Meijer Reward has been AWESOME for our school. We have over 50% of our families registered. Not all use it, but we have been very effective in our Rewards. We have just under 550 students and average around $700 per month. (Christmas is much higher.)

We have used our schools computer lab during conferences to have PTO help people sign up and talk how it's used/works. When so many parents are asking to cut out the "catalog" sales as a fundraiser - what could be used any easier? For the $5 admin fee: You only need to get the word out and get them using it. There is no backpack express, collecting order forms, checking & verifying info, collecting money, etc. You get the idea. I love it because I usually buy my groceries at Meijer and I will buy lots of other items as well. I also keep in mind that Meijer is donating money to my school choice. Anyone buying groceries easily can get $100 per month. And an added bonus is that you can live anywhere and donate to anyone who participates. So we have lots of grandparents & family who live in other areas able to participate in our school fundraiser without having to get together to look at a catalog, and then again just to drop stuff off. And Meijer does a great job of tracking the people involved. We have a drawing once a quarter for anyone who uses their Meijer Reward card and the winner gets a Meijer Money Card.

Tim,

Here is a link to the FAQ. Meijer Rewards FAQ

As for the $5 fee...here is what it says under MCR Organization Terms & Conditions

10. Meijer shall deduct a monthly $5 administrative fee for all organizations enrolled in MCR. If no check is issued to the organization in any month, this fee will accrue and be subtracted from the organization's next scheduled check.

Click here to read the rest of the terms. It just seems weird to me that they charge for the opportunity to earn money. I am in no way trying to make this into a negative thing...I am just trying to find out all I can to make an informed decision regarding our school. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 07-09-2005, 04:02 PM: Message edited by: Melissa Constantine ]

We have been involved with this program for about 2 years now. I took over the program last November from the original PTO member who signed us up.

I'm finding it really hard to get the families to get involved with this. I've promoted this many times, sent home new applications to every parent with a cover letter saying this is NOT a credit card offer. They all seem to think it is.

When I took it over we had 32 members signed up, now we have 80. It is hard to get them to actually use their cards. I promoted the contest they had in March, where every new member you got signed up in March you'd get 3.00 per member. We had 17 new members sign up, but I either missed it in the rules or it wasn't stated that they had to actually activate their cards (use it once) before April 30th. Sadly we only had 3 people activate it before that date and you had to have a minimum of 10 people to get the $3.00 per. Really dissapointed in this.

We only average about 100.00 a month, lucky to get a check, because that is the amount you have to reach before they will send you one. The 5.00 is taken out of your amount in the account they add up. Its a processing fee.

We are going to keep promoting it, but out of 550 students in 2 years we only have 80 members. Finally pushed the Principal to actually get one during the March contest and only 3 teachers are signed up.

Thinking of running a contest of some sorts to promote it next time. You also have to spend over $100.00 a month there to receive any percentage.

We'll keep plugging along [img]smile.gif[/img] Could be an excellent program.

[ 07-09-2005, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: tj6993 ]

Do you have alink to the program rules? What's the $5 fee? Who's that charged to and for what?

Tim

I am resurrecting this old post from the archives. LOL!

We just had a Meijer store built in our town, and I was checking out their rewards program. I am a bit concerned about the $5 per month fee and the fact that each household's first $100 in purchases do not count. For years, Kroger has had a chokehold on our city. They actually bought out any store they considered competition! :eek: No joke! People are used to shopping there, and I am leery about whether our parents will switch stores. I guess the good part about Kroger being everywhere is that people are already used to having to swipe a card.

Here is what I want to know...if you are enrolled with Meijer, are you happy? Have you had any problems? Anything else you want to say about this program?

What I plan to do is have a mini survey form at registration to see if parents:

a) Shop at Meijer
b) How often they shop at Meijer
c) Approximately how much they feel they will spend
d) Are they willing to have their Rewards go to our school

If you think of any other questions that I should ask, please post them.

We signed up for Community Rewards in Nov. We had six people signed up that month, and are up to 42 now. BUT only half remember to use their card. You really have to promote and remind people to use it - it's a change.

One thing that we ran into is that people thought they had to use the Meijer CREDIT CARD. That's the first thing on the web site when signing up - make sure that people realize that you can get a guest card that is just scanned. I spoke with several families that did not want to participate because they did not want to charge groceries (which they really did not have to do but it is not presented that way by Meijer).

We bring in about $200 per month on the 20 families that are consistently using the card. It's a great program - for both Meijer and us.