Selling Cookies and Other Fun Fundraisers

The Kansas City Star has a column called “Snarky in the Suburbs” by Sherry Kuehl, which I enjoy. Last week, her piece was titled “Sure they’re nondescript, but the Thin Mint has a mighty allure”. She described her decades-long addiction to Girl Scout Thin Mints. That reminded me of my own relationship with Thin Mints and other kid-sold products.

Actually, my first experience was as a Blue Bird (part of the Camp Fire Girls). I was only a Blue Bird during my third-grade year, which ended in the spring of 1964 when I was eight. Part of my Blue Bird experience was selling Camp Fire mints. My friend Janice and I dutifully suited up in our Blue Bird uniforms and canvassed the homes around her house—I lived on an isolated street where sales would be slim. It was a pleasant afternoon, and we took a few orders. I don’t recall anything about delivering the orders. But one reason I dropped out of Camp Fire Girls was that I didn’t like selling the candy.

Fast forward to when my daughter was a Girl Scout. She stayed in all the way from Daisies through Juniors, kindergarten through eighth grade. Cookies are a big fundraiser for the Girl Scouts, and her troop participated every year. Once or twice, there were contests between the various Girl Scout levels at her school over which group could sell the most cookies. My daughter, always competitive, put out a big effort those years. One of those years, my freezer ended up full of cookies she’d convinced me to buy to get her an award.

That may also have been the year we walked the neighborhood to sell cookies. It was a raw, miserable winter day—November, as I recall. The cookies wouldn’t arrive until after the first of the year, but we were to take orders before the holidays. I walked with my daughter, but I made her do the ask. She was only about eight that year—about the same age I’d been when I sold my Camp Fire mints. I’d learned my lesson, and it was time for my daughter to learn hers.

I do remember filling the orders with her that year in our living room, sorting all the boxes into the varieties each family had ordered. Then we had to make the deliveries. It was a royal pain, and we had to decipher people’s handwriting to find where to deliver them. I could usually figure out either an address or a phone number (which I then used to ask for clarification on the address).

Most of the years my daughter was in Girl Scouts, I also took a copy of the cookie order form to work. People in my department—and even neighboring departments—seemed eager to purchase cookies. But towards the end of her Girl Scout career, I learned that selling cookies at work was a violation of corporate policy. So I quit supporting her cookie order enterprise. I still filled my freezer, but that was the extent of my involvement.

Through the years, we participated in many other fundraisers for my kids’ school and for their various extra-curricular activities. I hated all of them.

I bought from the gift wrap fundraisers, but refused to sell it around the neighborhood or at work, because Hallmark made gift wrap, so that fundraiser was in direct competition with my employer. The fundraiser gift wrap was very cheap—not nearly so nice as Hallmark’s paper—but I used it on Christmas presents anyway.

One year, the Boy Scouts sold popcorn. I think we still have a tub, though our son has been out of Scouts for over twenty years.

About the only good fundraisers were the Christmas wreaths the Boy Scouts sold for a few years. Those were pretty, and I liked buying those for our front door.

And I’m always happy to buy Girl Scout cookies for personal consumption. In recent years, I have usually been able to find the Girl Scouts encamped outside a grocery store or other retail establishment. I buy my cookies and take them home the same day. No messing with orders before Christmas and deliveries months later. This year, however, I didn’t see any cookies. Maybe I should have looked harder. I wonder if I can still find some. Thin Mints would make a good snack about now.

What do you remember about your kids’ fundraisers?