Texting + QuickBase Makes Buying Girl Scouts Cookies Easier in LA

By Liz McCann | Posted on March 8th, 2010

Ever consider sending a text message or email to find out where you can buy your favorite Girl Scouts Cookies? Well, in the Greater Los Angeles County now you can!

The Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles - serving Los Angeles County and parts of Kern and San Bernardino counties – are using QuickBase as their online database to track and manage cookie booth sales locations and times for their annual cookie sales. Following the merger of six Girl Scouts councils, the Greater Los Angeles council now serves 45,000 Girl Scouts and QuickBase is playing a big part in streamlining operations for the council and the volunteers. Previously, more than 100 different spreadsheets from across the council had to be manually entered into the cookie baker’s system.

Since automating their systems with QuickBase, the Council has reduced the paperwork associated with the sales for 3.5M boxes of cookies annually by 95%.

In addition to their more traditional use of QuickBase, texting functionality has been implemented to make it easier for the general public in the Los Angeles area to find and buy those highly sought after Thin Mints.

How does it work?

When Greater Los Angeles County residents decide they want to buy Girl Scout cookies this March, they can now simply text or email their zip code to gs@girlscoutsla.org. The system will search the online database and return the exact location, date and time of two nearby cookie sales booths. If you want more locations, simply hit reply and QuickBase will send you two additional locations pulled from the more than 600 sales booth locations and 18,000 sales dates and times that the volunteers had previously entered into the system.

This new text querying functionality is very customized and specific to the Girl Scouts main QuickBase application. QuickBase partners, Dovetail Associates and Juiced Technologies worked together to deliver this customization. For several years, Dovetail Associates has been working with a few different Girl Scouts councils developing and customizing their QuickBase booth sales applications, which the councils now so fondly refer to as Green Beans.

Hungry Yet?

This is a pretty cool use of QuickBase. What are some of the ways you might consider leveraging this kind of customized functionality?

About the Girl Scouts

The Annual Girl Scout Cookie Program is America’s leading financial empowerment and entrepreneurial program for girls, in addition to a money-earning activity. The cookie program is an integral part of the Girl Scout Leadership Experience and a time-honored Girl Scout tradition for more than 90 years. The public eagerly awaits the cookie season every year and this new technology is a way to connect customers with Girl Scouts who gain important skills and confidence with every customer interaction.