First and foremost as a Girl Scout leader, we never make the girls sell cookies it is an optional program. Secondly, we teach the girls NEVER to go alone, always go with a friend (if they are older) or go with their parent/guardian and if they are older - TELL the parents were you are going and when to expect to be back. Third the new way of selling the cookies immediate...no more order taking..they bring the selection of cookies to the door for purchase; so in most cases the girls will be driven and an adult is right there driving the vehicle. Fourth, most of the troop do cookie booth sales thus eliminating the need to go door to door. Fifth, if the girl can use the phone - make the calls by the girl -- we always trained the girls not to let mom and dad do all the work by bringing in the order sheet to work. The book Girl Scout Safety-Wise book and the Girl Scout cookie program has each girl and parent sign an agreement to make sure the girls sell the cookie in a safe manner. Why are we picking on the Girl Scouts? This is the only major fundraiser that they do..they do not charge huge annual membership fees (none of which does the individual troop see) and the don't normally charge huge troop dues (.50 to 1.00 per meeting -- twice a month). How about any door to door fundraising...Boy Scouts, school activities?

I meant if they are younger in the parenthesis. I forget when the cutoff age is for mandatory taking a buddy on the sales. Cookie sales normally started in January and for the girls in the colder climes...they rarely went door to door because of the bad/frigid weather.

I also forgot the BIGGEST RULE taught...NEVER go into a HOUSE, ever. My own girls never went out by themselves (only the neighbors right next door, one was my daycare). I always drove behind them and parked along the street, they were always in my sight. Once my eldest got into 4th grade, she and her sister would go out together; again with me following along. My eldest got less sales then my youngest so the next years; she didn't go door-to-door and the troop decided they would do better at booth sales (and they all were experiencing the decline in sales door-to-door because they weren't little anymore - cute as they put it). When it came to the SHS Band Fruit sales -- she didn't even bother; as the author put it hitting up the homeowners didn't work. None of our relatives live in the state (shipping fruit was too expensive). So she worked at the Metrodome as a volunteer and at the time volunteer organization working at the Metrodome got money for their group's workers for there fundraising. I have a question for the author? What other methods of fundraising do you suggest for any group if you don't want the homeowner hit up for the money? I wish the school group that sold those coupon cards would come back to my neighborhood and I haven't seen a girl scout in a few years (my girls aren't in scouts anymore but I am still a leader. Can't buy cookies from my troop because it could foster the view of favoritism).

Another thing...you personally don't like door-to-door sales even with a parent tagging along? Do you escort your children to school? Walk with them in a grocery store? Let them play in the yard? I believe you just have a problem with fundraising in any method.

I love everything Penna1965 said, hear hear!

I don't think she was picking on the Girl Scouts; just using it as an example since it's that time of year. I was a Girl Scout back in the day - super cookie seller most of the years, I may add - and I remember going alone around my neighborhood. I'm sure when I was little my mom came with my but once I hit junior GS status my neighbors knew I was coming. I also remember selling magazines, candybars, Gold C books, the works! Sure I got turned away a lot, but I think the interaction helped. However, being older now, I get the safety factor.

There is a way, I think, to balance the "benefits" of door-to-door selling (and they do exist) with the safety of the child. There are select families in our neighborhood to whom our kids could go; they are all trusted neighbors and the houses are all visible from our front porch. When our kids were in the "wrapping paper for schools" age group, they knew they could go to those six houses. No more, no less. And they knew either my husband or I would be watching. So they were able to have a sense of freedom, a sense of participating in something that benefited their school---and the sense of possibly not making a "sale". And they were within earshot/view of their home the entire time.

I struggle with & have been thinking about this issue over the past week. While I agree with the author, and hear the irritation with the first (& 2nd & 3rd & 4th!) poster, I have to come down on the side of the author: kids should NOT be doing door-to-door sales!

While the GSA may do a good job of training their girls on safe, appropriate selling, it truly depends on who is in leadership & how well the girls & their families are listening & following directions. The 10-yr-old across the street heads out daily, usually by herself but occasionally with a same-aged friend, to sell cookies. It is NOT safe, even though we live in a generally safe neighborhood in SLP.

Second, SLP has a solicitation law on the books. Hmmm... Are Girl Scouts, sports teams, school kids, church groups, etc, exempt? I'm guessing NOT... which leads me to the conclusion that we are encouraging our children to engage in ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR. Not cool.

Last, while I was also a GS & sold a ton of cookies, we relied on family, friends, church & parental work contacts for my selling. I did NOT go door-to-door, despite living in an extremely safe & smaller community - in a safer time in history. As a social worker - and now mother to twin 6-yr-old daughters - I am extremely sensitive to the SAFETY issues present in our current world situation.

Bottom line: it may be illegal, and is an unnecessary RISK for our children to engage in door-to-door selling. It worries me.

While I was never a Girl Scout (surprise, surprise), I did sell chocolate in grade school. Believe it was mainly grades 4-6. I think this issue really comes down to age. If you're 7,8,9, maybe you go with mom/dad walking with you to the door. If you're 10,11,12, perhaps it's good for you to learn a bit of independence. Personally, I don't recall ever feeling threatened or scared going by myself. I knew what to do if someone approached me in a harassing way. To me, it was safe.

Um, even as an adult I don't want to head up to people's houses and ask them buy stuff - just too many freaks out there.

When my kid has stuff to sell from school or whatever, I buy stuff and then use it to give out as gifts or whatever and everyone in the company I work for knows the routine and plenty of folks with kids all do the round robin to buy the stuff.

