From Troops to Troops: Blue Star Moms Make Five-Star Effort to Deliver Cookies to Armed Forces

The 90-plus Girls Scout troops in the Parsippany-Troy Hills service unit sold more than 50,000 boxes of cookies this year. At $4 a box, that’s more than $200,000 in cookie sales, which ended on March 27.

To learn exactly where all the money goes, read "How the Cookie Crumbles," a document provided by the Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey. 

All of the proceeds go to the Girl Scouts and their troops, council programs and camping, training, financial aid and costs assocated with operating the seven properties owned by the GSNNJ in Northern New Jersey.

Many customers who bought cookies turned around and donated them to the Blue Star Moms, which is an organization made up of moms who have or had children serving in the military.  The Blue Star Moms send those donations to the men and women of the armed forces.

Michelle Darling, the , has been collecting donated boxes of cookies for the Blue Star Moms since March 10.

Darling has opened up this program to all of the troops in the wider council known as the Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey (GSNNJ) which has a strong presence in Bergen, Morris, Passaic, Sussex and northern Warren counties and supports more than 54,000 members.

Since Darling is accepting donations from the entire GSNNJ, she has troops from all over Northern New Jersey dropping off cookies and other donated items at her home. She currently has more than 8,500 boxes of cookies in her dining room. 

Janet Barnes, product sales director for the GSNNJ, spoke highly of Darling and the program.

"Michelle is amazing," she said. "I'm so proud of what she's done. This program really brings home the sense of community service that we try to instill in the girls."

The Blue Star Moms come to Parsippany to pick up the cookies and then they package and label them and pay the cost of shipping them to men and women around the world. 

In addition to the shipping cost, they have to find an efficient way to pick up all those boxes of cookies from Darling and get them back to their offices in Lakewood. 

Darling describes this as a pleasant problem.

“I called Blue Star Moms and said I have good news and bad news," she said. "The good news is we have lots of cookies, the bad news is we have lots of cookies.”

In an effort to help the Blue Star Moms keep costs at a minimum, Darling contacted Prudent Corp., the moving company that delivers the cookies from the bakery to the firehouse in Parsippany. The company donated a truck and a person to transport the cookies to the Blue Star Moms.

Members of the community have also submitted names and addresses of friends and family serving in the military and those individuals will get personalized care packages sent to them from Blue Star Moms.