There are three grocery receipt programs in our area of which I am aware: Giant A+ Bonus Bucks (
www.giantfood.com/aplus_newsletter_displ...326&CFTOKEN=24694696
), Safeway's eScrip (
www.safeway.com/community_escript.asp
) and Food Lion's Shop and Share (
www.foodlion.com/shp_lssstart.asp
). We'll probably collect $2,000-$2,500 through these programs this school year.
They all work the same in that you have some sort of identifying card that you use at checkout, and your receipts are tracked to your school when you designate one, so there's virtually no work needed on the part of the school to participate.
Of the three, we make the most money from Giant. Part of that is their market share, but it's more because of how much money each organization allocates to the program. They are all similar in that they divide the funds collected through the program proportionally among the participating organization depending on their total accumulated sales (so if all schools/organizations participating have $10,000 of eligible sales, and your school has $1,000 in sales, you get 10% of the total amount the grocery store has decided to contribute for this time period). Food Lion has a cap on earnings of $350/quarter; I don't believe the other two have a similar cap. Also, Giant and Safeway run roughly over a traditional school year time frame. Food Lion runs on a calendar year basis--you can earn throughout the year, but you have to get people to sign up again in December/January of each year, which is kind of awkward timing. Food Lion also only allows you to designate one school/organization; Safeway and Giant let you split your designation.
Our coordinator collects frequent shopper card numbers from people and gets their permission to put the school's designation in the grocery store system herself. She also tells people that she will redesignate for them in subsequent years--once we have your card number, we will keep getting a percentage of your purchases unless you specifically override that designation.
So--the coordinator's work consists of publicizing the programs at the beginning of the year, entering the card numbers to the grocery store sytems (all online), and periodically sending out emails for any promotional specials. (Giant, for example, gives extra credit when you buy certain products every two weeks.) We think it's a pretty good payback for the relatively small amount of work involved.
Now that I look at all I typed I realize it's probably more than you wanted to know!
Hope it helps!
