Dive Brief:

• The Girl Scouts of the U.S.A are adding content to their digital cookie-selling platform with the help of a $3 million investment from Visa and Dell. 
• The site and mobile app will now feature games, videos, quizzes, music and educational workshops in addition to small-business tools. 
• The Girl Scouts took their annual cookie fundraiser online for the first time last year, selling about $10 million worth of Do-Si-Dos, Samoas, Thin Mints, and other varieties. 

Dive Insight:

Visa and Dell are helping the Girl Scouts sweeten the pot for members who wish to take their annual cookie fundraiser online. The organization’s digital cookie platform—which contributed more than $10 million in cookie sales in its first year—will now offer more content to help scouts learn about e-commerce, business development, and other topics.

Visa and Dell have contributed about $3 million to add games, videos, quizzes, and music to the digital platform. Dell helped build and update the app, and donated hundreds of tablets to underprivileged scouts wishing to participate in the digital initiative this year.

Dell and Visa logos appear on the Girl Scouts’ cookie-selling sites and mobile app, and volunteers from the two companies have lent their expertise to workshops designed to help build websites, draft sales pitches, and target customers. Girl Scouts can use Visa Checkout to process payments online payments.

Membership in the century-old organization has been slowly slipping for several years. About 1.9 million girls now belong to the Scouts, and a handful have complained about its focus on selling cookies. But the Girl Scouts say that the digital platform will help shore up recruitment alongside cookie sales by making it easier to join and participate—and it seems certain to spawn a generation of e-commerce entrepreneurs.