How To Donate Unsold Girl Scout Cookies To Local Heroes

What's better than opening up a fresh box of Girl Scout Cookies and digging in. How about sending a few boxes of Girl Scout Cookies to some local heroes?

Between lower than usual participation and the COVID-19 pandemic 2021 was a difficult year for Girl Scout Cookie sales. In fact they were left with 15 million boxes of unsold cookies at the end of their usual sales period. Many of those boxes never even left the bakery warehouses where they were made.

But the Girl Scouts weren't going to let them go to waste, they sent a bunch of them to military and first responders. But there were still a lot of cookies left, so they came up with a new plan, Cookies for Heroes. You can buy the unsold cookies online and donate them to charities right here in our local area. Becky Burton, the Chief Executive Officer for Girl Scouts of Texas Oklahoma Plains tells us,

At Girl Scouts of Texas Oklahoma Plains, we did have excess cookie packages at the end of our cookie season in March. Through our Cookies for Heroes program, 108,288 packages were donated from our Girl Scout Troops to front line workers, military troops, homeless shelters, and other organizations in the community. Of those donated packages, 86,604 went to area food banks and school districts across our area. We are proud of the cookie businesses our Girl Scouts executed this year, along with the opportunity for girls to learn how to best utilize excess inventory.

The Cookies for Heroes donation page lets you purchase boxes of Girl Scout Cookies and they'll be shipped to various charities in our local area. The credit for the sale goes to the Girl Scout Council in our local area as well.

The outpouring of support for the cookie program nationally has been overwhelming. Girl Scouts of the USA has launched a donation-only site to support the Girl Scout Movement after an unprecedented year. Please visit digitalcookie.girlscouts.org/scout/girlscouts2021 to make a donation for a box of cookies to be delivered to front-line workers, first responders, food banks, and other worthy causes. Donations made through this national effort stay local to our area.

It's $5 a box to donate cookies and you won't be able to choose which type of cookie gets delivered, that will be up the the Girl Scouts and local availability. They're also waving the 4-box minimum and shipping fees for donated cookies.

Cookies for Heroes is set up as a donation-only site, so you and I will have to wait until next year to dive into another box of Thin Mints, Lemon-Ups, or Caramel deLites / Samoas.

In the mean time we'll know that we've supported out local Girl Scouts Troop, we didn't let those delicious treats go to waste, and that they went to some local heroes who've been working hard all through the pandemic.