GirlGuiding New Zealand says it's yet to decide how to make up the lost revenue after axing its famous biscuits.
Photo: Supplied / GirlGuiding New Zealand
Every year, Girl Guides and volunteers sell nearly 900,000 packets of the vanilla-flavoured biscuit with its clover leaf logo.
However, the organisation announced yesterday it would stop producing them next year after more than six decades as members were spending too much time selling them.
The organisation's chief executive, Susan Coleman, said that it had been operating in New Zealand for 110 years and it was time for a review.
"We want to ensure that we focus all our time and energy on empowering the lives of girls and young women which is what our purpose is all about ... biscuits is a fundraiser to enable us to do that but it can't be the thing that we're always renowned for, it can't be where we can put all our time and energy into."
The status of volunteering had changed in New Zealand with a 42 percent decrease in the number of volunteering hours, Ms Coleman said. All organisations that were very reliant on volunteers had to reassess where they spent that volunteer time, she said.
Biscuit sales make up a third of GirlGuiding New Zealand's income and Ms Coleman said it would need to think of ways to make up that funding.
"The decision that has been made is that we do need to cover off our shortfall through the generation of additional income in changing how we deliver our services.
"We are starting to look at what services do our families value and assess all of that, we need to determine the best way to fund those services and look at what an appropriate charge is to access those services."
Ms Coleman said regardless they had decided the time spent selling biscuits was better spent making a difference.
There were 35,000 cartons of Girl Guide biscuits still for sale and it was anticipated that they would be sold out by early next year, Ms Coleman said.
