It's Girl Scout Cookie season, so it's a great time to remind you that the Girl Scouts welcome trans and nonbinary children. Here is a list of trans Girl Scouts to order cookies from.
I always get Girl Scout cookies every year. I was in Girl Scouts as a kid, and back when I was still going to camp in the early 2000's, the camp had cabins set aside for the gay boys who had been kicked out of the boy scouts. Even back when I originally joined in the 90's they accepted anyone who wanted to join a troop. Scouting is for everyone!
It's warms my heart to hear that the girl scouts don't discriminate with their child exploitation to sell their cookies.
I recant my statement after having initially misunderstood the revenue and expenses regarding fundraising in relation to the value provided for the money taken from fundraising.
Your Samoa chart tells me that the cost to produce and drop ship these cookies is slightly less than a quarter of the sales price, yet the troop doing all of the work sees 22% revenue which is exploitation. A fundraiser should see all profits go to the troop that does all the work after expenses, not 22%.
Let's say children were sent to the factories to bake and package the cookies instead of going door to door selling them and they were given 22% of a regular workers salary. Would that be exploitation? I'm sure it would be ok if the other 54% were spent on a fun pizza party at the end of the day.
I see this line used a lot, and it sure does sound snappy but it doesn't actual make any sense. Exploitation requires an exploiter, and the troops are funding themselves by talking to relatives and maybe standing at a table in a supervised group for a two hours on the weekend. No one is profiting off this fundraiser except the troops themselves.
There is actual child exploitation problems in the US. I think you are falling in to the qAnon style trap where some people talk about "child sexual abuse" by a secret cabals instead of talking about actual child abuse occurring in their own towns because it sounds Spicer to talk about the first one.
This isn't a topic that's worth much time or energy.
If you read the comment chain with OP you'll see my argument present is that the "fundraiser" for the troop nets 22% while taking 78% of while only having 24% cost.
Please explain to me what value is provided for 54% of the revenue after having already paid the cost to get the cookies made and packaged and already having paid dues to access this program?
Gonna hard disagree about this being exploitation of the youth.
Girl Scouts of America is strictly a nonprofit, meaning what excess money they do raise is used to cover running costs of the organization itself and reinvested into various projects within their mission scope, which for the girl scouts, is improving and enable the lives with more opportunities.
Yes, it's true, the troop of the individual girlscout only sees 22% of the sales according to recent figures. This doesn't seem a lot, but really all the girls are doing is going out for 10-20 hours per 'cookie season' to gather orders and then another 10-20 hours to deliver said orders when they are done. From a six dollar box of cookies (tax free!) 22% is $1.32. How many boxes the girlscout sells varies considerably by region and the child, not many figures are publicly available though GSA claims on average they sell 200 million boxes per year. Low end estimates figure even novice girls can get 30 per season with experienced scouts averaging 100-200 with some troops often reporting 300 average or more. If a girl spends 40 hours canvasing the neighborhood and delivering them to sell 200 boxes, thats roughly 5 dollars per hour. Not great but certainly better than other fundraisers some youth partake in.
This gets more difficult to track and balance out now that the girl scouts support and promote online cooking sales, as the above article links, but girls still get credit for these sales despite only posting the url or QR code to attract the sales.
And the cookie program itself takes 24%, or 1.44 per box. This is absurdly cheap, considering it doesn't just cover the cost to bake the cookies, but also package and ship them, at no charge to the youth, even for things such as online orders or direct delivery options they offer now. This is charitable work, but that's still a phenomenally low operating cost.
And yes, the Girl Scouts of America does take 54% or 3.24 per box. This might seem high at first, though you again have to remember their nonprofit status. And unlike the Boy Scouts who are constantly fraught with controversy after controversy due to how the organization is run as well as political pressure from those who should have no involvement with them, the Girl Scouts have a general good reputation if being the younger sibling of scouting organization when we talk about cultural awareness of their activities and how much time the media gives them on average (effectively none) so I can't say I'm that worried that millions of dollars are being funneled into some directors pocket tax free when the worst thing people say about them is they are a cookie salesperson masquerading as a scouting organization.
The GSA invests heavily in programs and facilities used by the Girl Scouts themselves, as well as doing outreach programs for generalized youth to be given opportunities on top of supporting nationwide efforts to support troops in lower income areas that can't fundraise to the same level as those in richer areas.
And my own person input here, as a former Boy Scout that made Eagle Scout: GSA does brand recognition so damn well that it's incredibly easy and low stress to sell those cookies. We as the boy scouts did multiple fundraisers a year, from popcorn (the traditional yet lesser known counterpart to GSA Cookie sales) to pizzas and utensils to even trying to sell camping related gear one year. Everyone knows the Girl Scout cookies, everyone wants to buy them and in most scenarios a girl just has to show up with the ordering brochure and a smile and people interested in buying them will immediately scramble to order what they can. I'm not faulting the GSA or girls in this scenario, I'm envious because as a Boy Scout we were always envious of that simplicity when trying to pitch our own fundraisers to the local community and I can't count how many times I was told to my face to come back with the cookie sale.
So TL;DR, yes the GSA takes the largest cut, but they are also doing most of the actual work involved in producing and shipping the cookies at no charge to the girls, something most fundraisers that sell food DO NOT do, and the girls just have to do the legwork to find mostly willing customers and ensure the cookies get delivered. Compare that to any job that pays a commission for selling items and anyone who does those types of jobs would literally kill for 22% of the total cost of each sale.
I misread the 2023 earnings report where it stated fundraising was $4.4 million as revenue instead of an expense, so when you read it like I did originally it would mean they make 97% from dues and other means and 3% from fundraising (which is false). Which is why I tried to defend my position that there's no value in taking that from the children and it's just a cash grab.
Meh. Their cookies suck imo. Over priced and the boxes are tiny. The lemon are decent and the chocolate mint are decent too the rest can be tossed into the ocean.
I tried selling boy scout popcorn and that shit was a pain in the ass. It was like $10 for some microwave popcorn or something. Wasn't even good. Honestly, if you see these poor guys, donate money directly to them if you don't want to try the shit popcorn. (Thank you to the Eagle Scout Vons employee who donated $50 to Troop 1238!)
Not controversial, especially when the cookies are chilled/frozen (I grew in up in a family that freezes basically all treats, especially chocolate ones)
They're also partnering up with Raytheon. I wish that was a joke. Wokeness and murder, what a combination; goes together like peanut butter and chocolate.