For the Girl Scouts, cookies are more important than ever

To be sure, the Girl Scouts are entering their 101st year of cookie sales with no lack of challenges. Enrollment of girls and adult volunteers stands at about 2.6 million, down from 3.8 million in 2003.

Competition from after-school programs and electronics may be partly to blame, but Goodbody said it's also more challenging today to recruit adult volunteers to lead troops because parents have less time, especially with the increase in women's workforce participation rates since the 1950s.

"There are thousands of girls on waitlists to join, but there are not enough volunteers," Goodbody said. "There's more competition than ever coming from video games as well as the after-school activities both inside and outside school. People don't understand that with Girl Scouts, it's a one-stop shop. It's not like, 'I'm just going to do ice skating.'"

In October, the Boy Scouts said it would admit girls into Cub Starts starting in 2018, a decision that was criticized at the time by the Girl Scouts as a move designed to boost the Boy Scouts' revenue, which the Boy Scouts denied.