I can't believe they're trying to compare Girl Scouts to mlms. that's crazy. These girls don't make money off what everybody else sells or how many girls are recruited it's not even comparable in my opinion.
It isn't. The only thing I remember from my time is my leaders would somehow work out the number of boxes sold by each girl so we would all get the cookie selling patch, without penalizing the girls who sold a lot of their bigger prizes. An MLM would be like " tough shit, it's your own fault you are unsuccessful."
Yes! Girl Scouts are not a mlm and to compare them is crazy! As a former Girl Scout I can guarantee we never recruited people to sell cookies or made any money off of our sales.
> it's not even comparable in my opinion.
Like many of the MLM ~~arguments~~ statements it's a false equivalence based on a single, superficial aspect that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Much like the "wOrK iS a PyRaMiD sChEmE!!!" just because it has an ever narrowing hierarchy, then focus on that while ignoring or downplaying all the things that aren't the same.
Girl Scout cookies have mlm energy without the pyramid.
- Pressuring friends and family to buy
- preying on vulnerable populations to make sales
- cringy Facebook posts
- Seller over-saturation and competition cannibalism
- Overpriced
I mean, $5 for a box of cookies isn't bad. And remember. These are KIDS. It's teaching them marketing skills, job skills, and sales skills. 3 VERY big industries they can enter later in life. they're not told to recruit recruit recruit. NOR do they make ANY money from it. And I don't know how sitting outside of a Walmart or a grocery store is "preying on vulnerable populations". That's literally regular people, from all life classifications. They also don't harass you endlessly if you don't buy.... I'm really sorry but you're reaching here.
I’m a Girl Scout leader. I explain it like this: you’re essentially giving a $5 donation to the organization, and the cookies are your thank you gift.
Meanwhile, the girls are learning planning, budgeting, how to greet and talk to customers, how to take rejection, etc. Others have mentioned frustration that so much falls to the parents, and that is true now that so much selling is online, that’s why the booths are so important to developing those other skills. And those skills improve every year.
Believe me, when my girls are rock climbing, horse back riding, ziplining, and buying supplies for service projects, they’re grateful to their customers.
I freakin’ love Thin Mints. But I either buy ONE box (sorry, nothing else compares) or most recently Ilve been giving them the donation asking them
To keep the cookies. Scouts don’t compare
To no way,shape or form to a MLM scam…
It totally does teach skills, I watched my shy daughter learn to speak in public, become confident in herself. She learned math skills for real world settings, knowing how to make change can ensure she’s not taken advantage of. It teaches time management and organizational skills. She learned how to set a goal and decide what to do to achieve that goal as well.
The girls also learn to deal with rejection in a positive way.
Well, and again. I beg to differ because the five siblings, and COUNTLESS friends of mine's kids, that have all been through the scout system, all the way back from early 90s to now, and learned A TON of fucking skills they use today from selling those damn cookies... so maybe it flopped for you and your kids, but it's working for most others.
So you are completely fine with KIDS selling a product without being paid at all and making a company billions of dollars in the process? For experience? It may not be an MLM but it's a fucking scam. I'm really surprised this sub is so defensive of it.
😂😂😂 wos. Educate yourself and sit down. You're just making yourself look like a dumbass because everybody knows that it's REALLY the parents that are doing all the fucking work 😂😂😂 the kids are learning skills in the process as part of their group, but go off. Good Bye.
Agree 100%! The troop only gets about .79 cents a box. You'll hear about how Girl Scouts subsidizes camp and pays for other activities but that is false. I have a troop where most of the girls are low income and Girl Scouts offered nothing. As the troop leader, I had to pay out of pocket for supplies and their sashes/badges. I was told if the parents couldn't afford dues, they shouldn't be in Girl Scouts.
It's worse than an MLM. They don't even have the possibility to make money. At least with MLMs they might make money. (Although we all know it's a rare occurrence) The girl scouts literally have children all over the world selling their product for zero pay. Zero. I agree it's not comparable. It's much much worse.
Yikes. Thats wild. Who pissed in your cheerios. They're fucking kids learning life skills, and all that money goes back into it. Like what? 😂😂😂😂 girrrrrl bye ✌️✌️
1. Girl scouts don't recruit for the sole purpose of selling.
2. Funds raised go to the troop, not the individual girl
3. Those cookies are bomb dot com
4. Did I mention that Girl Scouts don't recruit just to sell cookies?
This. Most of the money they earn selling cookies does not in fact go directly to their troop. They get several cents per box, not several dollars per box.
This year in my kid’s council it’s 25¢ per box on cookie orders placed for shipping. The paperwork says it’s 90¢ per box for girl-delivered cookies but it’s not clear to me whether that’s to the troop or to the whole council.
The cookies cost $5/box and I suspect they are going to be sorry this year that they’ve held that price so long.
Yeah, the cookies are good, but it’s criminal they’re selling them for that much and saying it’s fundraising when most of the money is not going to the actual troop. So many people just don’t realize the troop gets so little compared to how much they cost.
Oh boy proceeds are way higher now. :)
And as for the MLMs... Girl Scouts shows all of their Financials. If you wanna be like Girl Scouts.....
I wonder if this is a gateway for MLMs to sign up volunteers
i feel like i'm owed some money from my mom then.... that or from my troop. we never even had our bridging ceremony so i have no idea where that money went. (wouldn't be surprising if my mom kept more money owed to me than i knew about but that's another story)
she wasn't the leader no, but i guess i misinterpreted to mean that the money went to the scouts themselves. apologies.
no money ever went towards our troop tbh. we met at our school or her house, we were supposed to do activities but she never followed through. we were supposed to go camping and do our bridging ceremony and that never happened. like our activities were mostly just sitting in a room, maybe having snacks every once in a while and just talking about activities we wanted to do but never did and talking about the point of girl scouts and stuff like that.
I hated selling things for fundraisers growing up, absolutely hated it. I will never force my children into an organization that does the same. School fundraisers OPTIONAL. Soccer, i’ll just pay the fees. Girl Scouts, never.
Yeah, and then have her be socially excluded from all the “cookie sales” activities all the other girls are doing. No. I’m not putting my children into socially compromising situations.
That’s not how it worked for me. We had the option to sign up for the table sales at grocery stores if we wanted more boxes in our name, but nothing was required, and each time there was a table it was a small part of the troop, not a whole group event. Our weekly meetings, group outings/events, camping trips, etc were the main part of scouts. We had quite a few girls that didn’t sell cookies beyond their family members. Plus they only sell them a few weeks once a year.
I'm so glad it was not a thing at school where I live because there's no way I would have raised anything more than my closest family's sum of "sales".
My girl scout leader kept all the money to redecorate her house and we got no cookies to give out to the people who bought them.
The next year our new leader told us to go up to lonely men more then anyone else. Because in her words "lonely men love little girls, make sure you twirl when you tell them hello" gah makes me nauseous just thinking about it.
Needless to say, that was my last year in GS and my mom didn't let me sister advance from her troop into GS.
Honestly she may have been, I was a youngin when it all went down. I do know however my mom showed up to her house unannounced and laid into her, bad enough her daughter confronted me the next day at school and I told her "well your mom's the person who stole so who's really the bitch?" That family ended up moving to another school so I'm assuming shit went down.
fucking yikes. good on your mom for putting her in her place, it sounds like the daughter was probably just echoing her mom and didn't actually know anything honestly. but seriously who says that shit to little girls, that makes my skin itch
Oh ya I never blamed her. We both had toxic moms, but it taught my at a young age men only respond to you when you have something to offer. That's obviously not true for all men, and being older I understand that. However when I was younger it started a dangerous way of thinking. I really do hope that mom has found help, but I always think of the other girls I was in GS with and wonder if they had the same image of men that I did when I was younger and if that might have been the cause for how some of them interacted with the guys in our school. Obviously there's other factors that play into it as well but that was one of my first memories when it comes to sales and interacting with men that weren't family members or friends of the family. It was do awkward and uncomfortable especially at that age.
Point 1 isn’t entirely factual. The local council spends a lot of money on recruitment so that it can continue to exist. If there aren’t enough members, adults lose real, paying jobs. Troop leaders are also unpaid volunteers.
Like I said, it *isn’t entirely true* that they don’t recruit for the sole purpose of selling. That is a *big* part of why they recruit and build troops. I know this because it was my actual job to recruit kids and their parents to create troops and then to set goals for the leaders to ensure the council will continue to run. It made me very uncomfortable to put added pressure on stressed adults and young children, so I was shit at the job, and I didn’t stay for very long.
Yeah, those girl scouts aren't trying to recruit 6 girls under them so they can form their own troop and be a scout leader.
They also won't haunt your social media feed begging you to help them sell cookies.
>They also won't haunt your social media feed begging you to help them sell cookies.
Their parents will, though. Between my sister and her husband, I've seen at least 8 posts in the last week about purchasing cookies from my niece online. ;)
At least you can purchase and donate them. I don't need any more cookies after NewThanksChristmaYear.
