Do the Girl Scouts need to move with the times?

The Girl Scouts of USA makes headlines every spring as young girls around the country sell box after box of Thin Mints, Tagalongs and my personal favorite, Samosas cookies. (We just polished off our third box!)

This year, the Girl Scouts is getting a bum rap of being "behind the times." Why? Because it bans the online sale of Girl Scout Cookies.

If you haven't heard this story already, let me break it down for you.

Eight-year-old Wild Day Freeborn is a Girl Scout in North Carolina and she wants to sell 12,000 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. Why 12,000 boxes? To raise the funds to send her entire troop to a summer camp. Certainly a commendable goal.

Freeborn asked her dad, an executive at a Web design and development firm, to help her use the Internet to sell the cookies. He said yes, and the two created a YouTube video, (hosted by her dad's company), which directed folks to an online store where you could buy the Girl Scout cookies from her. According to a Newsweek piece, more than 700 boxes of cookies were purchased online from Freeborn's site. And in a town with a solid base of Girl Scout members, you can imagine that this girl's entrepreneurial endeavor cut into the cookie sales of other troop members.

Here's the big catch: The Girl Scouts of USA does not permit online sales. Period.

Of course, now there's an uproar over the fact that the girl (er, her dad) had to pull the YouTube video and the very fact that the Girl Scouts doesn't allow cookies to be sold via the Web. On the girl's Facebook page, one mom posted that she was considering not allowing her daughter to join the organization because the Girl Scouts is "so behind the times."

Is the Girl Scouts of USA really behind the times? Nope. If you want to buy cookies in your area, you can go online, drop in your zip code, and they will connect you with a troop member who can hook you up with your Trefoils or Di-Si-Dos. Hey, you can even friend the Girl Scouts Cookies pages on Flickr.com, MySpace and Facebook.

I don't have a problem with the Girl Scouts ban of online cookie sales. Not every Girl Scout has regular access to a computer -- or parents who can build their daughter a website to support online sales.

Is the organization "failing our girls," as Newsweek puts wonders, because it doesn't allow its troops to sell cookies online? Hardly. The spring tradition of Girl Scout troops working their hardest to sell cookies the old-fashioned way should carry weight and meaning for Girl Scout members. It should evoke a sense of pride and accomplishment. When you sign up to be a Girl Scout, a girl and her parents know that the annual cookie sale is part of the package.

Does the Girl Scouts of USA need to move ahead with technology by allowing online sales of cookies? It wouldn't be a bad idea to give the girls the option to conduct Internet sales so long as each girl is offered access to a computer and help to pull her site together.

Sure, this particular e-commerce savvy Girl Scout (and her dad) showed some smarts when it came to pulling her plan together. But maybe her dad should have started at step one by helping his daughter review the Girl Scout Cookie Frequently Asked Questions page before he set up Freeborn's online store. Teaching your kids to play by the rules should stand for something, too. (As of today, she is still selling the cookies online.)

Okay, enough of me mouthing off.

Do you think the Girl Scouts of USA is behind the digital times? Do you think the organization should make WIld Freeborn remove her online site? And is her dad at fault for building the site while not following Girl Scout rules?