A Guide To Sweet Success! “What can a girl do?”

Girls can Change the World! Build excitement around the cookie sale with a cookie event at the Council or Service Unit level. Girls of all ages learn by doing. These activities help girls develop The 5 Skills through interactive stations and fun!

Choose a Style and Event Venue Sleepover — Host an overnight or PJ party. Get a DJ for dancing and movies to watch. Popcorn and other snacks round out the night. Cookie Kick-Off at an attraction or park - Host your event at a local zoo – super special if they have a Red Panda! Set up stations near animals that have been cookie mascots in the past and use this opportunity to help girls connect with the environment! Other attractions like mini golf or a botanical garden give girls the opportunity to do extra activities with the rally and increase the value and participation. Cookie Recipe Cook-Off — Invite Local Chefs to create desserts with the cookies. Have girls sample and vote on best desserts. Or set up an Iron Chef competition with cookies as the secret ingredient. Pep Rally — short and sweet – meet at a central location and host the best pep rally ever. Cheers, songs, ceremonial first cookie order – all for fun. Replicate your Cookie Rally/Kick-off across the council simultaneously so more girls can attend. Your sale will benefit if more girls have an opportunity to attend an event.

Preparation:

• Choose an appropriate location for your event. Be sure to find out what costs are involved and any special requirements needed. • Model financial literacy by creating a budget for the event and cost to attend. • Advertise the event through council newsletters, flyers, or social media as appropriate. Be sure to set up a method of registration so you know how many will attend. • Coordinate with your local council communications department to get the word out about the rally. It can help initiate the

media campaign for the cookie sale. • Recruit help! Don't try to do it all alone. Break jobs into small responsibilities that people can easily do. Invite teen Girl Scouts to help with set up and program activities. • Please Note: If you are going to sample cookies or provide refreshments, be sure to ask the girls about any potential allergies they may have.

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What to include: • Open the event with a welcome. Create fun cheers or songs to get the enthusiasm going! Talk about why the Girl Scout Cookie Program is so important to Girl Scouting and the girls. • Divide the girls into manageable groups. Explain how the event will run. Be creative and have fun! • Encourage the girls to interact and share ideas during the event. • If girls are visiting stations and there is a time limit, use a horn or whistle to signal, about every 15 minutes, when it is time to move to the next station. • Incorporate the 5 Skills for Girls into booths: Goal Setting, Decision Making, Money Management, People Skills and Business Ethics. See notes in this guide on which skills are supported by these learning activities. • Consider a station or two where girls can complete part of their age level Cookie Business badges. Refer to the Girl Guides to Girl Scouting for more details.

Hands-On Stations

America’s Best Cookies Girls learn all about Girl Scout Cookies and know their product. Suggestions:

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Play a Girl Scout Cookie Matching Game. Have names of cookies on one side of a piece of paper and descriptions of the cookies on the other. Let girls match up cookie pictures with descriptions. Download photos of the cookies from the ABC Art Gallery at abcsmartcookies.com. Do a Taste Test. Invite girls to taste the Girl Scout Cookies. To save time at the rally, pre-pack the cookies in baggies for the event. Ask girls to write their own descriptions. Have them rank their favorites on a large voting board!

Play “Design a Meal.” Using magazines (with pictures of food), girls can design a meal including Girl Scout Cookies as part of the meal. Cookie clip art can be downloaded from www.abcsmartcookies.com. They should be aware of the serving size for each cookie and write this number on their meal poster. “Name that Cookie.” Call out key cookie facts and have girls shout out the name when they recognize it. For instance – uses real Citrus flavors – Cranberry Citrus Crisps! Cookie Bingo. Set up bingo cards with cookie facts, names, etc. and play to increase girls’ knowledge of all the cookie varieties.  

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What can a Girl do?

Encourages girls to think about and practice giving back to their community during the cookie sale. Suggestions: Consider a service project to recycle gently used toys for a children’s center or collecting warm coats or blankets for those in need as part of your rally.

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Create sculptures out of items normally thrown away. Start early and collect all boxes and cases from cookies used at training events or the rally and gather together. Girls work in teams to create sculptures. Provide items that can be reused like fabric scraps, paper, etc. Highlight your cookie share project by inviting representatives of the organizations you support. Military personnel can share stories of how meaningful the “taste of home” is or food banks can talk about how cookies add something special to food baskets.

Talk about how cookie sales can support other community service projects. Have girls and troops post their community service projects on a wall for all to see. Invite girls and troops to share this information on the GSUSA wall - Map it! Girls Changing the World. For more information about Map It!, visit this website http://forgirls.girlscouts.org/map-it-girls-changing-the-world

Super Sales

Girls learn more about their sales goals and brainstorm ways to exceed goals. Suggestions: Know Your Product and Pricing Game. Break girls up into teams of 2 to 4 girls and give each team a half-page answer sheet. Create “flash cards” depicting boxes of cookies in varying amounts and boxes with money. For instance, a flash card could show 5 boxes of cookies. The question would be, “How much will these cookies cost?” Your answer might be $17.50 if you are at $3.50 a box, or $20.00 if you are at $4.00 a box. Hold up each card (could also be done as a PowerPoint if indoors) for just a few seconds and give the teams 10 seconds to write an answer.