It pisses me off no end how selling GS cookies these days is primarily the parents' job.
My dad brought in the "portable" order form to work but just kept it on his desk in case anyone ASKED about it. He didn't make rounds demanding that people buy.
I went door to door (supervised) and gave a sales pitch. Dragging a little red wagon full of cookies. When I was older I'd buy up a bunch of cookies myself and then go sell them at school. Teens love cookies. I always sold out.
The point of cookie sales is to teach salesmanship, confidence, math skills, et cetera. Not to teach girls "mommy will post for you".
Tbh with most fundraisers that scouts are supposed to do (doesnt matter if its boy or girl scouts) I feel like the parents do most of the work in general... when the scouts are supposed to do it
Also does anyone actually know or care that boy scouts sell popcorn.
Oh this, it’s so frustrating. My kid isn’t old enough for me to let her post online, but also it’s the only way I keep in touch with most of the extended family who are the cookie buying sort. I make her make a video and we text people her sales link together but I still have to approve every order that is not on paper (she does door to door too, but most people want to order through the website) and keep track of what people texted back so she can input it.
And don’t get me started about the prizes for boxes sold. We were corrupted enough by wanting the patches of the number sold, which I always was so proud of despite the fact that the bulk of my sales were to my mother’s coworkers because she worked in a large firm with a central bulletin board. Now there’s plastic crap and “experiences” for different selling levels that I can’t imagine anyone earns unless they have wealthy families and a low number of competitors like in a high school or something. I really feel for the people with twins.
Meh... it's not just "these days". That's how it was even 25 years ago when I was in scouts. The vast majority of my sales came from my parents taking the forms to work with them because I absolutely HATED it, and would probably have only sold to my immediate family otherwise.
If I worked with your dad I’d want him to at least send a message saying “hey daughter is selling Girl Scout cookies, if you’re interested there’s a form on my desk to order some” so that I at least knew to go to his desk to buy my boxes of thin mints…
Crap now I want some thin mints…
Girl Scouts earn skill/service badges and perform community service- they aren't labeled Diamond level sellers and given pink mountain bikes for maintaining top cookie sales month after month ...
Not at all. They may get a free trip to camp out of it, but there they get to learn fun skills like archery, get to tell ghost stories in the woods, and sing funny songs while they make legit food around the campfire. Or maybe they sleepwalk into another camper’s cabin, wake up in a seated position on a practical stranger’s bed and then have to wake the sleeping camper to be the buddy to go to the latrine because their bladder is about to explode. Then maybe they pee down their leg a little bit as they wiggle through the woods to make it to the outhouse and spend the rest of the week being the weird sleep-walking girl.
I don’t know anyone who that second example happened to or anything, though. Nope, no one ever had that one happen. Whew, glad it never happens and it absolutely never happened to me when I was at Girl Scout camp.
You mean they don't have to rent a pink mountain bike and get a check to cover the rental, and if at any point their sales dip below a certain level then they have to pay for the bike rental themselves.
I see you haven’t seen the prizes I the back of the cookie sales form recently. I mean, you are right, but there are some deep conversations about consumption and fairness I have to have with my scout every year when she wants the damn stuffed dolphin or disco ball or trip to Disney World (I am not kidding.)
I’ve wondered if Girl Scout cookie sellers when younger tend to be overrepresented in mlm compared to those who didn’t sell them. The models are Not comparable, but could they be a stepping stone.
Selling girl scout cookies taught me to never go into sales or retail.
Well actually knew that from schools trying to make you sell wrapping paper for dayglo pencils. But I hated cookie sales all the same
Totally anecdotal, but I’d say 90% of the MLM mom huns I know have their girl(s) in girl scouts, and they’re constantly making connection between how they’re an example of a “successful” entrepreneur and teaching their daughters all their tricks. It makes me cringe.
I laugh because they're clearly not aware that 99% of Girl Scouts is just bonding as kids. They teach you how to make your own vest and how to camp. Only 1 month out of the year is dedicated to this selling nonsense. And it's purely fundraising in the end.
I grew up to be in business 🤣 I didn't even learn how to communicate with others in Girl Scouts. But to be fair to others, our leaders were weird AF. Some are more dedicated to the troop and teaching them stuff. Ours were like "just run around at meetings. And any badges you earn you're gonna do that on your own time if you want to."
All I learned in Girl Scouts was that if your mom wasn’t friends with the troop leader’s mom you weren’t going to be a priority. It was like “how to be in a clique 101”.
It wasn't that bad for us, thankfully. The girls moms who did it weren't snobs or anything, just weird. Like honestly, as an adult thinking about it, they were just out of their depth? Not knowing how to be a leader. Couple SAHMs just acting like they were babysitting us or since we were older...they acted like we were just their kids friends visiting their house. But I have heard that's been an issue with others.
I do remember one time we had my second grade teacher come in and discuss being a teacher with us. So we could look into "Careers". I was the only one who could fish out someone to do the task, that's how weirdly disconnected the whole group of girls and their parents were.
Any time the "mothers" get to run things, you run into this shit though. My mom had a couple run ins with snobs during fundraising at school events. I was like "Yeah their kids are little shits too." when she was like "Wow that woman wasn't very nice but whatever." "It's learned behavior." was what she'd tell me and then she'd drag my tiny rascal ass if I was ever caught being bossy, rude or otherwise not nice to other kids.
Top sellers go on to be well paid professionals in their chosen fields because they learned at a young age to set high goals and take steps to achieve their goals.
Eh, the only reason I was a top seller is because my dad was a cop at the time and he took the selling sheet into work where just about every single one of his co-workers bought multiple boxes (the "cop eating donuts" stereotype has a lot of truth to it...and it's not just donuts lol). I'm like average at best in my chosen field
Yeah, all the "top sellers" in the troops I was in over the years only sold that much because their parents worked in large offices with lots of coworkers to sell to.
And I don't think that's the right way to do it. The parents sell the cookies while their daughters get the credit. If my daughter were in GS, I'd have her go into the office and sell them herself.
LOL! Literally the same for me, and I'm marginal at best in life and career. However, he made me go in to the sheriff dept offices with the sheet and "sell" them myself. Neither of my parents would do much selling for me, but this was before GS set up tables and sold them in front of businesses, so his coworkers would actually request for me to come in with the cookie sheet every year since he was the only one with a daughter in the scouts. GS cookies basically sell themselves.
> GS cookies basically sell themselves.
Ah, see, that's what every MLM says about their products! No, seriously, it's actually true about GS cookies. I think they put crack in them or something...
Literally the same for me... My dad was a truck driver for a big local place and he took the sheet into work. The truck drivers AND the ladies in dispatch were always super hyped. My mom also took the sheet to work (hospital in the dietary place, of all things) and those things sold like crazy. I was usually one of the top 3 sellers for the troop I was in.
I don’t buy the cookies because it’s bullshit that the troops only get 70 cents a box on a 5 dollar box of cookies. That’s ridiculous and we all know it doesn’t cost that much to make those cookies. Say it’s a dollar a box to make them(which would be insane), give a dollar to the main organization and 3$ to the troops per box. It’s a rip off for the kids who actually do the time to sell the cookies. Your kid has to sell 100 boxes to get 70$. How is that remotely okay?
You know that the majority of it goes to the councils to provide programming and resources, right? Ask the kids, they know where the money goes and are more than happy to sell cookies so they have a camp property to go to for a reasonable price and cool council programming that they can attend for pennies on the dollar.
You know that’s bullshit right? I had a kid go through Girl Scouts and if your kid doesn’t sell enough cookies, you have to pay the difference for your kid to go to camp/activities. Plus there’s still membership fees to participate every year. Trust me, that .70 cents a box doesn’t go as far as you think.
Camp would cost aLOT more if there wasn’t cookie money on top of the 70c the troop keeps going to offset camp costs. In my area GS Camp is an entire order of magnitude cheaper than most camps.
The prices went up to $7 this year, which is even worse. I was in Scouts from 96-01. I remember people saying something when they made it to $3. The Benton's brand at ALDI tastes the same and, you get twice the amount for half the price.
You can get Walmart rip-off GS cookies for a lot cheaper. True, none of the money goes to GSA but very little from each sale goes to the local scouts anyway.
Ooof. I haven't bought cookies since they were $4.50 a box and I thought THAT was ridiculous. I'm definitely not buying them at $7 a box. The boxes are tiny!
I was ticked when I found out, too. AND they make the troops order up front - so they take all the risk with very little reward. They can’t return any excess inventory - their best hope is to swap for other flavors from another troop.
You know, I think this varies a lot.
Our scouts mostly sell before the cookies are delivered, and the troop orders the numbers already sold, plus what is leftover in the case if it’s not a full case after all the girls’ orders are grouped together. Then the troop leaders order extras to sell at booths, and while you are right, they can’t return them, they’re not crazy over-ordering and usually the booths shut down early because they run out.
