Girl scout fund raising lacks of innovation and creativity
It didn’t start when someone knocked at our door selling Thin Mints. Nor did it occur to me when a colleague walked around hawking those cookies on her child’s behalf. It suddenly dawned on me when I noticed some overweight adults helping young girls sell cookies outside the Walmart store.
Sometimes people sell homemade cookies for fundraisers, since there are rewards for top sellers. Some parents simply buy many boxes of these cookies in order to help their children meet the target.
When I put together these facts, it didn’t make sense: cookies, young girls, overweight adults, and America’s obesity epidemic. Even if girl scouts management was said to make effort to reduce fat in their cookies, cookies are the last thing we need if we want to overcome our weight problem. Why can’t people sell something else? Why can’t we think of something else? Why can’t we break away from this unhealthy tradition of girl scouts cookies selling? Are cookies really the only thing that will sell? In addition to cookies, can we come out with something else?
Even in fundraising or in doing any kind of charity work, we need to learn to be innovative and creative, and to be so at an early age, like combining fundraising with something else, something more challenging and healthy than selling cookies, like helping girls come up with healthy and nutrious recipes, like growing plants or doing some craft work during holiday seasons and selling them for fundraising, like mixing with boys in their fundraising activities. I am sure boys also have fundraising task. In this process, the girls can learn something other than making cookies. I am sure there are many things that people can learn to make and sell.
One last thing that is a bit disturbing is the fact that the only thing that I, as an outsider, know of girl scout is about girl scout cookies, as if that’s the only thing they are good at or they are expected to be good at. I am sure the insiders might argue with me on this. Truth be told, cookies is the only thing that I know about girl scouts.
On the other hand, I never hear of boy scouts selling cookies. On the contrary, I have heard of many fun things that boy scouts are doing. Do we have a different expectations when it comes to scout’s gender? Or are we enforcing gender stereotypes by preparing our girls to be cookie-makers/homemakers?
For our nation’s girls to grow up meeting the challenge of the future, girl scouts organizer should start to think out of its cookies box, brainstorm on the grassroot level, and prepare girls to be anything but cookies makers or cookies sellers.
Kent Mueller
2 months, 4 weeks agoIf you know so little about the Girl Scouts that the only thing you know is that they sell cookies, then maybe you should write about something on which you are actually knowledgeable.
I have read many really bad columns in my life. But this is perhaps the first one where the writer actually wrote why it should not have been written. You, yourself, said you know nothing about Girl Scouts other than that they sell cookies. Did it cross your mind that, just perhaps, you should do something called research before you write?
I am not here to defend the Girl Scouts. No doubt they have their flaws as all human organized organizations will have.
But to change many decades of a successful program simply because someone doesn’t want to see “cookie” and “girl” in the the same venue is preposterous. Even though we had no daughters, I have been around many girl scout cookie transactions. I have yet to see a single one of those transactions occur because a little girl wrestled and adult to the ground, forcing the sale of an unhealthy snack to an adult. The adult can buy if he or she desires. Before long we will live in a country where an adult can be prevented from purchasing a 20 oz soft drink. Oh….sadly, we already live in that country……
You admittedly do not know what the Girls Scouts are about. You said that yourself. What if the Girl Scouts teach young girls how to manage their time, sell a product profitably, do so in a healthy way and to work as a team when possible. Wouldn’t that make you feel like a fool? It should.
Yanwen Xia
Overland Park
2 months, 4 weeks agoKent, thanks for being so frank. I am sure insiders and outsiders hold different views on the same topic. And both insiders and outsiders have legitimate right to air their impression.
I knew if I did some research on this, I would definitely know more than I am now. And I knew my writing will be offensive to some people, especially insiders. As it is, I don’t know much about it.
Still, I think if an outsider knows only cookies about girl scouts, doesn’t it reveal something about girl scouts?
Kent Mueller
2 months, 4 weeks agoYanwen, what does it say if a particular outsider doesn’t know what goes on inside the Girl Scouts? It tells me that you don’t know enough about the topic to write a column.
As I said, I didn’t raise any girls, therefore I’m not an “insider”. You admit you “don’t know much about it” and you say that you knew your writing would “be offensive to some people”. The why write it, unless you intended to offend? Not having any facts, you don’t add to any pool of knowledge.
What was your objective?
