Licensing Deals at the NCS

Every three years, as a part of its national governance cycle, Girl Scouting hosts the National Council Session (NCS) to discuss and vote on proposals aimed at the betterment of the organization. For 2026, there will be three proposals on the agenda. Interestingly enough, two of them cover topics that get the membership in a lather when you mess with them: membership dues and cookies. I’ve written about the one involving membership dues already. Time for me to tackle the other one.

Specifically, this proposal is about GSUSA’s licensing of its cookie flavors. The Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland council sponsored a proposal (with quite a long title) called Preservation of Girl Scout Leadership Experience Relating to the Entrepreneurship Program. You can read the entire proposal here on GSG. To get to the point, Kansas Heartland wants to suspend any third-party food products using the likeness or branding of Girl Scout cookies during the entirety of fall product and cookie seasons for all councils. In other words, they don’t want Walmart placing Thin Mint PopTarts on the shelves while girls are selling fall product or cookies anywhere in the country.

I’ve found through the years that there’s a sizable number of folks who believe that these licensed products negatively affect cookie sales. They feel that these items compete against cookies and that having them available dilutes the exclusivity of Girl Scout cookies which are only sold a few weeks out of the year. And they’re very passionate about this belief, as anything cookie related usually goes. At one point early on in my Girl Scout volunteer career, I might have been more sympathetic to this viewpoint, but I’m now skeptical that these products are in competition with cookies. I think the knock-off cookies found at Aldi and Dollar Tree are much more of a threat. Last year, I started a goofy series of videos where I taste test GSUSA licensed products. And I’ve found that the VAST majority of them taste nothing like the cookies at all, so I really don’t believe anyone would pass up buying cookies just because they could get Caramel Coconut cupcakes instead.

GSUSA ran some research and found that its licensing deals actually accentuate and protect our cookie branding. I would love to point you to this research, but it’s behind closed doors on the GSUSA delegate website. I only know about it because my council’s National Delegates shared it with us during a delegate meeting. Hopefully yours will too, and if they don’t, then find out who they are and ask them about it if you’re interested.

Another issue with this proposal is the fact that it limits licensing to months when NO councils are running their fall product and cookie programs. Well, that leaves pretty much June and July because all councils stagger their programs at different times of the year. And while I’m no contract attorney, I seriously doubt any company interested in licensing GS cookie flavors will agree to a limitation where they can only sell their product two months out of the year. So if this proposal passes, that means you’ll only see cookie licensing on non-food items like body wash and makeup.

Some question where the licensing money goes and believe that troops should get a direct cut of anything cookie related. While I personally am not bothered by those things, I do believe our licensing deals are a double-edged sword. On one hand, we’re blessed to have a product that’s popular with the mainstream that brings in needed revenue. Girl Scouts from top to bottom would look DRASTICALLY different if we didn’t have cookies. On the other hand, licensing cookie products just further cements the popular belief that Girl Scouts is only about cookies. But I’m starting to stray off-topic and away from the proposal’s original intent.

While I think this proposal could be seen as “dangerous” for a variety of reasons, I do think it brings to the forefront some issues that have been nagging at the organization for a while now, and it’s given GSUSA an opportunity to respond to those concerns and discuss its licensing program in more detail. Not all proposals are destined to pass, but they still serve a purpose.