50 Fun Facts About Girl Scout

Who founded the Girl Scouts of the USA?

She had met Robert Baden-Powell a year earlier and came home determined to build something for girls.

In which year was the organisation founded?

The first troop meeting took place on 12 March that year, and the date is still marked as its birthday.

In which city did the first troop meet?

The founder's historic district there became the national programme centre in 1956.

Roughly how many members has the organisation grown to?

It has been organised and run exclusively for girls since its first meeting.

What did the founder leave to the Savannah troops in her will?

The building at 330 Drayton Street became the First Headquarters and is still in use.

What is the organisation's highest honour for older members?

Bronze and Silver sit below it, and older members work through both on the way up.

Which international body is the organisation a member of?

The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts links national organisations across the world.

Which level covers kindergarten and first grade?

That programme started in 1984, succeeding a 1976 pilot called Pixies.

In which year did the Daisy programme begin?

It replaced a short-lived pilot scheme for the same age group called Pixies.

Which level was created in 2008 for girls in grades 11 and 12?

The same reorganisation moved sixth graders up from Junior to Cadette.

Since the 2008 reorganisation, which grades have Brownies covered?

In the 1938 structure, Brownies ran from age seven to nine before the divisions were redrawn.

Which Senior programme, running from 1941 to the 1970s, was built around aviation?

In July 1942, 29 troop leaders from 15 states met in Philadelphia for its leadership training.

In which year was the first troop for African American girls founded?

An American Indian troop followed in New York State in 1921 and a Mexican American troop in Houston in 1922.

Where was the first American Indian troop formed, in 1921?

Most units were segregated at that time under state and local laws and customs.

Which city hosted the first troop for Mexican American girls, in 1922?

Josephine Groves Holloway went on to found unofficial African American troops in Tennessee in 1933.

Which scheme, introduced in 2003, ran alongside traditional badge work for older members?

Its booklets covered topics like environmentalism or self-confidence rather than a single skill.

Where were the first known Girl Scout cookies sold, in December 1917?

The Mistletoe Troop baked and sold them at their local high school.

Which Oklahoma unit made those first sales?

Five years later the national magazine printed a sugar cookie recipe and suggested every troop try it.

In which year did the official manual suggest selling cookies to fund a troop?

A magazine recipe six years earlier had already shown troops how to bake a simple sugar cookie.

What else did the Girl Scouts sell during the Second World War, when baking ingredients ran short?

They also collected fat in cans for the war effort and sold war bonds at no profit.

How many cookies were in a box in 1943?

Rationing shaped the whole programme that year, from ingredients to packaging.

How many bakeries were licensed to make the cookies from the 1990s?

ABC Bakers and Little Brownie Bakers between them decide which varieties a council can sell.

Roughly what share of the money does the local troop keep?

Most goes to the regional council for programming, and the bakery takes 25 to 35 per cent.

Up to how many cookie varieties are offered at once?

The same recipe can carry different names depending on which bakery a council uses.

Why can the same cookie have two different names?

There has never been a move to standardise them, which is why Samoas and Caramel deLites coexist.

How many boxes did Elizabeth Brinton, the 'Cookie Queen', sell in 1985?

She sold to a sitting president, Ronald Reagan, and her record stood for 29 years.

Which president did that record-setting seller sell cookies to?

Over her whole time as a member she moved more than 100,000 boxes.

Who broke that 29-year sales record in 2014?

She was twelve years old, and sold 18,107 boxes to do it.

How many boxes did New Jersey's Charlotte McCourt sell in 2017?

Her pitch letter, which honestly rated each cookie, went viral and did most of the work.

How many boxes were left unsold in June 2021?

Normal sales run to roughly 200 million boxes a year, so the pandemic hit hard.

Roughly how many boxes are sold in a normal year?

That volume is why bakery contracts and naming rights matter so much to each council.

What was the stated aim of the cookie programme, beyond raising money?

Booths at storefronts, door-to-door rounds and online sales all feed into the same lesson.

What do members earn by completing tasks and mastering skills?

The mission statement talks about courage, confidence and character, and the badge sheet is how it is measured.

Which activities does the organisation's mission specifically mention?

Everything else, from cookie booths to the Gold Award, hangs off those three.

Which three cookie recipes were added in the 1950s?

The Savannah name is a nod to the city where the whole organisation started.

Which grandmother's frontier experiences shaped early Girl Scout traditions?

She wrote about the Northwest Territory in her book Wau-Bun: The Early Day.

In which year did the founder's Savannah district become the national programme centre?

She had died in 1927, leaving her carriage house to the local troops.

How many councils remained after the 2006 reorganisation?

The mergers moved many councils to a different bakery, and cookie names changed with them.

Who traditionally set the price of a box of cookies?

A 2006 newspaper investigation found Thin Mints selling for $3.50 in one town and $4.00 in the next.

In which year were cookie sale awards introduced?

By then the programme had been running, in one form or another, for eighty years.

Which first lady was the actual president of the Girl Scouts from 1922 to 1925?

She later chaired the national board from 1925 to 1928, and every first lady since has served as honorary president of the organisation.

On which date do many American Girl Scouts celebrate Founder's Day?

It is the founder's birthday, so the parties often double as Halloween events with costumes and birthday cake.

Which designer, famous for film title sequences, created the Girl Scouts' 1978 logo?

The three-profile mark was refreshed in 2010, when the hair and facial styles were updated by The Original Champions of Design.

What colour vest do Girl Scout Juniors wear?

Each level has its own colour, and the three oldest levels all share khaki so a girl can keep one vest from sixth grade to graduation.

A project for the organisation's highest award takes a minimum of how many hours?

The Silver Award requires at least 50 hours and the Bronze Award at least 20, each one a large-scale service project.

What was the title of the first Girl Scout movie, in which the founder appeared?

During the same fundraising week in New York she dropped pamphlets onto a crowd from an airplane.

What is the Girl Scout slogan?

'Be prepared' is the motto, not the slogan, shared with Scouting movements worldwide.

Which airline gave Senior Girl Scouts courtesy flights in an aviation programme begun in 1959?

For many of the girls it was their first time on an airplane; the programme ended when the carrier hit financial trouble in the 1970s.

Which former Girl Scout became the first American woman to walk in space?

More than twenty of NASA's female career astronauts were Girl Scouts growing up.

How many fingers are held up to form the Girl Scout sign?

The sign uses the three middle fingers of the right hand and is made while reciting the Promise at troop meetings.