The basic information is that you buy gift cards and gift certificates from this company at a slightly discounted rate. When you sell them to your customers at the retail value you make a profit that can be used as fundraising.
You must work with high volume in order to make a significant profit. Lately, the risks involved is if the company you ordered from goes out of business (example: Scrip Advantage) or if one of your customers bounces a check(which happened to us two years ago and we are still trying to collect on the debt)
It can be quite a complicated process to set up and keep running. We didn't lose very much money from Scrip Advantage compared to some other schools, but the $645 we did lose pretty much negates any profit we would have made this year at our small school. It has been really hard to get parents to order from our program since it is voluntary at our school.
We put out an order form ( which needs updating every month since availabilty of gift cards changes) once a month in the school newletter, then we order the gift cards and gift certificates once a month. Those are then delivered and we have to put the orders together and make sure they are delivered.
Scrip companies are paid by check with delivery (if a local company) or automatic debit from an account if non local. Which is why Scrip Advantage was able to get money before delivery was made.
I will be recommending to cancel the program next year to the next Board. We just don't sell enough to make it worthwhile and we have run into so many problems.

Exactly how does this scrip thing work? I looked at the Great Lakes site but I'm a bit confused. What do you do? Buy gift cards at a discount and then resell them? I see you are all putting quite a bit of money out for this. Please explain further. Thanks!