Yesterday, I got an email alerting me that it was almost time for me to start one of my other jobs – Girl Scout troop “cookie booth” coordinator. It will be my eighth year playing a part in this almost-100-year-old tradition of selling cookies to finance troop activities.
This year, however, my daughters’ troop will be able to expand their sales and marketing skills beyond a booth in their physical neighborhood to their other native land thanks to the Digital Cookie 2.0 program.
Yes, these digital native girls can now add e- and m-commerce skills development to their traditional experience in goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills and business ethics.
As announced in September, the Digital Cookie 2.0 platform is made possible by Dell and Visa. The two companies are providing hundreds of thousands of girls access to Digital Cookie, as well as the opportunity to take their cookie business to the next level and be set up for future success in the digital world.
“By supporting Girl Scouts' Digital Cookie program, we’re helping girls expand their existing cookie businesses and preparing them to be future female business leaders,” Trisa Thompson, vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility at Dell noted during an event to kick off the program. “We need strong, smart, tech-savvy women in laboratories, start-ups, elected offices and boardrooms, and this is a great start for girls to learn exactly what they’re capable of.”
A CNN report noted when the pilot of the Digital Cookie program rolled out last year that “The shift to online cookie sales is a ‘natural progression,’ […] that has the potential to put responsibility back in the hands of girls, depending on how much parents let them do.”
It started with two separate ways for girls to market their online cookie business: by inviting customers to visit a personalized cookie website, or by taking in-person orders using a mobile app. This year, girls who sold cookies using their own cookie websites will have an expanded experience that includes a mobile app feature that allows for a more diversified experience simulating today’s retail markets.
I’m excited to add this new channel to the door-to-door and corner booth sales for our troop. It will teach them important skills about running an e-commerce business, including revenue projection and digital customer acquisition and management, and it features new ways for girls to track sales by date, cookie type, customer, and more.
Plus, most of us have friends and family who live in other parts of the country and it’s always been a logistical challenge to reach them. Far too many boxes my daughter sold to my mother in Louisiana never made it from our Texas house to hers – which could really be more of a personal restraint issue, I suppose…
Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility at Dell, Trisa Thompson, talks with a Girl Scout Cadet during the Digital Cookie 2.0 media rollout at the Girl Scouts of the USA Headquarters in New York, NY.