Kent Mueller
2 months, 4 weeks agoI’m sorry, I really don’t mean to jump down your throat. But, this came off as a broadside to the Girl Scout organization. And for what? For selling cookies? If children can’t sell cookies in this country, then we are far more gone that I had previously thought. Banishing cookies does nothing to teach youth healthy ways or the advantages of moderation.
Yanwen Xia
Overland Park
2 months, 4 weeks agoKent, Among other objectives, I really challenge people to challenge themselves and see if they are capable of thinking out of the box.
I have been thinking of writing similar thing about Salvation Army, which, once again, I admit from very beginning that I know nothing about, other than its lofty motivation and its inefficient way of raising money, which we are all very familiar with during holiday season. Once, I was sitting in my car waiting for someone outside the store, I noticed people tried to avoid the bell-people by going through the other door.
Why can’t the Army go to any of the church or school to mobilize people or any positive forces there to make crafts or even cookies and sell them, instead of simply waving the bell? Especially during holiday seasons when people are in need of cash, very few people would like to give out cash for nothing.
Again, my message is: be innovatory even in fundraising.
I wrote it because I believe it is a good message.
Yanwen Xia
Overland Park
2 months, 4 weeks agoKent, I think my message is more than about selling cookies. I don’t think I have said banning this practice.
Very often I see people take easy way out and avoid challenges. e.g. doing volunteer work. Make no mistake all volunteer works are highly recommendable. But it is easy to land one in a library, so easy that you have to apply early for a spot. On the other hand, it is difficult to create your own volunteer opportunities or even better create opportunities for you and others who are like you, by organizing kid’s club in summer or reading groups, etc. By creating your own volunteer opportunity, you contribute not only time but your organization skill or leadership or other skills.
Very often, if it is easy, many people rush in; if it is difficult, very few take that route. But one always learns and gains more by taking the difficult challenge.
This is how I see girl scout cookies and Salvation Army bell-waving. They do it partly because it is easy. But as a parent, I encourage my children to think differently from the crowd.
Kent Mueller
2 months, 4 weeks agoYanwen, this is amazing, you state you know nothing of these organizations, then you state with authority their deficiencies. Don’t you see how ridiculous that is?
You obviously want people to make crafts to sell. Go ahead, you can do that. But, I am amazed that you wonder why people would give money to the Salvation Army bell ringers “for nothing”. That is exactly the point. True charity doesn’t require a quid pro quo. People willingly give money because they want to help people who are less fortunate than they are. True charity does not involve assessing the value of what is received for what is given.
Matt Henry
2 months, 4 weeks agoIs it a good thing to think outside the box when you really have no idea what’s in the box? Should this author be challenged to think inside the box? Is it possible that the author’s biases are making an otherwise clear box very opaque? Fat girls selling cookies and learning about makeup and dolls while boys do cool stuff does make for a great thing to complain about. Why seek truth?
The reason you don’t hear about boy scouts selling cookies is because they spend 6 weeks selling popcorn. It’s their number one (and for many troops their only) annual fundraiser. Typically male biased. I’m not sure how but I’m sure it is. Terrible reinforcer of gender models in our patriarchal society. I guess.
Kent - only one dumber; the time someone called for an international ban on indoor fireworks without knowing what laws already exist, whether existing laws were already broken in incidents that occurred, pointed to three incidents that occurred over 40 years as evidence of necessity, and asked readers about how international law even works. This is a close second.
And is it just me or is there something unseemly about these ‘authors’ spending thousands of words defending their mendacity on these boards? The regulars don’t and their tripe is no better.
Matt Henry
2 months, 4 weeks ago“if an outsider knows only cookies about girl scouts, doesn’t it reveal something about girl scouts….”
I can’t see that it does. It’s not like there is no info out there. Stop and talk to a scout or leader, go to their website…. But even that is too much work? Really? It does say something about the person who would write a column in a major metropolitan newspaper about a topic she admits in the column that she knows almost nothing about, in a digital age where it would take about 30 seconds to learn a whole lot, both official and unofficial, and then tell everyone ELSE to think outside the box. I gotta tell you, this flabbergasts me. I can’t tell if this is arrogant or naive or a cultural embarrassment or all three.
Why in the world didn’t you at least make a small amount of effort to find out who they are and what they do? Why in the world would you say something so accusatory like they don’t do anything to “prepare girls to be anything but cookie makers or cookie sellers” when you didn’t spend even the smallest amount of time finding out if they do those very things?
