My oldest daughter is now in 1st grade at a local elementary school. Earlier this year, I caught her rummaging through our pantry with a pair of scissors and many cut up boxes on the floor. My first instinct was to be furious that she destroyed our cereal and Ziploc boxes, but I suppressed the anger and calmly asked what on Earth possessed her to cut up our boxes? She sweetly smiled and said, “I’m earning money for my school, Mommy.” Hard to be mad, right?
I do remember hearing something about turning in Box Tops at school but as a busy Mom, I had little time to add this to my agenda and didn’t really know why it was so important. Ironically, I was invited to attend Box Top University in New Orleans last week with two of my favorite NOLA bloggers (Crawfish Tales and NOLA Mommy) to learn all about why the program is both important and effective.
For starters, Box Tops (see the above logo) are located on the boxes of the products you know and love such as Cherrios, Kleenex, Ziploc, and Juicy Juice to name a few. If you shop at Walmart or Sam’s Club you can earn multiple box tops for each product or you can earn Box Tops by shopping online from the BTFE Marketplace from retailers such as Ann Taylor LOFT, Barnes and Nobles and eBags.
You’ve collected some Box Tops…now what? Bundle them up and send them to the Box Top Coordinator at your child’s school. The Coordinator will sort and bundle the Box Tops into groups of fifty (keeping the Bonus Box Tops separate) and mail them to General Mills. Did you know there is an employee at General Mills who actually counts all those box tops?
Your school will earn about $0.10 for each Box Top collected. Don’t think ten cents can make a difference? In 2011, more than 90,000 schools participated and earned $67 million dollars! In fact, red Bird Mission School in Kentucky earned over $20,000 for their school alone!
After attending Box Top University, I was amazed at the creativity of the Coordinators at our New Orleans area schools! They organize everything from pizza parties to “Be the Principal for a Day” events in order to get their students and teachers involved. With so many of our NOLA schools still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, it was very inspirational to see how the Box Top program has literally resurrected some extracurricular activities at damaged schools.
The Box Tops for Education program has made a huge difference in the lives of local students…are you ready to join them? Learn more and enroll soon!