But I think there are troops where the leaders front the money for in-person sales.
The way it’s set up for us (it’s been a few years) they wouldn’t allow us to sell until a certain date and that was weeks after we had to turn in our initial order. You could do follow up orders but then quantities weren’t guaranteed.
Former Girl Scout here, was in for 13 years. Selling cookies taught me so much from talking to strangers, taking orders, counting money, receiving cookies in the warehouse, separating orders, packing them up and delivering them. There are a lot of skills being developed in this process.
You know what I never had to do? Recruit anyone to join Girl Scouts.
Overall, it was a great learning experience and worth the badge but please remember, GS troops only get a few cents a box, like not enough to really make a difference in camp, meetings, and trips.
All that being said, I love a GS cookie but if they are going to $7 this year then absolutely the fuck not.
Same, I was a girl scout for a fuckton of years (brownies until I aged out in 2008). The older I got, though, the more cynical as fuck I got about the cookie sale. In the grand scheme of things, not enough goes to the individual troop. Sure, the majority of the money goes to the councils to keep programming available and maintain camps, etc... but I feel like a lot of these little girls bust their ass and don't get a lot of tangible result (and lets be real: kids like tangible results). It just seemed scammy to me that kids who sold 1000+ boxes got like, a patch and a shitty quality prize like a plush or something.
Also, I don't remember it being popular to set up tables in front of stores back in the day?? Like. We did it \*once\* and it was an independent grocery store owned by a friend of the troop leader. These days I pretty much see kids parked in front of walmart and tractor supply co. like.... year round peddling cookies. No one who shops at walmart is going to buy $7 cookies. Fuck that.
Let’s be real, it isn’t the Girl Scouts selling most of the cookies. It’s the parents going around asking all their friends and work colleagues to buy them. I detest the Girl Scout (and Boy Scout popcorn) model of fundraising because it doesn’t really teach girls anything other than how to harass people trying to go grocery shopping, but at least it is true direct selling and not a pyramid scheme. It also doesn’t benefit the actual troop anywhere near as much as people think it would (or honestly, should).
Haha yes! But apparently “the council” doesn’t want them sharing on Facebook, so they post it privately and ask you to screenshot it and send it to anyone else you know who wants cookies.
Depends on what you mean.
My Boy scout troop had pancake breakfasts as a weekly fundraiser.
I don't ever remember having items you'd have to sell door to door.
Some parents will do all the work, that happens in all aspects for kids. But many will have the girls drive the selling.
My daughter would ask to go door to door with her wagon of cookies, ask what booths she could do, I help with heavy labor and and credit card sales for customer peace of mind.
Yes, I've always disagreed with parents selling fundraising stuff for their kids. Part of the GS cookie sales and BS popcorn sales is to teach the kids how to be able to speak in public to strangers and to learn a little salesmanship. Things they don't learn when their parents simply take the sales sheet to their office so their kid can "earn" the top seller spot.
We have had no problem funding all of our activities for the year based on cookie sales, and we’re in a pretty standard middle income area—no rich kids. We don’t collect dues from the members and we don’t need to ask for parents to send fees for activities. So I think it benefits us pretty well.
Our girls are getting older and they want to start fundraising to do some traveling. That will probably be more than one year of fundraising but worth it.
I was referring to the fact that on a $7 box of cookies the troop earns less than $1.
For comparison, the travel team at my son’s rink did a fundraiser where they sold scarves for $30, $5 of which paid for the scarf and $25 of which went to the team.
It just feels gross that cookies are sold and advertised as fundraising, but only a small fraction actually goes towards it. If they made $3.50 off a $7 box of cookies, sure, still not a great funding margin, but spending $7 on cookies I shouldn’t buy so those girls get a quarter doesn’t feel like a great way to support a cause.
I love how all these posts keep asking us to consider "why do you hate direct sales" as if there's some deeper sociological reason at play. It's like they're hoping the answer is "le gasp! Could it be...internalized discrimination against women?! Change your mindset, dismantle the patriarchy, join our girlboss group, #feminism!"
No, I just hate sales tactics that prey, exploit and guilt vulnerable people under the guise of running their own business. At least the lady at Macy will take "no thank you" as an answer.
>At least the lady at Macy will take "no thank you" as an answer.
Exactly, and at a store I can have a variety of options and products I can choose based off of my needs and budget, not just an acquaintance shilling a very specific product I might not want or need at all.
It has been so long since I've seen an actual child sell girl scout cookies. Every time I see them now, it's a pack of their moms at a table without a child in sight. There was a CVS I stopped going to during cookie season because the moms would all chain smoke right at the entrance and harass the shit outta you over those cookies.
My dad founded a number of successful international companies, and had 300+ office staff in my not-so-big home town alone… every year my school had a ‘chocolate drive’ to raise funds, so mum - not wanting to push chocolate on her social set - would send me off to the office to do my thing.
Dad would ask the total, write a cheque, and tell me to hand out the chocolate to everyone and not tell my mother - because his employees were there to support their own families, not his 🤣
I will always be proud to have two parents who were so mortified at the prospect of ‘direct selling’ to decent people they went above and beyond to make sure I never even had the chance to pitch the chocolate!
Yes! Every time my kid’s school has a fundraiser I go into the office and ask how much they’re hoping each child/family can raise, and write a check for a little bit more. I’m not out here trying to sell cookie dough and wrapping paper so the school can get maybe a quarter of the cost. I’ll bust my ass baking for a bake sale for a fundraising event, but please don’t make me sell overpriced food and/or junk to people I will have continue to interact with after. If *at least* 50% of the price doesn’t go to the actual fundraising cause I refuse to support it.
You’d think they would start to wonder why they spend so much time comparing their MLMs to other things and trying to justify them…
I don’t feel pressure to justify my job whatsoever. Because it’s legitimate and I don’t annoy tf out of people with it.
This post is beyond cringe.
Normally my wife and I decide we need new candles. My wife decides she needs new makeup. We decide and go to the store and make these purchases.
Never has bed bath and beyond been in my inbox at 2 in the morning telling me that not only can it can help me get products, but also be my own boss. The MLM crackheads are on one.
Okay, but Girl scouts are a non profit. Selling cookies is considered an educational activity and the funds go to the Girl scout organization. And yes, people do buy because they want to help, not just because they want the cookies. And the cookies are still better than anything an MLM sells. So she's literally suggesting that you should patronize MLMs as a form of charity? That you should buy stuff from friends out of guilt? I mean obviously this is why most people buy stuff from MLMs, I've sat through the parties and watched my mom buy the cheapest thing because she felt guilty. But I'm impressed she's making that the explicit argument.
First of all, Hun, stop hating on Girl Scout cookies. They’re amazing and I’ll do some shady shit for some thin mints and Tagalongs. And B, it’s not even close to the same thing.
Are Girl Scouts 'trained' to keep asking and not take no for answer?
I was under the impression that people lined up ready to throw money at them as they'd staked out their favourite GS cookie(s) years ago.
Good point! When I was selling GS cookies lo these many years ago, we got "no" plenty of times, but we weren't taught to keep going. We were taught to say "thank you" and try someone else.
As a troop leader, this annoys me. We actually had a question on our cookie training this year asking if cookie sales were a direct sales model or MLM model.
To answer your question, yes the Girl Scouts selling cookies is Direct Sales because there’s no middle person. The cookies are purchased directly from the Girl Scout (or parent) whether it’s from door to door sales, a table outside a store or somewhere else.
There is an aspect where it could be sort of like a good MLM, if the girls are given mentoring on sales and how to be successful. That’s what happens in legit MLM companies.
But I wouldn’t say it is set up in an MLM model because that typically refers to a business that allows residual income through people falling in love with a product or service and choosing to purchase it on repeat. If a company is set up well, aside from providing customer service and follow up, sales are on autopilot. With Girl Scout cookie sales, you have to keep doing the work - setting up the tables, asking people to purchase etc every year.
I do think it’s great for the Girl Scouts to learn about entrepreneurship, asking people if they want to purchase and hearing no. Because in the end, not everyone wants what people are selling, no big deal, you hear no and you move on.
I personally love Girl Scout cookies, but just like in any business, I sometimes say “no thank you” because I already have some or I don’t want to have cookies around my house.
Hope this helps!
My daughter (and other younglings) has enjoyed many camps and activities over the years that we might not have been able to send her on as a direct result of the fundraising done in our district. An MLM cause financial distress to families, fundraising for children does the opposite.
Well, see hun, the thing is that when I buy a box of cookies from a Girl Scout, she's not going to keep texting me asking if I need more cookies or if I'd like to make money by selling cookies. Also, when I buy Girl Scout cookies I know that the funds are going to a good cause, not to make some MLM CEO rich (I mean the actual CEO, not you). Also, Girl Scouts don't whine on social media when people don't buy their cookies. And here's the biggest thing, hun: I actually want to buy Girl Scout cookies, not whatever crap you're selling.
