WOW, all of you write as if your program is "so so" and I'm sitting here, excited as heck on our results last year LOL (which are nothing compared to your so so results LOL).
Since we started in 1998, we've only raised $2111 BUT. ...last year we earned 40% of that bringing in 8610 box tops (approx 33 per student).
We keep monthly totals per classroom. We're a small school, 250+ students grades k-6.
At the end of the year, we reward the top three classrooms with pizza, krispy kreme or soda's.
Since we did so well at the end of last year, we decided to kick the new year off by having a contest. We gave each child a "savings baggie" for the summer and the student who saved the most and brought them in the first week of school, won a ride to school on the fire truck. That went over VERY WELL.
We count the cambell's soup labels and Tyson labels along with the box tops and last year, we collected a total of 18,000+ of all three of these labels!!!!!! p.s. Tyson gives .24 cents for each label . ..not many products but definatly WORTH the money they pay for them!!!!
Our local grocery stores also do incentives with box tops and campbell's. Either a coupon in their add for 100 bonus labels or next week, if you purchase 10 box tops products, you get a coupon for 70 bonus box tops!!! If you think about how many products have box tops on them, 10 products is NOTHING when you're doing the big grocery shopping LOL.
We keep parents updated on the top three classes each month in our newsletter AND we update them on any special promo's that we've been sent (like the one mentioned above). That seems to help keep interest all year long.
Our principal will not allow "competition", only "challenges". I found this idea at the Box Tops for Education site last night and alreadly printed up our notice:
THE BOX TOPS FOR EDUCATION “PIE IN THE FACE†CHALLENGE
A thermometer-type chart will be posted at school with a different teacher or staff member's photograph posted at each milestone goal (every 1,000 Box Tops for Education collected). Each time a goal is reached, the thermometer will be colored in and that teacher or staff member will get a pie thrown in their face! The students will have a great time, raise a lot of money and learn how to set and achieve a goal. Parents – please write your child’s name neatly on the back of the Box Top for Education. The child whose name is drawn gets to throw the pie! If the teacher or faculty member has a child that attends Eastside, their child also gets to throw a pie!
We have also included, besides faculty and staff - the PTO Prsident, the BTFE Coordinator, the Superintendant of Schools, the Mayor, the principal (one pie thrower chosen from each grade and each teacher and faculty member throws a pie!), and perhaps our govenor. [img]redface.gif[/img] )
Does 40,000 Box Tops for Education seem like an impossible goal to for us to reach?
Well, it isn’t! Nothing is impossible for Eastside Elementary School students!
If we work together, we can achieve any goal!
Let’s do the math.
There are approximately 500 students attending Eastside.
Our goal of 40,000 Box Tops for Education divided by 500 students equals
80 Box Tops for Education per student.
Does 80 Box Tops for Education seem like too high of a goal to for you to reach?
Well, it isn’t! Nothing is impossible for Eastside Elementary School students!
There are eight months left of school.
If you bring in 8 Box Tops for Education per month we will reach our goal!
That’s only 2 Box Tops for Education per student per week.
You and your parents can ask your friends to save Box Tops for Education for you!
You and your parents can ask your relatives to save Box Tops for Education for you!
You and your parents can ask your neighbors to save Box Tops for Education for you!
Your parents can ask their co-workers to save Box Tops for Education for you!
YOU CAN DO IT!
YOU CAN DO IT!
YOU CAN DO IT!
YOU CAN DO IT!
YOU CAN DO IT!
Critter - we have been doing boxtops for ages but do not track it at all. In fact, all we have in both our schools are collection containers in key areas of the school. The boxtops coordinator just picks them up and does her thing. (I believe it is a little tedious since most people do not do a good job of cutting). Our coordinators do not seem to want to initiate any contests or anything. At least, I have not have any try to do it. One person about 2 years ago was going to do something but I never did see it materialize. We have alot of people who help out but do not go the extra mile to "get into it" if you know what I mean...
Curious though, how much people actually bring in per year with all those great incentive programs out there I read about on this forum..... We bring in about $1300 per year.
We run two contests per year. The top class in each grade gets a party - ice cream, munchkins or bagels and juice. We average about 12 Box Tops per student but that is up from around 5 per student two years ago. To raise interest in the contests (which run about 2 months) we regularly post results for the top 3 classes in each grade and have the student council make announcements. Once the kids know how they are doing, they try to get family and neighbors to start saving Box Tops for them as well.
I wouldn't say we've got the most aggressive programs, but here's the experience of the two elementary schools my kids are in.
They both average about 25 boxtops/kid/year. Both schools track by class, not by kid.
One of them has a "5 on Friday" campaign, where they have a station set up in the cafeteria on Friday--any kids bringing in at least 5 get a piece of candy. (I have issues with that, but that's a whole other thread....) They do track those back to the classrooms, not the individual kids. The other school just kept track of how classrooms did by month and gave the highest classroom a special certificate each month.
Both have incentives at the end of the collection year for the class that brings in the most--one did a pizza party at the end of the year, the other one did a Hawaiian luau type thing with ice cream sundaes. One of them is doing an additional incentive this year at the beginning of the year to get in all the stuff that was collected over the summer--probably another ice cream party. One of the schools also keeps up a bulletin board showing the progress by classroom--that worked pretty well last year; the 5th graders actually got pretty competitive.
Hope that CBrooks chimes in; I'm pretty sure she was the one who posted the other day with some amazing BoxTops numbers.
After years of collecting Boxtops passively, we are going to implement some sort of Boxtops collection program at our school this year. Need some advice from you experienced folk:
o Do you track donations at the student level? (We have over 700 students in 30 classes).
O Do you give prizes for most collected? If so, what kind of prizes, how often?
o What's been your experience with the number of Boxtops turned in on average, per student or family? We're trying to come up with a realistic goal. Is it 50 per student per year? 500?
Thanks for your help. I know there's info advice from General Mills, too, but I wanted first hand "from the trenches" views.
