, but what do the girls get?
Not a whole hell of a lot. There are bitty consolation prizes and stuff if a girl sells the most boxes in her troop, and there might be troop prizes if a particular troop does tops in the district/council. The individual prizes may as well be something along the lines of "I sold 300 boxes of cookies and all I got was this lousy shirt". Or in some cases, a bandanna. Or a cheap waterbottle.
For every box sold, the troop itself gets back a certain percentage of profit..approximately 10%(give or take...i think there are some who get 12%) to do with as they please. Usually this means a trip somewhere.
Anyone good at math? In my area, cookies are 3.50 a box. Based on the figures above, a troop gets .35-.40 cents (Seriously doubt the 40 part...) per box sold. Common trips are either
a)Raleigh (trips to your state capital are always fun)
b) Savannah GA, where Juliet Lowe's birthplace is located,
or if your troop is overly ambitious (or knows lots of rich people) then,
c) a beach trip
.37 cents a box, taking about 3 boxes to equal a little over a dollar. Room/board have to be taken into account, along with food, and any admission/ticket prices for activities planned.
For a quick look, if a troop planned a weekend in Raleigh for fun state-capital educationish things, it would cost around $95 for a room that you can cram two or three girls. Theres 285 boxes right there. That in itself isnt too bad...except the average troop has about 8-12 girls. Theres another two or three rooms.
And thats just hotel cost. Looks like mom and dad get to shell out more money.
I think the 'goal' that has the most chance for success was the Brownie Troop outside Harris Teeter a couple weeks ago. The younger ones are easy to please. They're perfectly happy having an overnight in one of the nicer area hotels complete with pool, room service, and any other fun stuff the hotel has to offer.
Sure, the rest of the money goes to other 'worthwhile' parts of girl scouting, such as special programs and projects and camp maintenance, but I never saw a lot of it back when I was a scout. In order to attend many of these programs, there was still an entry fee for us and I think we still had to pay extra as a 'contribution to the presenter" or some bullshit like that(and it wasnt that good a program either).
There was always some maintenance thing or another at the camps. One year, the highropes course was down. The next year a popular set of trails were closed due to fallen branches from a storm at the beginning of winter (we were there at the end of April).
I spent a little more than two summers working at a summer outdoors camp, and have done a good bit of camp maintenance. If we can trailblaze/make a completely new trail up the side of a mountain in a couple of days, it shouldnt take 5 or 6 months to get around to clearing out some fallen tree's and branches. We couldve had it done in less than an hour.
They say the rest of the money is benefiting Girl Scouting and the girls in general. Prove it. Obviously, my luck with it sucked, and Ive never heard a single troop leader speak positively on the monetary distribution aspect of this decades-old fundraiser.
What about the rest of you? Girl Scouts, former scouts, scout moms and dads? Have you or your troops seen these benefits?
The girls have been getting screwed over on this for years. It makes me sad. :(
5/30
Stumble It!
Not a whole hell of a lot. There are bitty consolation prizes and stuff if a girl sells the most boxes in her troop, and there might be troop prizes if a particular troop does tops in the district/council. The individual prizes may as well be something along the lines of "I sold 300 boxes of cookies and all I got was this lousy shirt". Or in some cases, a bandanna. Or a cheap waterbottle.
For every box sold, the troop itself gets back a certain percentage of profit..approximately 10%(give or take...i think there are some who get 12%) to do with as they please. Usually this means a trip somewhere.
Anyone good at math? In my area, cookies are 3.50 a box. Based on the figures above, a troop gets .35-.40 cents (Seriously doubt the 40 part...) per box sold. Common trips are either
a)Raleigh (trips to your state capital are always fun)
b) Savannah GA, where Juliet Lowe's birthplace is located,
or if your troop is overly ambitious (or knows lots of rich people) then,
c) a beach trip
.37 cents a box, taking about 3 boxes to equal a little over a dollar. Room/board have to be taken into account, along with food, and any admission/ticket prices for activities planned.
For a quick look, if a troop planned a weekend in Raleigh for fun state-capital educationish things, it would cost around $95 for a room that you can cram two or three girls. Theres 285 boxes right there. That in itself isnt too bad...except the average troop has about 8-12 girls. Theres another two or three rooms.
And thats just hotel cost. Looks like mom and dad get to shell out more money.
I think the 'goal' that has the most chance for success was the Brownie Troop outside Harris Teeter a couple weeks ago. The younger ones are easy to please. They're perfectly happy having an overnight in one of the nicer area hotels complete with pool, room service, and any other fun stuff the hotel has to offer.
Sure, the rest of the money goes to other 'worthwhile' parts of girl scouting, such as special programs and projects and camp maintenance, but I never saw a lot of it back when I was a scout. In order to attend many of these programs, there was still an entry fee for us and I think we still had to pay extra as a 'contribution to the presenter" or some bullshit like that(and it wasnt that good a program either).
There was always some maintenance thing or another at the camps. One year, the highropes course was down. The next year a popular set of trails were closed due to fallen branches from a storm at the beginning of winter (we were there at the end of April).
I spent a little more than two summers working at a summer outdoors camp, and have done a good bit of camp maintenance. If we can trailblaze/make a completely new trail up the side of a mountain in a couple of days, it shouldnt take 5 or 6 months to get around to clearing out some fallen tree's and branches. We couldve had it done in less than an hour.
They say the rest of the money is benefiting Girl Scouting and the girls in general. Prove it. Obviously, my luck with it sucked, and Ive never heard a single troop leader speak positively on the monetary distribution aspect of this decades-old fundraiser.
What about the rest of you? Girl Scouts, former scouts, scout moms and dads? Have you or your troops seen these benefits?
The girls have been getting screwed over on this for years. It makes me sad. :(
5/30
Stumble It!
posted by Sandra at 4:49 PM
2 Comments:
Not to mention the ego destruction girls face when people rudely turn them down for sales, particularly in front of grocery stores and banks. I have seen countless girls reduced to tears over the years. In the meantime, as the price of cookes has gone up (from 50cents a box in the early 70s to 4.50 here now) the number of cookies in the box has been cut in half!
You should add you recruit links into your posts ;) - Kageushi - Fallen Sword Game Admin
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