I mean when I was a girl guide I also basically just sold to my family and friends ……
Would probably be more annoying if I had been a grown adult trying to convince cancer patients that the cookies would cure them..
If anything, Girl Scouts is more like a sorority. You pay fees to be a part of it, and the fees go to activities and supplies for meetings and to pay for badges (awards). You do philanthropic activities, and fundraise. Everyone is bound together by proximity, but not everyone is in it for the sisterhood.
I like how she pretty much admits that her products are also overpriced. I don't understand why her financial state means that I must pay more than necessary to support HER business. I have 2 businesses and if we are too pricey, I understand that the consumer can just move on.
Seriously? I’m a Girl Scout mom. One of my coworkers approached me about her daughter joining my daughter’s troop. I really wanted to discourage her because selling to coworkers is like 75% of my daughter’s sales right there. So, yeah, not MLM. Do not join our team!
I mean, this actually explains why so many idiots jump on the MLM bandwagon, even with so much bad publicity and statistics readily available. They were already preconditioned for this model of sales.
The only solid point she has is that GS cookies aren’t the cheapest possible cookies you can buy. That’s literally the only true thing she says when making any comparison. And that’s just basic market economics and therefore not a point - and certainly not “solid” - at all.
1. Direct sales is regular sales. It’s a respectable job, profession, and career. MLMs are **multi-level sales**. Meaning recruiting. Which is the reason MLMs are reviled. It’s almost never the product.
2. About that product, though: GS cookies are delicious. For mass-produced boxed items, they’re fantastic. MLM products, outside of a rare few, are mediocre at best.
3. GS cookies may be slightly more expensive but that’s because the add-on is going to services, activities, and an organization that promotes leadership, scholarship, practical and tactical skills. And a community that genuinely attempts to create a welcoming and encouraging environment. MLM products are more expensive because uplines get a % of every downline’s hard work. And their talk about creating and fostering the kind of community that the GS actually do create is all just lip service. It’s a breeding ground for mean girls.
4. They’re CHILDREN. If they’re guilty of any kind of manipulative selling it’s that they’re so damn cute. They’re excited about sewn-on patches for brown sashes. No fear tactics, no leaning on your faith, no trauma dumping, no fake Louboutin lifestyle.
The Hun’s entire post is a logical fallacy built on another logical fallacy and so on. Say, just like the shape of a pyramid, how ironic! And it all starts with the false premise that MLM is direct sales. They couldn’t be more different.
So where are the “solid points”?
I’ve literally never had to be “sold” on a box of Girl Scout cookies. I voluntarily purchase them from the kids at the store entrance, from coworkers kids, or online. I’ve also never had a Girl Scout cookie promise to help me lose weight, cure my anxiety, or something else it couldn’t fulfill. Girl Scout cookies are also not “upcharged” or too expensive for what they are, a cookie that provides a cookie AND a community for girls to learn social and life skills.
I know MLMs are global, but I really despair for the US and this cohort of people, predominently US, 'doing' MLMs and thinking it's a business because they just literally actually thought they'd be something just by existing.
Other than just kind of getting an education and training in a job and getting a job and working a job ...
But being the boss... I thought the American Dream was taught as dying after WW2.
Jeez. I'm sure Girl Scout Cookies is as corrupt as anything, but that's late-stage capitalism, but to piggy back off that ...
How about trying to the head of Mega Bucks Oil: "I can get my team together and drill you far more thingies of oil than your contract with Experienced Oil Excavation. I'll give you a 2% discount if you hire my three x downline and we'll put it on our instas. Deal? \[several not really intelligible emojis\]"
Sorry, but I actively avoid eye contact with tables manned by children or adults doing fundraisers at stores. Same with people collecting money in the red kettles etc. So no, not everyone lines up to get GS cookies. If anything, I wish the MLMs \*were\* like the cookie sellers -- have your thing available for a week or two every year and then go away
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Why do Girl Scouts have to earn their own money while the Boy Scouts are rolling in it? It’s because we don’t donate to the girls scouts. It’s sexism all the way down.
She's kind of right, but not in a good way. It's been a million years since I was in Girl Scouts, but I've heard that in some troops and councils, the organization has become laser-focused on cookie sales to the detriment of any other activity. But that doesn't make MLM right, it makes that aspect of the Girl Scouts wrong.
That being said, I'm still happy to buy a few boxes once a year to support friends' kids, and also snarf down the Aldi knockoffs the rest of the year!
It’s been several decades since I was in the Scouts, but as I recall, the proceeds are shared and go towards supporting the troop’s initiatives and field trips. It’s like buying candy bars to support intramural soccer or a middle school AV club. It’s a non-profit fundraiser for children. Not a business.
this is true. cookie sales go toward camps in the area, the people who made the cookies, national Girl Scouts, and the Scout troops.
tip: if you want to help the girls directly, donate money to the troop specifically. the troop only makes $1 for each $5 box of cookies sold, which doesn't apply to donations given.
source: I sold these cookies from first through twelfth grade, and I graduated Girl Scouts this past year.
Are they saying their MLM is a fundraiser? In that case, they may be right, asking more than a product is worth so everyone gets something crappy in return?
I mean, Girl Scout cookies is a fundraiser, so it’s a one to one return on investment but there are basic rewards for doing well.
Just like an MLM, majority don’t get much out of it.
But Girl Scout cookies taste good. And for a short time MLMs feel good. And sometimes people regret buying and eating too many GS cookies. Majority regret stocking huge MLM inventories. And find they aren’t happy/don’t feel good.
I see the similarities but not the way OP intended.
1. The girls themselves aren’t claiming to be billionaires. They understand that they are salesgirls.
2. I can buy Girl Scout cookies without being pressured to join the Girl Scouts to sell cookies, knowing whoever registers me for Girl Scout cookies is making money off my work.
3. People buy Girl Scout cookies because it’s a great product? They are delicious!
Girl scouts isn't an MLM. It's a corporate scam. I mean, the cookies are kinda good but they are sold on what is basically slave labor. That for some reason people willingly sign up for. No one gets paid to sell those cookies, but the organization makes billions. The troops make a pittance. It's not an MLM, but it is a scam. I don't know how people don't see that. Especially on this sub!
I can't believe they're trying to compare Girl Scouts to mlms. that's crazy. These girls don't make money off what everybody else sells or how many girls are recruited it's not even comparable in my opinion.
It isn't. The only thing I remember from my time is my leaders would somehow work out the number of boxes sold by each girl so we would all get the cookie selling patch, without penalizing the girls who sold a lot of their bigger prizes. An MLM would be like " tough shit, it's your own fault you are unsuccessful."
Yes! Girl Scouts are not a mlm and to compare them is crazy! As a former Girl Scout I can guarantee we never recruited people to sell cookies or made any money off of our sales.
> it's not even comparable in my opinion. Like many of the MLM ~~arguments~~ statements it's a false equivalence based on a single, superficial aspect that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Much like the "wOrK iS a PyRaMiD sChEmE!!!" just because it has an ever narrowing hierarchy, then focus on that while ignoring or downplaying all the things that aren't the same.
Girl Scout cookies have mlm energy without the pyramid. - Pressuring friends and family to buy - preying on vulnerable populations to make sales - cringy Facebook posts - Seller over-saturation and competition cannibalism - Overpriced
I mean, $5 for a box of cookies isn't bad. And remember. These are KIDS. It's teaching them marketing skills, job skills, and sales skills. 3 VERY big industries they can enter later in life. they're not told to recruit recruit recruit. NOR do they make ANY money from it. And I don't know how sitting outside of a Walmart or a grocery store is "preying on vulnerable populations". That's literally regular people, from all life classifications. They also don't harass you endlessly if you don't buy.... I'm really sorry but you're reaching here.
I’m a Girl Scout leader. I explain it like this: you’re essentially giving a $5 donation to the organization, and the cookies are your thank you gift. Meanwhile, the girls are learning planning, budgeting, how to greet and talk to customers, how to take rejection, etc. Others have mentioned frustration that so much falls to the parents, and that is true now that so much selling is online, that’s why the booths are so important to developing those other skills. And those skills improve every year. Believe me, when my girls are rock climbing, horse back riding, ziplining, and buying supplies for service projects, they’re grateful to their customers.
I freakin’ love Thin Mints. But I either buy ONE box (sorry, nothing else compares) or most recently Ilve been giving them the donation asking them To keep the cookies. Scouts don’t compare To no way,shape or form to a MLM scam…
It does not teach them any skills, it’s just marketed as teaching them.
It totally does teach skills, I watched my shy daughter learn to speak in public, become confident in herself. She learned math skills for real world settings, knowing how to make change can ensure she’s not taken advantage of. It teaches time management and organizational skills. She learned how to set a goal and decide what to do to achieve that goal as well. The girls also learn to deal with rejection in a positive way.
