# The cookie crumbles

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/1998/03/11/cookie-crumbles/
- Published: 1998-03-11T00:00:00+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Cookies are generating problems for online fundraising by Girl Guides and Brownies
in the USA. These cookies aren’t the Web-based variety which help Web site owners
track the movements of visitors, but the original sweet biscuit variety. The sales
of boxes of cookies is a traditional means of fundraising for the organisations.
A third of the 319 councils of Guides and Brownies are now trying to sell their 
cookies via the Web. This has removed the community aspect of this form of community
fundraising since Guides can now sell cookies anywhere in the country, thereby eating
into the profits of other groups. As a result some groups have banned online cookie
sales from out-of-state purchasers.

Will such voluntary restrictions work for long? Or will the more entrepreneurial
nonprofit groups generate a whole new source of income, at the expense of the more
traditional groups? This issue is bound to be reflected in the UK before long, as
one charity realises that its traditional fundraising market has been eroded by 
another organisation using the Web.

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