We faced a similar predicament. My girls could only make the donation because they raised the money individually and used it to buy the cookies, then chose to give “their” cookies away. Neither troop was able to do this as a troop.
One thing I love about where I live is that the scouts are very aware of the council limitations. One girl from another troop used all her money earned from selling cookies to buy boxes off other troops who hadn’t sold all theirs and then donated them all to a pantry where she volunteers.
How did a girl from a troop earn money selling cookies? Do the girls up there earn individually ? Here all the earnings go to the troop account after the council is paid for the cookies. Individual girl would not have "earnings" so to speak.
Our area had their recognition banquet last evening, my youngest girl, known as Shortie, was fourth in sales for the area with over 1100 boxes sold, she got a medallion for her efforts and another girl in her troop was eight with just over 1,000 boxes. All told our area sold over 189,000 packages of cookies. Girl scouts made a chunk of money from our area for sure.
There were troops down here that got stuck with boxes of cookies because of inexperienced leaders and cookie moms, and that is sad because they worked hard selling , just didn't know the game and council won't take any back once you pick them up.
Their troop has a policy that the girls get to decide with the amount that comes back to the troop based on their sales. This girl set a massive goal, achieved it and had the troop purchase cookies for her using those funds (a gray area which you learn to find). She couldn’t actually cash out, but the troop can vote and redirect funds. In this case, the troop voted to each use their own earnings for their own projects.
It’s the same here with not being able to return cookies. Actually, all of the cookies we purchased helped my girls’ troops clear out their inventory. What I did was wait until the end of cookie season and the emails saying how many boxes were left. Then I divided the amount according to troop needs (how many cookies they still had available). Fortunately, we were able to help both troops complete their sales AND pick up more cookies to meet the donation amount.
Next year I hope we can repeat this with the goal of buying cookies off troops with less support and fewer sales opportunities. It’s my first year with a troop, so I had no idea how cookie sales work from the top down. There is so much good that comes from Girl Scouts, and I love the budgeting and marketing the girls learned through cookie sales, but I don’t much care for some of the policies surrounding cookies including the hot the troop takes if someone is unable to collect funds or a parent doesn’t pay for cookies.
Okay, I see how you are doing it now and that makes sense. I might suggest that to my girls and see if they would want to get a discussion going with their troops on how to allocate cookie earnings in the future.