Beyond Cookies: Evidence About Team Coproduction and Engagement Retention From Girl Scouts Cookie Program

Retention is a critical challenge for organizations, especially nonprofits, which often face higher turnover than for-profit firms. Unlike many for-profits, nonprofits have fewer financial resources to retain participants, so continued participation depends more on team climate and opportunities to learn by working together. We study these dynamics in the Girl Scouts Cookie Program. We collect sales and troop membership information between 2016 and 2018 from a local Girl Scout council consisting of approximately 30,000 members. We examine the effects of a group of three team diversity features: Disparity, variety, and separation, on a Girl Scout’s decision to return to sell cookies the following year. Our results suggest that a more evenly distributed sales performance within the troop (i.e., low sales disparity) is associated with higher retention, with larger gains for lower sellers. In addition, greater grade level (i.e., age) variety is associated with higher retention for both younger and older participants. Furthermore, mixing newcomers with returnees (i.e., high return-status separation) has asymmetric dual effects: High return-status separation tends to discourage new girls from returning while encouraging returning girls to stay. Finally, we find that returning participants tend to sell more in subsequent years, consistent with learning-by-doing. These empirical results have implications for the Girl Scouts of the USA and other similar nonprofit organizations to compose teams and organize collaboration activities to improve engagement and enhance learning.