Economy of Scale Matters

Just think, we have 53 girl members and over 100 parents/guardians, 20 non-parent volunteer leaders who regularly assist and 4 adults from our chartered organization church who regularly help us. I run into these 177 people all the time at the store, walking down the street and in other places. When we need 5 people to help with something, we have it immediately. We have 10-15 new girls join each year and a number who graduate from us and move on. The group will continue long after I cease my involvement, because when there is that scale of activity and personnel, there is momentum and things move forward more easily. I have learned that having a bigger organization is a lot easier than having a small group dependent on a few key adults. Finally, it is undeniably more enjoyable.

I’m generally aware of the Chevy Chase Scouts BSA Troop for Girls and understand they have a great program. When our Scouts BSA Troop goes to camp we meet many of the other all-girl Troops in our council and really enjoy sharing thoughts on what works well. This summer at our council’s Camp Olmstead, we were one of the four all-girl Troops present the week we were there. A commonality of these Troops is the monthly campout and significant leadership by adult women, including the outdoor program.

On fundraising, please do not infer criticism of other youth organization fundraising strategies when I share what works for our particular Scout BSA Troop for Girls. Children who successfully sell products and simultaneously fund a good part of their local, council and national organization expenses are doing something that works for those organizations. I just know there would be a different feel to our Troop if we dedicated a significant portion of our time and volunteer activity focused on product sales. At this point in our 4-year history, our parents would not go along with it even if I wanted to do it.

The annual budget for our 53-girl organization is well over $25,000, and every penny of that is directly spent on program in our Troop for our girls. This means we are continuously doing things like rafting, rock climbing, camping and boating, as well as enjoyable indoor things. This budget does not include summer camp and extraordinary summer travel experiences, which are done with stand-alone budgets. Product sales would just never generate sufficient revenue to fuel this girl-led-extravaganza.

There is another all girls troop that meets in Chevy Chase. It's been great for my daughter who is very outdoorsy and was not satisfied with her girl scout troop. They camp 1x per month paired with another activity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the dues answer. Here’s my GS experience for transparency and to help other PPs think about their situation, since you’ve been so helpful, OP:

Product sales eat up January-March for my GS troop and even though it funds a year of activities, the time spent prepping for cookie sale and recovering from that can eat up nearly half of the school year’s meetings. It also causes a lot of difficulty because girls who leave the troop work hard to earn money they don’t benefit from, while new girls reap the benefits of the previous year’s hard work. We end up self-funding for some activities to get around that, which creates a ton of tedious follow-up and parent communication. Imagining the possibilities of getting 3 months back and starting the year with a fully-funded budget is tempting.

I don't want to derail this thread too much, but...
I'm a GS leader in GSCM, and we currently do fall cookie sales, and what you talked about really concerns me! Supposedly next year GSUSA is forcing us to move to winter/spring cookies like the rest of the country.
Right now, I spend one meeting in September talking about cookies, and we spend a few weekend days in October/November doing cookie booths. That's it. We start earning money in October, so we know what we have for the year's budget. It also means we're doing cookies while we're also selecting badges, organizing leadership, etc., so that it's sort of part of the 'start up" activities.
I hate hate hate the idea of breaking up the middle of the year with cookies. I also have no idea how we'll fund the first half of the year. Do you just use the previous year's cookie sales for the following year?

Thanks!

Yes, we use previous years’ sales for the next year, not necessarily because we want to. And we are very light on activities until December. It’s why our troop is cookie/travel focused. I happen to live in a Council with very few council-sponsored activities. If we were in a more active council, it would be great to have the bulk of Council events during cookie season so the girls wouldn’t be entirely sales and booth focused.

I wish we could sell in October and energize the troop and move on to “real” activities, but we’ve tried to make the best of it by putting any talking/sitting badges into cookie season and make the rest of the year about getting out and about. We do a big camping trip in May after funds have been dispersed to the troop in April. And the girls usually go to a Service Unit day camp in July. We used to have a camping trip in September but it was too hard to get reservations this year and last. Even though it is very much against Girl Scout policy, our Troop Treasurer maintains careful accounting of troop bank account contribution by girl. Since we have a lot of girls who have stayed for many years but others who have cycled in and out, it helps track funding toward a big international troop trip. All parents have bought into this idea but I dread the day when someone undermines it or our treasurer steps away and someone less organized takes over.