Kent Mueller
2 months, 4 weeks agoI wish I could just let this one go, but….
Yanwen, please explain why you think standing out in the elements with a Salvation Army money kettle “is easy”. Also, please explain why you think selling Girl Scout cookies “is easy”.
You said the bell ringers for the Salvation Army are “inefficient”. Why do you say that? Do you know what revenue is raised in that process? Do you know what costs are involved? Do you know the degree of effort involved to manage the operation? Do you know the trend lines of each of those? Those are the things one needs to know before a pronouncement of efficient or inefficient can be made. If a change would be made, it would only make sense to change to something that would raise more money. Selling homemade crafts? I could be wrong, but I don’t see either the Salvation Army or the Girl Scouts raising more money by selling crafts than by bell ringing and selling popular cookies.
When you defended your lack of knowledge of the Girl Scouts, you asked if that doesn’t reveal something about the Girl Scouts. No, it does not. It is not incumbent upon the Girl Scouts to make sure a particular writer is informed about their organization. However, it should be incumbent upon a writer to not write about a subject the writer willingly admits of which to know nothing. That isn’t challenging anyone to think outside the box. That is tearing something down with no basis to do so.
Matt Henry
2 months, 4 weeks agoBingo, Kent. It takes a lot of chutzpah to suggest that people should change their thinking on a subject when acknowledging that you know almost nothing about that subject. Boggles the mind.
And great point on the “inefficiencies” at the Salvation Army. How can you possibly make a charge of inefficiency if you know absolutely nothing about the details?
Matt Henry
2 months, 4 weeks agoLast thought: Kent, you should enjoy this link. This is not about this issue, but it screams about it.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2013/02/gay-marriage-is-it-right-to-be-wrong.html
George Hunsucker
Northland
2 months, 4 weeks agoI anxiously await the reply to the request by the Salvation Army to raise money at our schools as Y suggested in the 5th post of this thread…..
She obviously does not understand the Christian concepts that are domonstrated in the Salvation Army’s efforts—God repeatedly said you will be measured on how you help the poorest, be it clothing, food or money…
George Hunsucker
Northland
2 months, 4 weeks agoMy grandfather used to say Matt,”never let a lack of knowledger prevent you from speaking with authority”…. looks like the shoe fits perfectly…
Kent Mueller
2 months, 4 weeks agoMatt, thanks for the support. But, I prefer to leave gay marriage out of this. I am a died in the whole conservative. However, unlike many conservatives, I believe gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry just as heterosexuals. My view of conservatism is that the focal point is on the rights of the individual. Therefore, it is easy for me to support marriage regardless of who is involved.
Also, I don’t think Yanwen is a bad person at all. It is just puzzling as to why commenting on something one admittedly knows nothing is a project in helping people think outside the box.
I could make provocative statements about the newest theories of nuclear physics to help people think outside the box. But I don’t think that would be a good idea since I know nothing of nuclear physics.
Matt Henry
2 months, 4 weeks agoIf you read the article you will see that the author was using gay marriage as an example but specifically says that you can replace it with any controversial topic in the modern era, no matter what side you take. He used gay marriage because it is well known and topical. You could just as easily rewrite his whole piece on the moral relativism of girl scout cookie sales. That was my point in even bringing it up.
Nor do I think this author is a “bad” person (whatever that means, relatively speaking), but what does the fact that this piece even exist and is not laughed off this page say about where we are societally? We can’t have a real conversation about anything due to this problem with moral relativism. Can you imagine a more inane topic, especially when castigating those for the “moral” crimes of gender stereotyping and abetting childhood obesity? Can you see how the topic of the despotism of moral relativism is, well, relevant and how this could be the poster child for it?
I think that this piece is considered at all a reasonable addition to the discourse in our society says a great deal about how we have fallen, and that piece I linked to says why.
Kent Mueller
2 months, 4 weeks agoMatt, what you say is very plausible. But, how about this line of reasoning? It could be that there is less and less editing prior to publication than there used to be before significant downsizing in the newspaper industry occurred.
Matt Henry
2 months, 4 weeks agoTrue enough. I would add that the advent of the internet and online newspaper gives voice to a lot that would not otherwise be out there. My guess is that this piece would never make the “paper”, but it costs nothing to allow a little bandwith.
