Cookies and camaraderie give Spokane-area Girl Scouts a ‘moonshot’ membership boost

Retired Air Force Col. Brian Newberry has overseen three years of steady growth as the CEO of Girl Scouts Eastern Washington North Idaho, and he continues pushing toward his “moonshot goal” of having 5,000 Girl Scout members in the conference.

As the father of two sons, Newberry admits he had a learning curve in figuring out how to lead thousands of girls.

“I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve come home with glitter in my hair,” he said.

The local council is bucking the national trends in everything from cookie sales to membership, Newberry said. Though the national average of membership growth is 1.5 percent this year, so far the conference is seeing growth of 8 percent. Last year it was 10 percent, and it was 10 percent the year before that, too. Membership currently sits just under 4,000.

“Membership organizations across the U.S. have been on the decline, whether it be churches or youth organizations,” Newberry said. “I knew we needed to grow. There’s a need for Girl Scouts in this world to make it a better place.”

The COVID-19 pandemic sent membership in the wrong direction in 2020, but the organization has been recovering nicely, Newberry said.

“Our retention is why we’re winning,” he said. “We’re able to retain girls because of all the exciting things we’re doing.”

Among the new ventures is a Stem Mobile, which brought STEM activities to Girl Scouts to 43 mostly rural locations last year. Last June, the Savannah Summit Adventure Park, a new high-ropes course, was completed at Camp Four Echoes on Lake Coeur d’Alene. Camp Four Echoes was just selected as one of the top 300 camps in the United States by Newsweek and given a five-star rating.

Older girls can visit the state legislative offices in Olympia on an annual trip, and earlier this year four teens were selected as delegates to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York.

Abrihet Epps, 14, was among those who visited the UN. She sat through weeks of meetings to prepare and gave a speech on financial literacy while she was there.

“It was a lot of work leading up to it,” she said. “It was kind of a crazy schedule there.”

Epps said she enjoyed meeting and talking to Girl Scouts from around the world.

“I actually worked really closely with the Girl Scouts of Taiwan,” she said.

Newberry said he calls the Girl Scouts of Eastern Washington North Idaho a “council of distinction.”

“I do feel like we’re Gonzaga,” he said, referencing the popular Gonzaga University basketball teams. “We’re recognized nationally.”

Though membership growth has been increasing, the Eastern Washington North Idaho conference is still among the smallest in the nation, falling somewhere between 80 and 90 among the 110 conferences by size.

“In my heart, I would suggest we’re one of the largest,” he said.

One of the key drivers for the success of the council is cookie sales. Sales have topped a million boxes for each of the last three years. The council receives 70 percent of its income from cookie sales, and a portion of each cookie box sale goes to the troop the seller belongs to, paying for activities.

“I don’t think there’s any other council in America that can say they’ve had the three best cookie sales ever,” Newberry said. “I think the key to our success has been cookie sales. It has put us in the unique position that we are able to do more for our girls. We are able to offer a lot of older Girl Scout programs.”

Abrihet was the third-best seller in the conference this year, selling 4,175 boxes. She signs up to sell cookies outside local grocery stores after school and puts in eight-hour shifts during Spring Break.

She said she signed up for the Girl Scouts on a whim after her teacher sent a flyer home in the first grade, but it’s the experiences paid for by cookie sales that she’s been able to have that keep her coming back.

“I love trying new things,” Abrihet said. “I don’t know if I would have tried anything without the Girl Scouts.”

About 200 of the boxes she sold were donated to U.S. service members, health care professionals and first responders. Newberry said he arrived at the Girl Scouts after the 2018 cookie season, when 12,000 boxes were donated. After Newberry took over, he began sharing about how much receiving Girl Scout cookies meant to him while he was in the Air Force.

“I started talking about the value of the cookie,” he said. “The girls jumped to 24,000.”

That number of annual donations has stood at over 39,000 boxes for the last two years. They’ve gone to nurses working at the Veterans Hospital, military spouses, maintenance crews at Fairchild Air Force Base and local Reserve and National Guard units. In February, Newberry delivered 3,000 boxes to Fairchild’s deployment center so Airmen deploying overseas could tuck a few boxes in their luggage.

“It’s an incredible effort,” he said.