Big thanks to the Scoutmaster who started this thread. You’ve got me thinking a lot about culture shifts in our troop, food drives, and the future (or not!) of cookie sales.

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the dues answer. Here’s my GS experience for transparency and to help other PPs think about their situation, since you’ve been so helpful, OP:

Product sales eat up January-March for my GS troop and even though it funds a year of activities, the time spent prepping for cookie sale and recovering from that can eat up nearly half of the school year’s meetings. It also causes a lot of difficulty because girls who leave the troop work hard to earn money they don’t benefit from, while new girls reap the benefits of the previous year’s hard work. We end up self-funding for some activities to get around that, which creates a ton of tedious follow-up and parent communication. Imagining the possibilities of getting 3 months back and starting the year with a fully-funded budget is tempting.

I don't want to derail this thread too much, but...
I'm a GS leader in GSCM, and we currently do fall cookie sales, and what you talked about really concerns me! Supposedly next year GSUSA is forcing us to move to winter/spring cookies like the rest of the country.
Right now, I spend one meeting in September talking about cookies, and we spend a few weekend days in October/November doing cookie booths. That's it. We start earning money in October, so we know what we have for the year's budget. It also means we're doing cookies while we're also selecting badges, organizing leadership, etc., so that it's sort of part of the 'start up" activities.
I hate hate hate the idea of breaking up the middle of the year with cookies. I also have no idea how we'll fund the first half of the year. Do you just use the previous year's cookie sales for the following year?

Thanks!

To the PP on the positive tone of this thread, thanks for this observation. I've also noted the sometimes-harsh and unnecessary tone used in discussing these programs. I'm glad that both programs exist and believe they both do a great job providing very different services for girls. Both programs have come under harsh criticism over the past decade for a variety of reasons (some justified). I just avoid unnecessary comparisons between these programs because they are so different and not really in competition with each other. We just share what has worked for our group and keep things positive. By the way, we have postponed our Open House from this Saturday to the 15th due to the severe weather (see the event postings).

Sorry I have not been able to get to this thread for the past few days, all due to business. It looks like most questions have been answered except for ones from the PP who asked about our fundraising practices.

Our Scouts BSA Troop for Girls does not conduct product sales because that is the overwhelming preference of our parents and girl members. The reasons they provide include a desire to have girls spend 100% of their time on program and not fundraising activities. Many believe product sale fundraising does not raise a sufficient amount to do the “big things” the girls want to experience. We could not conduct monthly campouts and our annual week at summer camp for 53 girls if we had to rely entirely on product sales fundraising.

I have never coordinated a youth product sales fundraising effort, but several of our parents have. These people believe youth product sales fundraising is not a “good deal” because of what they believe are insufficient profit margins that are disproportionate to the efforts required. They still want the girls to have opportunities to interact with adults in a safe environment, so they arrange for our girls to participate in an annual food drive, during which our girls are outside food stores and ask for food pantry contributions. The resulting mountain of food contributions (and, I really mean a mountain) are a testament that the girls are able to be entrepreneurs in this different manner.

We know that we are an outlier with our policy, but after four years of operation, I have come to believe that this is a great way to go. It respects everyone’s interest to concentrate their time on Scouting. And, our dues are reasonable, a great value, and confidentially reduced for our under-resourced families.

Over the past four years I had one (rather wealthy) parent suggest to me that I run a product sales campaign so she could pay less dues for her girl. When I said I would consider it if she were the chair of the effort, the look of horror on her face said it all! Nobody in our group wants to do product sales if there is another way to go.

OP I just want to applaud you for the tone of this thread. BSA/GSUSA threads usually devolve very quickly and put me off both orgs.

OP -- this is brilliant.

I have a son, not a daughter, but I grew up doing the equivalent of this kind of program in another country.

We learned to camp starting at around 10, and at around 13 or 14 could earn an outdoor certification that allowed us to do independent camping trips. By 15 we were doing unsupervised backcountry hikes in groups. The skills I learned doing this have seen me through a lifetime.

Thank you so much for this amazing work; and thank you for the empathy of making sure that it's not just accessible to kids with means.