As for teaching my kid skills, I remember having to sell stuff door and door and I don't recall really learning anything other than I am horrible at sales and didn't want to do it for a living...

Ms. Halvorsen: What is SLP?

There are fewer freaks and less stranger danger than you think. Most crimes against children are still committed by people they know. I hated the door-to-door selling as a kid but it didn't harm me permanently to have to do it. And I was given a choice, if I didn't want to go out and sell it myself, I didn't have to. I had to understand I wasn't going to win the top prize, but I could make the decision for myself. Generally my parents did not take the sales sheets to work, it was understood that this was my project and if I didn't do the sales, there would be no sales. Still - I would not send a child out alone any more, but I would go with them and support the door-to-door selling. The last saleskids we've had at our house both had their parents with them. The most important thing to teach them is to never go inside the door. Stay on the steps/porch.

Penna, SLP = St. Louis Park. I'm not sure where I stand on the actual issue of selling, but I did want to weigh in on the "stranger danger" issue. Whether going door-to-door or not, people in life inevitably have to learn how to deal with strangers. If you work in retail, or are a delivery person, you confront strangers all the time. There are a number of other examples. Again, as I mentioned, age is important when it comes to this stuff—younger children should certainly be more wary of strangers. But older children—whether selling door-to-door or not—should learn the concept of interacting with strangers, in my opinion.

Each adult generation takes on the fear and paranoia of the previous generation; "back in the day" is a lie of mythical proportions. This paranoia wreaks havoc on community building. It would be useful to answer statistically: just exactly how many "freaks" are out there? What percentage of youth who are selling items door to door get kidnapped, raped, or killed? Every parent takes a risk when they put their children in a car, which entails a higher probability of injury than soliciting. The many benefits for youth engaging in door to door sales in their own community outweigh the risks. If the risks appear too great for you, then don't allow your children to do it. However, don't preach to other parents who see it differently.

Does no one else see the problem with having our kids just be sales people for junk? I love Thin Mints, but a lot of the stuff (wrapping paper is one I can think of) is just cheap junk, and sadly a lot of the food items (except the fruit) is frankly rather unhealthy - is this really necessary? I think fundraisers of service (car wash, raking leaves, shoveling, etc) are much better. Or, my niece is doing one now where you pledge to donate a certain amount per book they read (or a flat amount). What a great idea!

I'm not a parent, but I have little support for the "salesman" type of fundraising for kids, regardless of where it is done (door-to-door or otherwise).

I did a lot of door to door fundraising for organized sports and girl scouts when I was a kid. Selling in the neighborhood was easy because we knew all of our neighbors. The kids that sold the most were usually the ones that their parents brought the candy/cookies or whatever to work. I was lucky enough to have older siblings that sold for me at their high school so I did rather well.

Since I've been a homeowner I have yet to have any kids come door to door selling anything. I think it is becoming a thing of the past now.

No way. I'm not concerned about the safety aspects, but don't think we should be sending our kids out to peddle stuff. I'm less bothered by the scout groups and other organizations, but it's the SCHOOL-sponsored door-to-door fundraising that really angers me, especially since so many of the products are so expensive and the school gets such a small percentage of the profit. That said, I think it's very safe for a pair of kids to be going door-to-door selling stuff, and assume that the odds of them getting hurt are far greater when they get in a car for a routine drive to the store. I like the fact that kids are actually getting out and walking around the neighborhood and meeting neighbors -- just don't like that they are doing so in the form of selling things.

Gretchen H, before you going accusing Girl Scouts of breaking the law, go look at the law. Anti-soliticing laws generally have exemptions for youth fundraising. Does "SLP?" Like you, I won't take the time to look it up. First off, I don't even know whether "SLP" is Saint Louis Park or Spring Lake Park or Saturn Loon Planet.

Wendy, I generally enjoy your site, but your 2 "reasons" aren't persuasive to me. Your first reason is you don't like it. Well, others like it. How do we decide this weighty matter? Your preferences shouldn't apply to all of us.
Your second reason is safety. Of course it's true that, as your cited National Association for Paranoid Parents that, "The safest thing is to prohibit your children from participating in door-to-door solicitations, the organization says on its website." Well, actually it's not true. The safest thing would be to lock your child indoors until they die of natural causes as a senior citizen. That way, no bad people could ever get to them. But in the real world, we have to take risks, even the risks of walking around the mean streets of Maple Grove with boxes of tasty cookies in tow. Scary!

OK, let's not let kids play outside my themselve! Let's organize social events for our kids so they can't learn how to do it for themselves! Let's not let the kids go out and learn how to interact with others! Let's just build a wall around our children and make them afraid of everyone! Now, when these kids have kids of their own... they will build an even bigger wall! I pray that people teach their kids how to trust their gut feelings and not be an isolated... paranoid... quivering mass. Girl Scouts, you keep selling those cookies door to door... that is the only way I will buy them. Not from a stand, I need a sales pitch! All three of my babies were Girl Scouts.

Yes, Girl Scouts should sell door to door, with adult supervision.. The lessons they learn about safety, entrepreneurship, communication and self-confidence far out weigh the threat of a predator. Here's a link to where Girl Scout cookie money goes.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2012/03/07/good-question-where-does-girl-scout-cookie-money-go/

ELIMINATE SCHOOL FUNDRAISING! Unique Collaboration Generates Revenue for Public and Private Schools Year-Round and Keeps Our Children Off the Streets
By Saving Participants on Ordinary Purchases of Products & Services.
http://globebanc.com/business/schools