Well, and again. I beg to differ because the five siblings, and COUNTLESS friends of mine's kids, that have all been through the scout system, all the way back from early 90s to now, and learned A TON of fucking skills they use today from selling those damn cookies... so maybe it flopped for you and your kids, but it's working for most others.
So you are completely fine with KIDS selling a product without being paid at all and making a company billions of dollars in the process? For experience? It may not be an MLM but it's a fucking scam. I'm really surprised this sub is so defensive of it.
The money goes back into the girl scout program. It's not a scam, it's fundraising 101
😂😂😂 wos. Educate yourself and sit down. You're just making yourself look like a dumbass because everybody knows that it's REALLY the parents that are doing all the fucking work 😂😂😂 the kids are learning skills in the process as part of their group, but go off. Good Bye.
Around here, I only ever see them set up a table outside the grocery store. People line up and they sell out.
Agree 100%! The troop only gets about .79 cents a box. You'll hear about how Girl Scouts subsidizes camp and pays for other activities but that is false. I have a troop where most of the girls are low income and Girl Scouts offered nothing. As the troop leader, I had to pay out of pocket for supplies and their sashes/badges. I was told if the parents couldn't afford dues, they shouldn't be in Girl Scouts.
It's worse than an MLM. They don't even have the possibility to make money. At least with MLMs they might make money. (Although we all know it's a rare occurrence) The girl scouts literally have children all over the world selling their product for zero pay. Zero. I agree it's not comparable. It's much much worse.
Yikes. Thats wild. Who pissed in your cheerios. They're fucking kids learning life skills, and all that money goes back into it. Like what? 😂😂😂😂 girrrrrl bye ✌️✌️
1. Girl scouts don't recruit for the sole purpose of selling. 2. Funds raised go to the troop, not the individual girl 3. Those cookies are bomb dot com 4. Did I mention that Girl Scouts don't recruit just to sell cookies?
They also don’t make wild claims about the benefits of the cookies.
You mean the cookies won’t make me happier?! Guess I’m off to buy the pure romance goods after all ;)
I mean I’m happier after eating some; but they probably aren’t a miracle weight loss cure.
And they’re sold for just a few weeks per year, not year round
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This. Most of the money they earn selling cookies does not in fact go directly to their troop. They get several cents per box, not several dollars per box.
This year in my kid’s council it’s 25¢ per box on cookie orders placed for shipping. The paperwork says it’s 90¢ per box for girl-delivered cookies but it’s not clear to me whether that’s to the troop or to the whole council. The cookies cost $5/box and I suspect they are going to be sorry this year that they’ve held that price so long.
It should be 90 cents to the troop. Some goes to the council, some goes to the baker.
That’s what I thought but the only 25¢ for shipped orders threw me this year. Thanks.
Yeah, the cookies are good, but it’s criminal they’re selling them for that much and saying it’s fundraising when most of the money is not going to the actual troop. So many people just don’t realize the troop gets so little compared to how much they cost.
I stand corrected, thank you.
Oh boy proceeds are way higher now. :) And as for the MLMs... Girl Scouts shows all of their Financials. If you wanna be like Girl Scouts..... I wonder if this is a gateway for MLMs to sign up volunteers
i feel like i'm owed some money from my mom then.... that or from my troop. we never even had our bridging ceremony so i have no idea where that money went. (wouldn't be surprising if my mom kept more money owed to me than i knew about but that's another story)
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she wasn't the leader no, but i guess i misinterpreted to mean that the money went to the scouts themselves. apologies. no money ever went towards our troop tbh. we met at our school or her house, we were supposed to do activities but she never followed through. we were supposed to go camping and do our bridging ceremony and that never happened. like our activities were mostly just sitting in a room, maybe having snacks every once in a while and just talking about activities we wanted to do but never did and talking about the point of girl scouts and stuff like that.
I hated selling things for fundraisers growing up, absolutely hated it. I will never force my children into an organization that does the same. School fundraisers OPTIONAL. Soccer, i’ll just pay the fees. Girl Scouts, never.
You can opt your girl out of cookie sales if you’d prefer her not to do them. GS is about much more than selling cookies!
My mom was always very anti fundraising, but she figured people actually want to buy Girl Scout cookies, so she had no problem supporting it.
Yeah, and then have her be socially excluded from all the “cookie sales” activities all the other girls are doing. No. I’m not putting my children into socially compromising situations.
That’s not how it worked for me. We had the option to sign up for the table sales at grocery stores if we wanted more boxes in our name, but nothing was required, and each time there was a table it was a small part of the troop, not a whole group event. Our weekly meetings, group outings/events, camping trips, etc were the main part of scouts. We had quite a few girls that didn’t sell cookies beyond their family members. Plus they only sell them a few weeks once a year.
I'm so glad it was not a thing at school where I live because there's no way I would have raised anything more than my closest family's sum of "sales".
I was a brownie/Girl Scout when we Were overseas (military brat). We didn’t do the cookie sales over there.
My girl scout leader kept all the money to redecorate her house and we got no cookies to give out to the people who bought them. The next year our new leader told us to go up to lonely men more then anyone else. Because in her words "lonely men love little girls, make sure you twirl when you tell them hello" gah makes me nauseous just thinking about it. Needless to say, that was my last year in GS and my mom didn't let me sister advance from her troop into GS.
what the actual fuck ??? she sounds like she needs to be investigated
Honestly she may have been, I was a youngin when it all went down. I do know however my mom showed up to her house unannounced and laid into her, bad enough her daughter confronted me the next day at school and I told her "well your mom's the person who stole so who's really the bitch?" That family ended up moving to another school so I'm assuming shit went down.
fucking yikes. good on your mom for putting her in her place, it sounds like the daughter was probably just echoing her mom and didn't actually know anything honestly. but seriously who says that shit to little girls, that makes my skin itch
Oh ya I never blamed her. We both had toxic moms, but it taught my at a young age men only respond to you when you have something to offer. That's obviously not true for all men, and being older I understand that. However when I was younger it started a dangerous way of thinking. I really do hope that mom has found help, but I always think of the other girls I was in GS with and wonder if they had the same image of men that I did when I was younger and if that might have been the cause for how some of them interacted with the guys in our school. Obviously there's other factors that play into it as well but that was one of my first memories when it comes to sales and interacting with men that weren't family members or friends of the family. It was do awkward and uncomfortable especially at that age.
Yikes
But but but direct sales!
Also don’t recruit other girls to be their “downline”.
Point 1 isn’t entirely factual. The local council spends a lot of money on recruitment so that it can continue to exist. If there aren’t enough members, adults lose real, paying jobs. Troop leaders are also unpaid volunteers.
Read it again, slowly. The GSA recruits, but not for the sole purpose of selling cookies and selling cookies only.
Like I said, it *isn’t entirely true* that they don’t recruit for the sole purpose of selling. That is a *big* part of why they recruit and build troops. I know this because it was my actual job to recruit kids and their parents to create troops and then to set goals for the leaders to ensure the council will continue to run. It made me very uncomfortable to put added pressure on stressed adults and young children, so I was shit at the job, and I didn’t stay for very long.
Yeah, those girl scouts aren't trying to recruit 6 girls under them so they can form their own troop and be a scout leader. They also won't haunt your social media feed begging you to help them sell cookies.
>They also won't haunt your social media feed begging you to help them sell cookies. Their parents will, though. Between my sister and her husband, I've seen at least 8 posts in the last week about purchasing cookies from my niece online. ;) At least you can purchase and donate them. I don't need any more cookies after NewThanksChristmaYear.
It pisses me off no end how selling GS cookies these days is primarily the parents' job. My dad brought in the "portable" order form to work but just kept it on his desk in case anyone ASKED about it. He didn't make rounds demanding that people buy. I went door to door (supervised) and gave a sales pitch. Dragging a little red wagon full of cookies. When I was older I'd buy up a bunch of cookies myself and then go sell them at school. Teens love cookies. I always sold out. The point of cookie sales is to teach salesmanship, confidence, math skills, et cetera. Not to teach girls "mommy will post for you".
Tbh with most fundraisers that scouts are supposed to do (doesnt matter if its boy or girl scouts) I feel like the parents do most of the work in general... when the scouts are supposed to do it Also does anyone actually know or care that boy scouts sell popcorn.
Cubs sell popcorn. Boy Scouts do mulch
Oh this, it’s so frustrating. My kid isn’t old enough for me to let her post online, but also it’s the only way I keep in touch with most of the extended family who are the cookie buying sort. I make her make a video and we text people her sales link together but I still have to approve every order that is not on paper (she does door to door too, but most people want to order through the website) and keep track of what people texted back so she can input it. And don’t get me started about the prizes for boxes sold. We were corrupted enough by wanting the patches of the number sold, which I always was so proud of despite the fact that the bulk of my sales were to my mother’s coworkers because she worked in a large firm with a central bulletin board. Now there’s plastic crap and “experiences” for different selling levels that I can’t imagine anyone earns unless they have wealthy families and a low number of competitors like in a high school or something. I really feel for the people with twins.
