Cookie sales are THE Girl Scout tradition. It's a major event that requires enormous volunteer efforts to pull off each year. At the troop level, it also requires a great deal of time and effort. An adult must attend training and coordinate all aspects of ordering and delivering for what can be hundreds of cases of cookies. Traditional troops (those with just two or three co-leaders) tend to tackle the challenge by recruiting a cookie mom.

In my troops, which are cooperative, one or two moms take on that role and do not do any other events throughout the year. Even at that, I am not sure it is a fair swap. Our cookie moms attend training and then teach or re-teach the girls cookie sale etiquette in December. In the process, it's often a good idea to focus on one of the cookie try its or badges, since they tend to focus on the exact things that need to be covered or reviewed. They also collect permission slips to sell at this point (very important to ensure financial liability is assumed by each girl's parent).

The girls sell with the help of their parents and then the cookie moms have to count and order for the troop. Their next job as cookie gurus is to pick up the troop's order and then divide it up so that each girl can collect her share. Collecting and depositing the money may seem to ensure that the cookie moms have done enough, but somewhere in the middle of delivery, the cookie moms also coordinate up to four cookie booths.

Cookie booths are when the girls, properly chaperoned, set up a table and sell cookies to the general public. The best places to do this tend to be outside grocery stores and movie rental spots. Our troop does just one cookie booth a year, and the girls seem to enjoy it a great deal. Our neighborhood cookie manager originally provided us with the right combination of cases to order to stock our cookie booth but over the years, we've come up with out own list of big sellers and order accordingly.

Not enough? Cookie moms also have to order, pick up, and distribute incentives (patches and prizes) after all the monies are turned into Council. Incentives are the easiest and most enjoyable part of the job, although it can be hard to look at the faces of those who did not sell enough to earn the treasured incentive.

Being cookie mom, in other words, is a big commitment that requires good organizational skills. It is an essential job though. Without a cookie mom, a troop cannot participate in the cookie sale.