Still, I find that reasoned debate is something that is in it’s death throes in all facets of our society. My favorite modern expression is “well, that’s just Joe being Joe.” Another good one is “I was being true to myself”; this last one is a favorite of the under 30 crowd, like being true to one’s own beliefs, no matter how outside of what has ever been considered “right”, is the only true measure of rightness. If that doesn’t represent cracks in the foundation I don’t know what does.
Yanwen Xia
Overland Park
2 months, 4 weeks agoKent, “Do you know what revenue is raised in that process? Do you know what costs are involved? Do you know the degree of effort involved to manage the operation? Do you know the trend lines of each of those?”
These are legitimate questions. The fact that I did not write anything about it is I will wait till I have time to find related answers. In fact, I will start contacting Salvation Army after my daughter goes to college and I have some time for it.
I will share with you my findings.
Kent Mueller
2 months, 4 weeks agoYanwen, but you did write about that. You said the Salvation Army has inefficient ways of raising money. Yes, you said that. Please don’t say you didn’t. Did you even recognize the questions I posed as ones that would enable you to say the Salvation Army is inefficient? Those are the questions that would need answers before you said what you did. Remember, you have already said that you don’t know what you are talking about which is an astonishing admission by a writer. If you don’t know what you are writing about, what else do you have?
If you haven’t noticed I am the one who has somewhat defended you. But you attacked me and therefore you have bitten my hand and you have lost me.
You who have said you don’t know anything about the Salvation Army, and therefore don’t know anything about what you are writing, and have said they are inefficient in their money raising. The Salvation Army is a recipient of funds from the United Way. I have been a part of the the United Way review process which evaluates the recipient organizations in great detail. Of the dozens of agencies that are benefited by United Way dollars, I was a part of reviewing a small handful. One of those was the Salvation Army. That meant that I took time off for several days covering several weeks to pour over financial statements of the Salvation Army. I took binders of reports home to study. We then went as a group to tour various Salvation Army locations to see first hand how the money was being spent.
I, and many others over the years, spend that kind of effort to help ensure that donated dollars are put to good use, and you glom on to the Star’s pedestal and pronounce, and then defend, that the Salvation Army is inefficient, while saying you don’t have any idea what you are talking about. That shows an extraordinary amount of gall.
I was being nice, hoping that you would say something to the effect that it would be better for you to speak if you had done some homework. But, you have steadfastly held onto your claims while continuing to say you don’t any of the facts.
Your waiting until your daughter goes to college to contact the Salvation Army to ask the questions you needed to ask before making your charge is absolutely pathetic journalism. I’m sorry, I tried to be nice, but you just didn’t let me do that.
Jennifer Freeman Hodson
2 months, 3 weeks agoI stumbled across this article while searching for some interesting facts on cookies we (meaning me and my girls) could share with others as they are working their cookie booth. Unlike yourself, I DO know what Girl Scouts do and what the organization does for girls. It does not make them into cookie makers nor homemakers, which you allude would be a bad thing for girls. On the contrary, homemaking is a very noble choice. The girls learn many skills, develop self confidence, learn the importance of setting and achieving set goals, money management, and people skills all while selling those cookies to people, both in their door to door sales and in booth sales. How do you think they get the funds to run this nationwide organization? Wait, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION. It is through the sale of those cookies, it is our main fundraiser (just as previously mentioned, the Boy Scouts sell popcorn). Here’s a few facts I learned from a simple Google search (which lead me to your absurd article)- cookies were first sold in 1917 by a troop in Muskogee, OK as a service project. By the way, we still do service projects, and each troop decides what to do. Another fun fact, Girl Scout Cookies are the top selling cookies during the first quarter every year. Without the sales of the cookies, which is a tradition, the organization could not exist. If you want to fight obesity, then I suggest maybe writing an article on ways you think would be innovative to do so. Please do not write an article bashing an organization, or their means of teaching and supporting our girls, without first doing some research to base your cockeyed opinion on. Oh, and by the way, if you think selling cookies is the easy way to raise money, you have obviously, without your stated ignorance of Girl Scouts, really hit the nail on the head that you know nothing of what you were writing about. This is a huge undertaking for everyone involved, especially the cookie managers, who volunteer hours and hours of their time to ensure this is handled smoothly. Have you ever volunteered in any capacity of the things you attacked? I am also a bell ringer, among many other volunteer efforts, and none of which are easy.