Girl Scouts–Arizona Cactus-Pine Council (GSACPC) is celebrating a successful cookie season. From Jan. 18 to Feb. 28, participating Girl Scouts across central and northern Arizona summoned their inner G.I.R.L. (Go-getter, Innovator, Risk-taker, Leader) ™ as they sold nearly 2.1 million boxes of delicious cookies, building essential financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills imperative to leadership and future success along the way.
Despite COVID-19, GSACPC Cookie Bosses kicked off the cookie selling in creative, socially distant, and contact-free ways to keep themselves and their customers safe. Even in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, girls adapted their sales methods to share the joy of Girl Scout Cookies through the largest girl-led entrepreneurship program. Their strategies include opening the Digital Cookie app early on Jan. 4 and offering drive-thru cookie booth locations throughout the Valley.
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The funds raised through the cookie program will allow local girls to take part in a variety of programs, community outreach projects, and enrichment over the next year, including:
• Help girls fund their Take Action projects for the community and amazing girl-led adventures for troops. Girl Scouts use their proceeds to fund High Award projects or projects that impact the community, like hosting a camp for youth, donating to those in need, and improving community parks. In 2020, many Girl Scouts sewed masks and made care packages to donate to essential workers, including physicians and hospital staff, grocery store staff, and first responders.
• Cover the cost of running the Girl Scout Cookie Program, including the costs of cookies, materials, and logistics.
• Help our Council provide Girl Scout programs in STEM, the outdoors, life skills, entrepreneurship, camps, leadership training, and more!
• Maintain and improve our four camp properties and the financial assistance that keeps Girl Scouting available and affordable for all girls.
Girl Scout Cookie Entreprenurs also earn rewards on their individual sales. They can choose to receive incentive prices or “Program Credits” that can be used to help pay for summer camp, membership dues, Girl Scout travel, and other programs and events.
The Girl Scout Cookie Program helps Girl Scouts earn money for these fun, educational activities and community projects and plays an important role in helping girls learn essential life skills like decision-making, money management, people skills, business ethics, and goal setting. All proceeds from the cookie program stay local and support Arizona’s Girl Scouts.
How the cookies crumbled, by the numbers:
• 6,492 girls in central and northern Arizona sold 2,082,122 packages of cookies
• The Per Girl Average was 320 boxes each, up from 176 boxes each in 2020
• The top cookie seller, Jordyn Talahytewa, an IGM from the Hopi Lands, sold 10,813 boxes of cookies
• The top troop, Troop 558 in Peoria, sold 34,468 boxes of cookies. Troop 1892 in Lake Havasu sold 18,720 boxes of cookies. Troop 203 in Tempe sold 17,512 boxes of cookies
• 17 girls sold over 5,000 boxes each
• Over 657,700 packages were sold online through its Digital Cookie platform, that’s more than double the sales through this platform compared to last year
• The most popular cookie sold was Thin Mints
The success of this year’s cookie program was possible only with the support of the community.
• Girl Scouts were still able to sell at some booths this year, thanks to Fry’s Food Stores, Bashas’ Family of Stores (Bashas’, Food City, A.J.’s), Walmart, and YAM Properties
• Real-estate brokerage Homie partnered with the Council on the “Tiny Cookie Castle,” which was designed and built by Girl Scout Cadette Maija Kaprosy. Each Sunday in February, cookie fans were able to visit The Shops at Norterra to tour the 13-foot by 13-foot by 9-foot castle made almost entirely out of Girl Scout Cookie boxes!
• The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation generously invested in girls once again through a $665,000 grant in support of the cookie program. It included purchasing one dozen boxes of cookies from every girl who participated. At nearly 80,000 boxes, this was the single largest cookie purchase ever made in Arizona.
