(no subject)

[the_rck]

The Girl Scout meeting started at 1:00. There were ten girls there. We talked about cookie sales. None of us were entirely clear about what the next step is. Supposedly the girls can keep taking orders, but we have no information as to how those will be filled or what we're supposed to do with them. The girls did agree that they would like to do a cookie booth. They had a few ideas as to where we might do one. It's not clear, though, how much initiative we have to show to get things going. The Council might set up the location and just assign us a day, or we might have to do all of that ourselves. We don't know.

We spent a while talking about things the girls would like to do. Some, like a trip to Hong Kong, are probably beyond what we can realistically do. A trip to Chicago, though, might be possible, and we can certainly afford a weekend camping trip, especially if the girls are willing to sleep on the ground in tents.

After all of the business, we let the girls out on the playground to run around. One of the leaders had half a dozen sleds and a pair of snowshoes. The girls took turns with all of that. I was outside for a little while but ended up going inside to direct parents to the playground when they came to pick up their daughters.

The community center where we meet has big bookshelves along one wall. Most of the books are aimed at elementary school kids. There's no sign or anything to explain what the books are for. The shelf might be an exchange. It might be a lending library. It might be something else entirely. I'm wondering because I saw a couple of books that interested me, books that the library doesn't have. I did, while I waited, read one very short book, Ursula LeGuin's Catwings.

Comments

[sorcycat.livejournal.com]

You might ask cherydactyl for advice, as they have done the girl scout thing. I'm not sure, but continuing to sell might require you to order the cookies in advance for the troupe and with the hope of selling them. This is a total guess on my part.

[the_rck]

Hopefully, our troop leader will actually ask the Council's cookie person. It would be good to know what's going on.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Oh I love Catwings!! It has three sequels, too.

The Girl Scout council sets up a schedule of cookie booths, though you can also do your own in a different location. I've been told that the best slots in council's schedule get snapped up very quickly, so you need to leap on it as soon as it is available if you want to get any good ones. For doing your own cookie booth in your own choice of location, you need to get the permission of the place where you are holding the booth. The best places are ones with a lot of foot traffic, especially college students. The U of M doesn't let you set up cookie booths on their property, but there is city property across the street from the Diag where you can set up a booth, though then you need an (inexpensive) permit from the city. People seemed to especially like the corner of State Street and North University for setting up this type of cookie booth.

Whether you do one of Council's cookie booths or your own location, a lot of troops have a bin of their own supplies for cookie booths that includes a cash box and a sign. Also some troops will make simple items to give out to people who make donations to the troop (eg. "If you donate at least X dollars, then you can have a homemade bookmark"). Donations to the troop go entirely to the troop, while buying cookies gives the troop only 50 or 60 cents out of the $4, so getting people to make donations brings in more money to the troop than selling cookies, and having bookmarks or other trinkets to give to donors really increases the number of donations.

Some Girl Scout leaders have said that people don't carry cash anymore, so it increases sales by a lot if you can accept credit cards at your cookie booth. They said that it was easy to get set up with a company called Square that lets you accept credit cards through somebody's smart phone. But I think I also heard that Council doesn't want people to do that this year, and instead they want troops to only make cash sales for cookies, but keep track of how many sales are lost because of not being able to accept credit cards. This is all hearsay and I'm not sure that it is correct, but it might mean that putting your cookie booth near an ATM is a good idea.

I'm pretty sure that the kids can keep on selling cookies right now, though I'm not clear on the details. I know there is a final date when they need to stop, but I don't think it's here yet. But please check me on this -- I don't want to steer you wrong, and I'm not sure that this is correct.

I've never been in charge of cookie sales, so I could be entirely wrong about any and all of the details here.

Would you like me to put you in touch with a friend who has experience with organizing cookie sales? It sounds like you could use a mentor who has done this before and can answer questions.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

The other thing about cookie booths is that Council has a thing called a Cookie Cupboard. Before each cookie booth, you need to pick up cookies from there, and afterward you need to return what you didn't sell. I'm not clear about how the money works for this, or whether you need to pre-order the cookies ahead of time, before you pick them up. I think I read that there was a change this year, and that in past years you had to pay for all the cookies and couldn't return the extras, but now you can bring the un-sold extras back to the Cookie Cupboard instead.

[the_rck]

Thanks for all the information! I've forwarded a chunk of it to our troop leaders.

I would really like to talk to someone who's done cookie sales before. We're doing it by the seat of our pants, and we're bound to make mistakes. We had an awful time, for example, figuring out how much a box of cookies costs. The information wasn't anywhere obvious on the handouts we were given.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

This year cookies are $4 per box. It used to be $3.50 -- the higher price is new this year. In the past the troop got to keep 50 cents per box, but this year I think it may have gone up to 60 cents.

[the_rck]

I think the only place in the entire packet that specified a price was the little pie chart that did a break down of where the money from each box of cookies goes. I couldn't find it anywhere else. I'd think that that was important information to give the girls.