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Brainstorm all the things girls can do to reach their sales goals. Post the steps on a large flipchart. Ideas might be: serve samples at a booth sale, sell at a special event, ask your mom and dad to take you to their workplace so you can sell cookies to their co-workers, etc. Role-play proper booth sale etiquette and good selling techniques. Set up sample booth sales or have items available for girls to set up a booth. Offer prizes for role-playing or super selling techniques. Film a “Cookie Commercial.” Set up a booth where girls can film their own commercial. Use a flip camera and offer to share the commercial via email with the troop leader after the rally.

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Goal Setting

Technology and Ideas for Success

Focuses on the valuable goal setting life skill and a key to Girl Scout Cookie success. Suggestions: Move with COCOmobile. Show girls how to download the COCOmobile app on their iPhone®, iPod touch® or iPad®. Set goals, track goals, practice entering and editing orders, and show them what they can earn and do all on COCOmobile. Your ABC Sales Consultant can assist you with setting up test troops if you want to enter orders. Or have a team of tech savvy girls help show others how to download and use the app on their mobile Apple® device.

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COCO for goal setting - set up a computer station where girls can visit the ABC website and set up their account and set their goals. This is another great opportunity for Cadettes, Seniors and Ambassadors to mentor younger girls. Ask the girls to list some cookie goals. How many boxes do they want to sell? Why do they want to sell cookies? To fund a special Take Action Project? What do they want to learn? Is there a skill they want to practice like Decision Making? Make the display visual and fun – maybe a “bamboo forest” and girls write their goals on pictures of the red panda. Give each girl a postcard and tell her to write down her goals for the cookie sale. Address the postcards to themselves. Let them know the postcards will be mailed after the initial orders to remind them of their goals!

People First!

Girls learn how to interact with customers And the answer is... Help girls learn people skills by having them practice answers to common questions or comments. Suggested questions could include: How many boxes have you sold? What is your troop doing with the money? What is your favorite cookie? Is there a sugar free cookie? Where can I find out cookie ingredients?

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Say Please! Help girls practice to gracefully accept no from a customer or how to ask a customer to support Girl Scouts. Have girls break into teams of two or three and have one girl act as the customer. Give the “customer” questions to ask or other responses. Encourage girls to switch roles so everyone can be a seller and a buyer. Skits are another way to present the information. Have good and not so good scenarios and have girls vote on the appropriate techniques.

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Safety First

Girls staying safe while selling. Suggestions: Invite a local police officer to talk to girls about personal safety while selling cookies. Review safe selling practices listed on the order card. Show girls where the safety information is located on their order card so they can review it any time. Create a practice door. Make and decorate a practice front door to a house. Stage someone inside the “house” and encourage girls to knock on the door to practice their selling and safety skills.

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Just for Fun Activity Ideas Photo Booth Set up a Photo Booth with cookie images in the background and have a huggable Red Panda Mascot on hand for photos. Encourage girls to use these photos with their order cards if Mom and Dad help by posting order cards at work. Design a Bandana Give girls 12 x 12 blank sheets of paper and have them design a bandana that could be printed and sold in your council shop.

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Thank You Art Have girls create Thank You Cards at the rally to give to Store Managers who provide booth locations, for customers who buy cookies, or for parents and volunteers who help during sale.

Cookie Twister Put a new twist on an old favorite! Use a Twister game or make your own using fabric, a tarp or a large bed sheet. Instead of colors, use cookies as the circles on the game board. Place the names of the cookies on the spinners. So put your left hand on Cranberry Citrus Crisps and your right foot on Thin Mints and twist away! Game Show Bonanza Make learning even more fun by borrowing from a favorite game show format. You can play 1 versus 100, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader or $25,000 Pyramid. Show the COCO video from ABC and some of the other fun girl videos on ABC’s YouTube channel, easily accessible through abcsmartcookies.com. Additional Resources For decorations and prizes, visit www.orientaltrading.com

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Share Your Rally Post information, photos or a short video on the ABC Baker’s Volunteer Facebook page and be sure to check back often for other fun rally ideas from troops and councils across the country!

SPECIAL THANKS

TO THE FOLLOWING VOLUNTEERS FOR THEIR INPUT! Beth S – Missouri Heartland GS Jessica G – Texas Oklahoma Plains GS Ami C – San Gorgonio GS Virginia C – Central California South GS Jen S – Northwestern Great Lakes GS

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