On episode 44 I told you about all of the boy scout troops owed unclaimed money. Well, it’s only fair for me to give equal time to girl scout troops! Title 9 and all that.
I once had the pleasure of surprising the Girls Scouts USA office in Pasadena, California with unclaimed money. It was a win-win because I left with a couple of boxes of brand new types of girl scout cookies as a little thank you.
But there’s more out there! Just now I searched the obvious term “Girl Scouts” on the missingmoney.com free website and got 35 hits for girl scout troops from Arizona to Wisconsin.
Some of the banks that have turned in money for the girl scouts are Capitol Federal Savings, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase. There are also businesses that had lost girl scout money, like Bon Ton Department stores and Bay State Gas Company.
When you’re searching for unclaimed money, you should try every logical set of key words you can think of, so next I searched “Brownie Troop.” That yielded another half dozen missing money accounts, half of them near me in Virginia.
One fun thing to do is to search in Texas and California, the only two states that actually tell you the exact amount you are owed. I tried putting “Girl” in the first name box and “Scouts” in the last name box in Texas —a good reminder to always try different combinations— and I got 33 pages worth of hits! Each page has close to 20 listings. Wow!
Right on page one was a big one: The Aransas Pass Girl Scounts Fund is owed $3,479 from a CD that matured and they never cashed in. If you know anybody there, please pass the word! Yikes, that same troop also lost track of a $3,248 savings account. Sounds like the volunteer troop leaders in Aransas Pass are a little overwhelmed or disorganized.
The Challenger Girls Scouts Day camp in Houston has an unclaimed money account worth $1,149, an old checking account turned over by Woodforest National Bank. And I found several other girl scout unclaimed money listings worth more than a thousand bucks.
Now why am I telling you this? Well, if you are a troop leader, for goodness sake, SEARCH for your troop. Money at not-for-profits is always tight and you could find the solution to your problems at MissingMoney.com or unclaimed.org, the two FREE sites I recommend for finding your unclaimed money.