Web Wafers: Girl Scout Cookies Can Now Be Bought Online

These are not your grandma's Girl Scouts. They now offer a video game design merit badge.

But it's the start of cookie selling season, when your co-workers' and neighbors' daughters guilt you into buying a 'few' boxes which you say you do under duress to be a friend - and then you sneakily buy six more boxes of Thin Mints or Samoas to scarf down when no one is looking.

But that cutesy cookie campaign is actually the organization's primary fund raising tool and they can not afford the opportunity cost of all those consumers who may just not know a Girl Scout - or one who can process a credit card in this increasingly cashless society. So they've done what everyone else has: gone online.

They expect an uptick in sales and who knows, maybe this will become the next big digital export. JL

Abby Ohlhouser reports in the Washington Post:

“The No. 1 reason people say they dont buy our cookies is that they can't find a Girl Scout." That's why this year you can buy them online. 

It took the Girl Scouts a long time to come around to the idea of selling cookies online. The organization has explored other technological opportunities, even creating a merit badge for video-game design in 2013. But just a few years ago, the organization was prohibiting enterprising girls from posting sales pitches on YouTube (GOOG). Last year they even stopped Alana Thompson, star of the recently cancelled Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo, from selling cookies on her Facebook page.

But the Girl Scouts needs to modernize. Cookies are the organization’s primary fundraising campaign: More than 200 million boxes are sold every year to help fund summer camps, field trips, and other programs. Cookie sales are also an important means by which the 102-year-old organization stays afloat amid declining membership and a multimillion-dollar pension deficit. In just the past year, the number of girl scouts has declined by nearly 300,000. “It’s definitely a trend we see,” says Parisi, attributing the decline to “increased competition for kids’ time.”
The cookie program is supposed to teach girls about entrepreneurship (assuming their parents aren’t just making all the sales for them, of course). To that end, Digital Cookie may be a more realistic model than forcing a bunch of 10-year-olds to become door-to-door saleswomen. “We want to help them become online entrepreneurs,” says Sarah Angel-Johnson, the Girl Scouts’ chief digital cookie executive.

Still, the door-to-door model does have its benefits, even in a digital world. “I hated selling cookies. It was so terrifying,” says Shaherose Charania, co-founder and chief executive of the tech company Women 2.0 and a former scout. “But that’s what was so important about it. It built my confidence, I learned social cues and how to sell to people.”
“Learning social-media marketing and e-commerce is really great,” Charania adds, “but I think you need that face-to-face terror, too.”