Circle October 14th on Your Calendars

TLDR: Send your paper Box Tops in with your student on October 14th.

Tired of pushing that gallon size plastic bag of Box Tops around the kitchen counter? Is your desk drawer impossible to close because there are too many Box Tops stuffed in there?

Hang in there because in less than one month, the DMS PTA will be accepting every paper Box Top we can find as part of its fall collection.

During the entire week of October 14th, send your student into school with the Box Tops your family (and extended family) has been collecting all summer. A parent volunteer will be waiting to accept them and ensure they are submitted to General Mills and redeemed for a cash donation to the DMS PTA.

Whether you have just a few, or have accumulated an obnoxiously tall pile, bring your Box Tops back to DMS on October 14th to help raise funds for our students and the activities that will provide academic enrichment.

Box Tops as Currency

TLDR: Regardless of their financial stature, nobody throws a dime in the trash. Why would you throw out a Box Top? 

One of the many reasons I am drawn to clipping and collecting Box Tops on behalf of Dunloggin is because they are a form of currency. As you likely already know, when a Box Top is returned to General Mills - $.10 is credited to the DMS PTA.

If you were walking down the street and saw an unclaimed dime lying on the ground, would you just pass it by? I think not. Most of us would definitely reach down to put it in our pocket.

Do you throw the spare change in your pocket or purse into the trash or recycle bin? Of course not. (That would also be a federal crime, by the way.) You collect it in a jar or dish until you amass a few dollars.

It's the same with Box Tops. Just visualize all of the dimes (er, Box Tops) laying in the cupboards and recycling bins of our houses, sitting there ready to be put to use on behalf of our students! 

Box Tops are Dead, Long Live Box Tops!

TLDR: Box Tops is phasing out the collection of package labels in favor of a mobile app that scans your grocery receipts. Save both for now to help raise money for DMS students.

Last spring, General Mills announced a change to the Box Tops for Education program.

Here is what your DMS family needs to know:

1) Box Tops remain a significant part of the PTA's fundraising mix for the 2019-2020 school year. Please don't stop clipping!

2) The program, however, is transitioning toward a mobile phone app-based system in which families photograph their grocery receipts (instead of cutting out the labels and returning them to the school). The scanning technology automatically detects the products purchased with the Box Tops seal.

3) Provided you have linked "Dunloggin Middle School (Ellicott City, MD)" as the beneficiary in your Box Tops in the mobile app, 10 cents is credited to the DMS PTA for every participating product found on your receipt.

Our family is using the mobile app and it really quite impressive. I would encourage you to download the app today and give it a try.

One more very important (in fact, critical) thing: keep clipping Box Tops labels as you see them and hold on to the ones you've been collecting all spring and summer! The PTA will be collecting them this fall as DMS is permitted to redeem these with General Mills until the program has fully transitioned away from clipping.    

For more details, this short video from the Box Tops team at General Mills is worth a watch, as well as, a quick tour through the Box Tops website.

So keep scanning those receipts and keep clipping (for now)!

Introductions!

TLDR: I am Fred and Box Tops is an unexpected interest of mine. Let me know if or when you have questions about the program.

Hello! My name is Fred Jorgensen and I am a Dunloggin Middle School (DMS) parent, as well as, the lead volunteer for our Box Tops for Education (BT4E) fundraising stream. This is my second year in the role.

For the 2019-2020 school year, my plan is to publish regular (and short) blog postings on the subject of Box Tops that inform, entertain, and motivate DMS families. As you'll see throughout the school year, Box Tops is a subject with many fascinating layers that we can only try to unpack together over a span of nine months. 

For anyone not familiar with "Box Tops", it is a school-fundraising / brand affinity program created by the General Mills corporation in 1996. When you buy GM food products from the grocery store with the below seal somewhere on the package, cut it out (before recycling), and return the seal to DMS... the school will redeem the seal to get $.10 to be used by the PTA for different types of student support. 

In an average year, DMS collects around 8,000 of these Box Tops seals from families to generate about $800 in fundraising toward the total PTA budget. Not bad... but still only a small sliver of what is DMS' grocery buying power with 650 students enrolled. (Don't worry, we will do the math to prove this out in a future post.)

For now, keep clipping those Box Tops while they last and definitely download the app to become more familiar with it. (In case you had not heard, General Mills is phasing out the paper box tops in favor of a mobile app. More to come on that subject.)