Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Cheap and Easy Ways to Help Catholic Schools

When we were house hunting, one thing my husband was absolutely adamant about was being close enough that we could send our children to a Catholic school. He attended a Catholic school through eighth grade; my first experience with a non-public school was college. At the time I didn't care that strongly one way or another, so we ended up living in an area with great public schools but not too far from a very good Catholic school. Compared to some, our local Catholic school is doing pretty well financially, receiving enough in donations and support from the church that tuition is reasonable, especially considering how expensive even day care can be. But you still frequently hear about the death spiral that many Catholic schools end up in, with diminishing enrollments and skyrocketing tuition, so we wanted to do our part to help keep tuition reasonable. We started back when we hoped to send our own children to this school, and now, even though we may never send a child to this school, we still want to help. We don't necessarily have a lot of money to give, though, and I don't think I have it in me to volunteer. Some days being around kids is just too much to bear. So what do I do? Cheap and easy giving via Box Tops, Labels for Education, and now Give with Target.

Box Tops 4 Education can be found on General Mills cereals, Pillsbury products, Ziploc bags and containers, Avery office products, and a lot more. The complete list is here.

Labels for Education can be found on Campbell's Soups, PopSecret popcorn, Pace salsas, Bic pens, and several more. Their list is here.

Most schools have a Box Tops Coordinator, and a quick call can confirm who you can send your collected Box Tops and Labels to. I send ours (and some from my parents and in-laws) in once year; altogether it's come to $50 to $80 each year. And even better, it didn't cost me an extra cent!

There's one more way I've been helping lately. Right now Target is giving away $5 million to schools across the country, and you don't even need a stamp to vote. All you need to do is go to
Give With Target, select your school, and vote. You can vote once a week. Once a school has reached 25 votes, it will receive at least $25 from Target; each additional vote is worth an extra dollar. (Caveat: it does want to connect via FaceBook, but you can set it so that only you see the posts.)

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