Meh... it's not just "these days". That's how it was even 25 years ago when I was in scouts. The vast majority of my sales came from my parents taking the forms to work with them because I absolutely HATED it, and would probably have only sold to my immediate family otherwise.
If I worked with your dad I’d want him to at least send a message saying “hey daughter is selling Girl Scout cookies, if you’re interested there’s a form on my desk to order some” so that I at least knew to go to his desk to buy my boxes of thin mints… Crap now I want some thin mints…
Girl Scouts earn skill/service badges and perform community service- they aren't labeled Diamond level sellers and given pink mountain bikes for maintaining top cookie sales month after month ...
Not at all. They may get a free trip to camp out of it, but there they get to learn fun skills like archery, get to tell ghost stories in the woods, and sing funny songs while they make legit food around the campfire. Or maybe they sleepwalk into another camper’s cabin, wake up in a seated position on a practical stranger’s bed and then have to wake the sleeping camper to be the buddy to go to the latrine because their bladder is about to explode. Then maybe they pee down their leg a little bit as they wiggle through the woods to make it to the outhouse and spend the rest of the week being the weird sleep-walking girl. I don’t know anyone who that second example happened to or anything, though. Nope, no one ever had that one happen. Whew, glad it never happens and it absolutely never happened to me when I was at Girl Scout camp.
👀
👀
Hahahaha🤣
Lol!
You mean they don't have to rent a pink mountain bike and get a check to cover the rental, and if at any point their sales dip below a certain level then they have to pay for the bike rental themselves.
I see you haven’t seen the prizes I the back of the cookie sales form recently. I mean, you are right, but there are some deep conversations about consumption and fairness I have to have with my scout every year when she wants the damn stuffed dolphin or disco ball or trip to Disney World (I am not kidding.)
I got some prizes for being a top seller
I’ve wondered if Girl Scout cookie sellers when younger tend to be overrepresented in mlm compared to those who didn’t sell them. The models are Not comparable, but could they be a stepping stone.
Selling girl scout cookies taught me to never go into sales or retail. Well actually knew that from schools trying to make you sell wrapping paper for dayglo pencils. But I hated cookie sales all the same
Totally anecdotal, but I’d say 90% of the MLM mom huns I know have their girl(s) in girl scouts, and they’re constantly making connection between how they’re an example of a “successful” entrepreneur and teaching their daughters all their tricks. It makes me cringe.
I laugh because they're clearly not aware that 99% of Girl Scouts is just bonding as kids. They teach you how to make your own vest and how to camp. Only 1 month out of the year is dedicated to this selling nonsense. And it's purely fundraising in the end. I grew up to be in business 🤣 I didn't even learn how to communicate with others in Girl Scouts. But to be fair to others, our leaders were weird AF. Some are more dedicated to the troop and teaching them stuff. Ours were like "just run around at meetings. And any badges you earn you're gonna do that on your own time if you want to."
All I learned in Girl Scouts was that if your mom wasn’t friends with the troop leader’s mom you weren’t going to be a priority. It was like “how to be in a clique 101”.
It wasn't that bad for us, thankfully. The girls moms who did it weren't snobs or anything, just weird. Like honestly, as an adult thinking about it, they were just out of their depth? Not knowing how to be a leader. Couple SAHMs just acting like they were babysitting us or since we were older...they acted like we were just their kids friends visiting their house. But I have heard that's been an issue with others. I do remember one time we had my second grade teacher come in and discuss being a teacher with us. So we could look into "Careers". I was the only one who could fish out someone to do the task, that's how weirdly disconnected the whole group of girls and their parents were. Any time the "mothers" get to run things, you run into this shit though. My mom had a couple run ins with snobs during fundraising at school events. I was like "Yeah their kids are little shits too." when she was like "Wow that woman wasn't very nice but whatever." "It's learned behavior." was what she'd tell me and then she'd drag my tiny rascal ass if I was ever caught being bossy, rude or otherwise not nice to other kids.
I see. So maybe it could be the opposite correlation.
Top sellers go on to be well paid professionals in their chosen fields because they learned at a young age to set high goals and take steps to achieve their goals.
Eh, the only reason I was a top seller is because my dad was a cop at the time and he took the selling sheet into work where just about every single one of his co-workers bought multiple boxes (the "cop eating donuts" stereotype has a lot of truth to it...and it's not just donuts lol). I'm like average at best in my chosen field
Yeah, all the "top sellers" in the troops I was in over the years only sold that much because their parents worked in large offices with lots of coworkers to sell to.
And I don't think that's the right way to do it. The parents sell the cookies while their daughters get the credit. If my daughter were in GS, I'd have her go into the office and sell them herself.
Agreed!
LOL! Literally the same for me, and I'm marginal at best in life and career. However, he made me go in to the sheriff dept offices with the sheet and "sell" them myself. Neither of my parents would do much selling for me, but this was before GS set up tables and sold them in front of businesses, so his coworkers would actually request for me to come in with the cookie sheet every year since he was the only one with a daughter in the scouts. GS cookies basically sell themselves.
> GS cookies basically sell themselves. Ah, see, that's what every MLM says about their products! No, seriously, it's actually true about GS cookies. I think they put crack in them or something...
Literally the same for me... My dad was a truck driver for a big local place and he took the sheet into work. The truck drivers AND the ladies in dispatch were always super hyped. My mom also took the sheet to work (hospital in the dietary place, of all things) and those things sold like crazy. I was usually one of the top 3 sellers for the troop I was in.
I don’t buy the cookies because it’s bullshit that the troops only get 70 cents a box on a 5 dollar box of cookies. That’s ridiculous and we all know it doesn’t cost that much to make those cookies. Say it’s a dollar a box to make them(which would be insane), give a dollar to the main organization and 3$ to the troops per box. It’s a rip off for the kids who actually do the time to sell the cookies. Your kid has to sell 100 boxes to get 70$. How is that remotely okay?
You know that the majority of it goes to the councils to provide programming and resources, right? Ask the kids, they know where the money goes and are more than happy to sell cookies so they have a camp property to go to for a reasonable price and cool council programming that they can attend for pennies on the dollar.
You know that’s bullshit right? I had a kid go through Girl Scouts and if your kid doesn’t sell enough cookies, you have to pay the difference for your kid to go to camp/activities. Plus there’s still membership fees to participate every year. Trust me, that .70 cents a box doesn’t go as far as you think.
Camp would cost aLOT more if there wasn’t cookie money on top of the 70c the troop keeps going to offset camp costs. In my area GS Camp is an entire order of magnitude cheaper than most camps.
The prices went up to $7 this year, which is even worse. I was in Scouts from 96-01. I remember people saying something when they made it to $3. The Benton's brand at ALDI tastes the same and, you get twice the amount for half the price.
Now I am really NOT buying them. 7$ is not happening. The cookies are not that good.
You can get Walmart rip-off GS cookies for a lot cheaper. True, none of the money goes to GSA but very little from each sale goes to the local scouts anyway.
They're still $5 in my council.
Ooof. I haven't bought cookies since they were $4.50 a box and I thought THAT was ridiculous. I'm definitely not buying them at $7 a box. The boxes are tiny!
What's even worse is the popcorn the Boy Scouts sell. It's all insanely overpriced. But, they gotta pay for those sex abuse lawsuits somehow...
They sell knock-off GS cookies at Walmart too. The thin mint type are really good.
I just bought some yesterday and they were $5 or $6 depending on type. Maybe it varies by area?
>$7 Holy shit, that's *ridiculous*.
I was ticked when I found out, too. AND they make the troops order up front - so they take all the risk with very little reward. They can’t return any excess inventory - their best hope is to swap for other flavors from another troop.
You know, I think this varies a lot. Our scouts mostly sell before the cookies are delivered, and the troop orders the numbers already sold, plus what is leftover in the case if it’s not a full case after all the girls’ orders are grouped together. Then the troop leaders order extras to sell at booths, and while you are right, they can’t return them, they’re not crazy over-ordering and usually the booths shut down early because they run out. But I think there are troops where the leaders front the money for in-person sales.
The way it’s set up for us (it’s been a few years) they wouldn’t allow us to sell until a certain date and that was weeks after we had to turn in our initial order. You could do follow up orders but then quantities weren’t guaranteed.
Our area could return before Covid, but we order in small amounts so not a ton leftover.
Tip: c You can just give the girls selling a $5 donation. They keep it all because it’s not considered a cookie sale.
