This year, the children are using the internet to their advantage through personalized websites and an app.
The Girl Scouts have long sold cookies in order to fund their programs, but this year, they are taking an entirely new direction in order to make sure that it is even easier to support them, by using online and mobile commerce tools.
The cookies have been sold for nearly a century, but it is clear that the program intends to remain up to date.
For the first time, Girl Scouts of America will now allow its members to use a mobile commerce app or personalized website in order to reach out to the people around them and sell the cookies that are critical to their ability to do what they do. That said, the individual Girl Scouts will be able to do this only with the permission of their parents or guardians as well as of their specific scout councils.
The entry into online and mobile commerce has been a response to a growing demand for this opportunity.
According to the chief digital cookie executive for the Girl Scouts, Sarah Angel-Johnson, “Girls have been telling us that they want to go into this space,” adding that “Online is where entrepreneurship is going.” The organization currently covers approximately 2 million girls across the United States.
Like other m-commerce and online shopping experiences, when a purchase is made over the website or the mobile app, it is possible to have the cookies shipped to the home or place of business of the buyer.
It is expected that during the launch of the program, there will be over 1 million girls – from those who are kindergarten age, right up to adolescence – who will be opting into this part of the cookie selling program, as this month represents one of their most important seasons. That said, this strategy is meant to be an enhancement and is not designed to replace the in-person contact that the girls have with the community, or the paper spreadsheets that are the foundation of an estimated $800 million in sales of cookies each year.