Box Tops for Education

You've all heard of Box Tops for Education, right? It's a program by General Mills where certain products have this little coupon that's worth $0.10 to schools. You get a coordinator at the school to rally up the students and parents to collect these Box Tops, clip them out, turn them into the school and the coordinator then submits them to General Mills and the school gets a check. It's basically free money because you're already buying these products and all you really need is a pair of scissors.

Shana was contacted to head the program and was told while it's an easy program, it can get big so maybe she could join in with another with another mom to split the duties. And she said "I know just the person!"

Turns out that person is ME.

Which is fine because I would like to get involved in Kael's school and meet other parents. Plus this seemed like an easy program - just collect, cut and mail, right? And fundraising for prizes and event promotion was something I did BC (Before Children).

Well, we've sort of jumped in head first, without our bikinis, so to speak. Or maybe we have our bikinis on, but the top's all tangled up at our neck, strangling us a bit. Anyway, we've decided to turn this into a competition amongst the classes with prizes and parties to the class with the most Box Tops. Which means we needed to make fliers, go to each classroom to talk up the program, talk with parents to promote the program, find prizes (hopefully donated by local businesses), and keep the enthusiasm up for the entire year. That's in addition to collecting the Tops every week, counting them and keeping a tally for a school of about 675 students.

THEN Shana tells me the Tops need to be cut "right" (they come in all different sizes with the majority of them being teeny tiny rectangles). In other words, after we collect all the Tops, we need to then go through each and every one and trim the coupons along the dotted lines. We're getting coupons that have been torn off, or entire lids are being turned it, or coupons from other programs are being submitted... so we need to do a final check to make sure they are ready for submission. But wait, we're not ready for submission yet. We still need to bundle them before we can ship them. I figured we'd put them all in a big bag and mail them off.

No, I would be wrong. Evidently I didn't read the Box Top Coordinator Handbook (and yes, there really is one). We need to count out 100 coupons and put them in a baggie for submission. That's one way of doing it. That would have been my choice: the fast and easy way.

This is Shana's way: Shana (aka Ms. Anal Retentive to the Nth degree) called me yesterday, as proud as can be, and tells me that she's got all her Box Tops in neat little piles according to size. I'm thinking: (1) she's totally lost it and (2) she's got way too much time on her hands. I ask her (very cautiously because she's quite pleased with herself) "why?" And she tells me so that it's easy for her to bundle it in stacks. I'm thinking you're tossing them in bags, who cares if they are all the same size? To which she tells me that we're stacking them. Literally. That means we count out 50, stack them in little piles, and tie them with string.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!

I knew then that she was a goner and it was my duty to drag her back to reality (and maybe slap some sense into her, just for kicks). We are NOT stacking them! We are counting out 100 (regardless of size) and dumping them in baggies and mailing them off! We are going to be drowning in these little coupons and the last thing I want to do is to stay up all night cutting, stacking them and then trying to string up a stack of 50 little tiny coupons. As it was, I was up until 12:30am last night cutting the leftover coupons collected from the end of last year. And last year wasn't as highly promoted as what we have planned for this year.

Clearly a saner mind must take control before she's got me using a ruler and X-acto knife to trim the coupons.

(Oh, and if any of you have Box Tops, feel free to mail them to me. Thanks!)