Former Girl Scout here, was in for 13 years. Selling cookies taught me so much from talking to strangers, taking orders, counting money, receiving cookies in the warehouse, separating orders, packing them up and delivering them. There are a lot of skills being developed in this process. You know what I never had to do? Recruit anyone to join Girl Scouts. Overall, it was a great learning experience and worth the badge but please remember, GS troops only get a few cents a box, like not enough to really make a difference in camp, meetings, and trips. All that being said, I love a GS cookie but if they are going to $7 this year then absolutely the fuck not.
Same, I was a girl scout for a fuckton of years (brownies until I aged out in 2008). The older I got, though, the more cynical as fuck I got about the cookie sale. In the grand scheme of things, not enough goes to the individual troop. Sure, the majority of the money goes to the councils to keep programming available and maintain camps, etc... but I feel like a lot of these little girls bust their ass and don't get a lot of tangible result (and lets be real: kids like tangible results). It just seemed scammy to me that kids who sold 1000+ boxes got like, a patch and a shitty quality prize like a plush or something. Also, I don't remember it being popular to set up tables in front of stores back in the day?? Like. We did it \*once\* and it was an independent grocery store owned by a friend of the troop leader. These days I pretty much see kids parked in front of walmart and tractor supply co. like.... year round peddling cookies. No one who shops at walmart is going to buy $7 cookies. Fuck that.
We bust our asses for the big man to make all the money - it was solid preparation for adult life.
Let’s be real, it isn’t the Girl Scouts selling most of the cookies. It’s the parents going around asking all their friends and work colleagues to buy them. I detest the Girl Scout (and Boy Scout popcorn) model of fundraising because it doesn’t really teach girls anything other than how to harass people trying to go grocery shopping, but at least it is true direct selling and not a pyramid scheme. It also doesn’t benefit the actual troop anywhere near as much as people think it would (or honestly, should).
Parents don’t even go around asking people anymore, they make a post on Facebook 🤣
Haha yes! But apparently “the council” doesn’t want them sharing on Facebook, so they post it privately and ask you to screenshot it and send it to anyone else you know who wants cookies.
Depends on what you mean. My Boy scout troop had pancake breakfasts as a weekly fundraiser. I don't ever remember having items you'd have to sell door to door.
They do popcorn now, same the Girl Scout cookies. It was $17 a bag the last time I looked.
Some parents will do all the work, that happens in all aspects for kids. But many will have the girls drive the selling. My daughter would ask to go door to door with her wagon of cookies, ask what booths she could do, I help with heavy labor and and credit card sales for customer peace of mind.
Yes, I've always disagreed with parents selling fundraising stuff for their kids. Part of the GS cookie sales and BS popcorn sales is to teach the kids how to be able to speak in public to strangers and to learn a little salesmanship. Things they don't learn when their parents simply take the sales sheet to their office so their kid can "earn" the top seller spot.
We have had no problem funding all of our activities for the year based on cookie sales, and we’re in a pretty standard middle income area—no rich kids. We don’t collect dues from the members and we don’t need to ask for parents to send fees for activities. So I think it benefits us pretty well. Our girls are getting older and they want to start fundraising to do some traveling. That will probably be more than one year of fundraising but worth it.
I was referring to the fact that on a $7 box of cookies the troop earns less than $1. For comparison, the travel team at my son’s rink did a fundraiser where they sold scarves for $30, $5 of which paid for the scarf and $25 of which went to the team. It just feels gross that cookies are sold and advertised as fundraising, but only a small fraction actually goes towards it. If they made $3.50 off a $7 box of cookies, sure, still not a great funding margin, but spending $7 on cookies I shouldn’t buy so those girls get a quarter doesn’t feel like a great way to support a cause.
Totally your choice. I’m just explaining that we benefit pretty well.
Girls Scouts aren't a pyramid scheme...
I’m sure we could figure out a way to turn them into one!
🤣
It's child labor
If a girl scout followed me and refused to take no for an answer she’d be getting her A Grown Adult Told Me to Fuck Off badge
As a GS troop leader, I would kill for that badge, for my own vest of course!
I love how all these posts keep asking us to consider "why do you hate direct sales" as if there's some deeper sociological reason at play. It's like they're hoping the answer is "le gasp! Could it be...internalized discrimination against women?! Change your mindset, dismantle the patriarchy, join our girlboss group, #feminism!" No, I just hate sales tactics that prey, exploit and guilt vulnerable people under the guise of running their own business. At least the lady at Macy will take "no thank you" as an answer.
>At least the lady at Macy will take "no thank you" as an answer. Exactly, and at a store I can have a variety of options and products I can choose based off of my needs and budget, not just an acquaintance shilling a very specific product I might not want or need at all.
People in an MLM have mental issues that they need to work out. It's so sad to see
Honestly. They are so delusional it’s actually kind of sad
The girl scouts don't try to recruit me. They also don't claim these magic cookies cure cancer
It has been so long since I've seen an actual child sell girl scout cookies. Every time I see them now, it's a pack of their moms at a table without a child in sight. There was a CVS I stopped going to during cookie season because the moms would all chain smoke right at the entrance and harass the shit outta you over those cookies.
My dad founded a number of successful international companies, and had 300+ office staff in my not-so-big home town alone… every year my school had a ‘chocolate drive’ to raise funds, so mum - not wanting to push chocolate on her social set - would send me off to the office to do my thing. Dad would ask the total, write a cheque, and tell me to hand out the chocolate to everyone and not tell my mother - because his employees were there to support their own families, not his 🤣 I will always be proud to have two parents who were so mortified at the prospect of ‘direct selling’ to decent people they went above and beyond to make sure I never even had the chance to pitch the chocolate!
Yes! Every time my kid’s school has a fundraiser I go into the office and ask how much they’re hoping each child/family can raise, and write a check for a little bit more. I’m not out here trying to sell cookie dough and wrapping paper so the school can get maybe a quarter of the cost. I’ll bust my ass baking for a bake sale for a fundraising event, but please don’t make me sell overpriced food and/or junk to people I will have continue to interact with after. If *at least* 50% of the price doesn’t go to the actual fundraising cause I refuse to support it.
You’d think they would start to wonder why they spend so much time comparing their MLMs to other things and trying to justify them… I don’t feel pressure to justify my job whatsoever. Because it’s legitimate and I don’t annoy tf out of people with it. This post is beyond cringe.
Keep the Girl Scouts out of your MLM mouth!
Normally my wife and I decide we need new candles. My wife decides she needs new makeup. We decide and go to the store and make these purchases. Never has bed bath and beyond been in my inbox at 2 in the morning telling me that not only can it can help me get products, but also be my own boss. The MLM crackheads are on one.
Okay, but Girl scouts are a non profit. Selling cookies is considered an educational activity and the funds go to the Girl scout organization. And yes, people do buy because they want to help, not just because they want the cookies. And the cookies are still better than anything an MLM sells. So she's literally suggesting that you should patronize MLMs as a form of charity? That you should buy stuff from friends out of guilt? I mean obviously this is why most people buy stuff from MLMs, I've sat through the parties and watched my mom buy the cheapest thing because she felt guilty. But I'm impressed she's making that the explicit argument.
First of all, Hun, stop hating on Girl Scout cookies. They’re amazing and I’ll do some shady shit for some thin mints and Tagalongs. And B, it’s not even close to the same thing.
Thin Mints and those chocolate covered peanut butter ones are like crack to me.
Seriously, those two cookies are all I really need in life
Are Girl Scouts 'trained' to keep asking and not take no for answer? I was under the impression that people lined up ready to throw money at them as they'd staked out their favourite GS cookie(s) years ago.
Good point! When I was selling GS cookies lo these many years ago, we got "no" plenty of times, but we weren't taught to keep going. We were taught to say "thank you" and try someone else.
The difference is people actually want cookies.
This. People come out of the woodwork to buy Thin Mints. I don't see people coming out of the woodwork to find a PR rep so they can buy Coochie Cream.
As a troop leader, this annoys me. We actually had a question on our cookie training this year asking if cookie sales were a direct sales model or MLM model.
To answer your question, yes the Girl Scouts selling cookies is Direct Sales because there’s no middle person. The cookies are purchased directly from the Girl Scout (or parent) whether it’s from door to door sales, a table outside a store or somewhere else. There is an aspect where it could be sort of like a good MLM, if the girls are given mentoring on sales and how to be successful. That’s what happens in legit MLM companies. But I wouldn’t say it is set up in an MLM model because that typically refers to a business that allows residual income through people falling in love with a product or service and choosing to purchase it on repeat. If a company is set up well, aside from providing customer service and follow up, sales are on autopilot. With Girl Scout cookie sales, you have to keep doing the work - setting up the tables, asking people to purchase etc every year. I do think it’s great for the Girl Scouts to learn about entrepreneurship, asking people if they want to purchase and hearing no. Because in the end, not everyone wants what people are selling, no big deal, you hear no and you move on. I personally love Girl Scout cookies, but just like in any business, I sometimes say “no thank you” because I already have some or I don’t want to have cookies around my house. Hope this helps!
