Girl Scout Cookie Selling times 3

I love Girl Scout Cookies and it is that time of year again. But how many families out their have several children in the same extra curricular activity. Multiple soccer games, softball, cheer leading, boys scouts, girl scouts, and that doesn't include the school related events throughout the year. While I love that my children are social and busy with good activities, I only have so many directions that I can be spread.

The cost of having multiple children enrolled in extra curricular activities can be overwhelming as well. For example, my 3 girls are all in girl scouts. Last summer, they all wanted to go to Camp Tahigwa for a weekend camping adventure. That weekend cost us over $150 and this was not an expensive specialty camp. 

I have to say though that fundraising time is the worst when you have multiple children in the same activity. I have had to make a rule that the only fundraisers we participate with in girl scouts are Girl Scout Cookies and bake sales. We can spend quality time together baking items for a bake sale. When it comes to selling the girl scout cookies, we had to implement a pot for cookie sales and then divide the amount sold equally among the three girls. In order for each of the girls to earn the prizes worth 100 boxes sold, they have to sell 300 boxes all together.

We have tried letting all the girls put their orders in separately, but then it just gets confusing for the customers because everyone feels like they have to buy at least one box from each of the girls. Then there are the people that just want one box. How do you decide who gets credit for that box? What is fair in that situation? As parents, we knew that was not going to work another year. The next year we decided to put everyone on the same sales form and divide the sales. That was obviously our first year because I didn't count as we went and ended up buying like 35 boxes so that the third girl could get that 100 boxes sold prize.

Last year we used that same selling method, but we agreed with the children that they could only submit an equal amount of boxes sold. The rest would be banked for discounts on trips for the rest of the year. That worked wonderfully! The girls worked their butts off and they sold over 300 boxes on their own. Plus, they had 60 boxes to submit towards discounts later in the year. They were happy because that meant one more trip than the year before. We were happy because we did not have to buy 35 extra boxes of cookies!

It worked so well for us last year, that I thought maybe some other parents selling Girl Scouts Cookies may want to try this idea out. Happy Cookie Selling to all you wonderful Girl Scouts out there!!