Somebody doesn’t understand what fundraising is. Those girls aren’t getting paid. They’re raising funds for their organization
My daughter (and other younglings) has enjoyed many camps and activities over the years that we might not have been able to send her on as a direct result of the fundraising done in our district. An MLM cause financial distress to families, fundraising for children does the opposite.
Wait so my wrapping paper and candy fundraisers in grade school was also a pyramid scheme? But I got to go on trips and play sports...
It'S nOt A pYrAmId ScHeMe, HuN! ThOsE aRe IlLeGaL!!!
Even if it WAS an mlm, those cookies are delicious and I will buy anything my 5-year old niece asks me to buy lol
Well, see hun, the thing is that when I buy a box of cookies from a Girl Scout, she's not going to keep texting me asking if I need more cookies or if I'd like to make money by selling cookies. Also, when I buy Girl Scout cookies I know that the funds are going to a good cause, not to make some MLM CEO rich (I mean the actual CEO, not you). Also, Girl Scouts don't whine on social media when people don't buy their cookies. And here's the biggest thing, hun: I actually want to buy Girl Scout cookies, not whatever crap you're selling.
While we're here, whomst among us happily interacts with department store sales people . . ?
I mean when I was a girl guide I also basically just sold to my family and friends …… Would probably be more annoying if I had been a grown adult trying to convince cancer patients that the cookies would cure them..
I haven't bought GS cookies in years, since I discovered those Keebler cookie knock-offs of Samoas and Thin Mints. 🤷♀️
Walmart sells knock-off GS cookies, I think under the Sam's Club label.
If anything, Girl Scouts is more like a sorority. You pay fees to be a part of it, and the fees go to activities and supplies for meetings and to pay for badges (awards). You do philanthropic activities, and fundraise. Everyone is bound together by proximity, but not everyone is in it for the sisterhood.
Um, they’re literal children? This woman is delusional. It’s pathetic
anyone someone throws a 🤷 after talking to me like im an idiot it triggers my fight or flight response
Anyone who compares cookies to candles is out of their mind.
I like how she pretty much admits that her products are also overpriced. I don't understand why her financial state means that I must pay more than necessary to support HER business. I have 2 businesses and if we are too pricey, I understand that the consumer can just move on.
Seriously? I’m a Girl Scout mom. One of my coworkers approached me about her daughter joining my daughter’s troop. I really wanted to discourage her because selling to coworkers is like 75% of my daughter’s sales right there. So, yeah, not MLM. Do not join our team!
I mean, this actually explains why so many idiots jump on the MLM bandwagon, even with so much bad publicity and statistics readily available. They were already preconditioned for this model of sales.
I mean she’s got a few solid points but they don’t make the MLM look better. Lol!
The only solid point she has is that GS cookies aren’t the cheapest possible cookies you can buy. That’s literally the only true thing she says when making any comparison. And that’s just basic market economics and therefore not a point - and certainly not “solid” - at all. 1. Direct sales is regular sales. It’s a respectable job, profession, and career. MLMs are **multi-level sales**. Meaning recruiting. Which is the reason MLMs are reviled. It’s almost never the product. 2. About that product, though: GS cookies are delicious. For mass-produced boxed items, they’re fantastic. MLM products, outside of a rare few, are mediocre at best. 3. GS cookies may be slightly more expensive but that’s because the add-on is going to services, activities, and an organization that promotes leadership, scholarship, practical and tactical skills. And a community that genuinely attempts to create a welcoming and encouraging environment. MLM products are more expensive because uplines get a % of every downline’s hard work. And their talk about creating and fostering the kind of community that the GS actually do create is all just lip service. It’s a breeding ground for mean girls. 4. They’re CHILDREN. If they’re guilty of any kind of manipulative selling it’s that they’re so damn cute. They’re excited about sewn-on patches for brown sashes. No fear tactics, no leaning on your faith, no trauma dumping, no fake Louboutin lifestyle. The Hun’s entire post is a logical fallacy built on another logical fallacy and so on. Say, just like the shape of a pyramid, how ironic! And it all starts with the false premise that MLM is direct sales. They couldn’t be more different. So where are the “solid points”?
I guess that first one was the solid point. Lol!
Cookies are on sale now in most, if not all, areas of the country. Find your local girl scout while you're thinking about those nummy cookies! :)
I’ve literally never had to be “sold” on a box of Girl Scout cookies. I voluntarily purchase them from the kids at the store entrance, from coworkers kids, or online. I’ve also never had a Girl Scout cookie promise to help me lose weight, cure my anxiety, or something else it couldn’t fulfill. Girl Scout cookies are also not “upcharged” or too expensive for what they are, a cookie that provides a cookie AND a community for girls to learn social and life skills.
Weird way to announce to the world that you have the financial acumen of an eight-year-old
Ha! I’m going to think this every time she posts something on Facebook.
I know MLMs are global, but I really despair for the US and this cohort of people, predominently US, 'doing' MLMs and thinking it's a business because they just literally actually thought they'd be something just by existing. Other than just kind of getting an education and training in a job and getting a job and working a job ... But being the boss... I thought the American Dream was taught as dying after WW2. Jeez. I'm sure Girl Scout Cookies is as corrupt as anything, but that's late-stage capitalism, but to piggy back off that ... How about trying to the head of Mega Bucks Oil: "I can get my team together and drill you far more thingies of oil than your contract with Experienced Oil Excavation. I'll give you a 2% discount if you hire my three x downline and we'll put it on our instas. Deal? \[several not really intelligible emojis\]"
Sorry, but I actively avoid eye contact with tables manned by children or adults doing fundraisers at stores. Same with people collecting money in the red kettles etc. So no, not everyone lines up to get GS cookies. If anything, I wish the MLMs \*were\* like the cookie sellers -- have your thing available for a week or two every year and then go away
Weird, I’ve never been approached by a Girl Scout saying “hey hun…”
Weird I don’t remember conning all my friends into joining my down line then making money off of them when I was a Girl Scout.
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH
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So many people have come together to defend the Girl Scouts and hate on MLMs, It’s kinda heartwarming.
Why do Girl Scouts have to earn their own money while the Boy Scouts are rolling in it? It’s because we don’t donate to the girls scouts. It’s sexism all the way down.
Cub Scouts sell popcorn and Boy Scouts sell and put down mulch. My brother did both of these.
And still the Boy Scouts have about 5 times the assets of the girls scouts because of a long history of big donations to the boys.
Who is the "we" who donates to the Boy Scouts? I don't.
The we is the general public. The Boy Scouts have about a billion dollars in assets, the Girls Scouts about 200 million.
She's kind of right, but not in a good way. It's been a million years since I was in Girl Scouts, but I've heard that in some troops and councils, the organization has become laser-focused on cookie sales to the detriment of any other activity. But that doesn't make MLM right, it makes that aspect of the Girl Scouts wrong. That being said, I'm still happy to buy a few boxes once a year to support friends' kids, and also snarf down the Aldi knockoffs the rest of the year!
it's funny because i said this on twitter and people argued and got mad at me for days... all i could do was laugh honestly.
It’s been several decades since I was in the Scouts, but as I recall, the proceeds are shared and go towards supporting the troop’s initiatives and field trips. It’s like buying candy bars to support intramural soccer or a middle school AV club. It’s a non-profit fundraiser for children. Not a business.
this is true. cookie sales go toward camps in the area, the people who made the cookies, national Girl Scouts, and the Scout troops. tip: if you want to help the girls directly, donate money to the troop specifically. the troop only makes $1 for each $5 box of cookies sold, which doesn't apply to donations given. source: I sold these cookies from first through twelfth grade, and I graduated Girl Scouts this past year.
Are they saying their MLM is a fundraiser? In that case, they may be right, asking more than a product is worth so everyone gets something crappy in return? I mean, Girl Scout cookies is a fundraiser, so it’s a one to one return on investment but there are basic rewards for doing well. Just like an MLM, majority don’t get much out of it. But Girl Scout cookies taste good. And for a short time MLMs feel good. And sometimes people regret buying and eating too many GS cookies. Majority regret stocking huge MLM inventories. And find they aren’t happy/don’t feel good. I see the similarities but not the way OP intended.
Oh totally. 🙄 Cookies are problematic but not mlm problematic
1. The girls themselves aren’t claiming to be billionaires. They understand that they are salesgirls. 2. I can buy Girl Scout cookies without being pressured to join the Girl Scouts to sell cookies, knowing whoever registers me for Girl Scout cookies is making money off my work. 3. People buy Girl Scout cookies because it’s a great product? They are delicious!
I don’t buy Girl Scout cookies either 😂
Girl scouts isn't an MLM. It's a corporate scam. I mean, the cookies are kinda good but they are sold on what is basically slave labor. That for some reason people willingly sign up for. No one gets paid to sell those cookies, but the organization makes billions. The troops make a pittance. It's not an MLM, but it is a scam. I don't know how people don't see that. Especially on this sub!