Great Receipts (06-22-09)

For the last several weeks, my office has resembled a school supply store. Boxes containing a wealth of teaching materials and educational products were stacked neatly against a wall, four feet high and several feet deep. I was thrilled every time I stepped into my office.

These materials had been acquired through the Shurfine Foods Register Tapes for Education Program. Every year, people give us their Shurfine Receipts for our local store. We then have several incredibly wonderful and diligent volunteers process each receipt.

Processing is a time-consuming task. First, each individual receipt has to be examined. If no tobacco or alcohol was purchased, then the sub-total (before tax amount) is circled. If tobacco and/or alcohol were purchased, the amounts for those purchases had to be crossed off the receipt, and the sub-totals had to be recalculated. The new amount is written at the bottom of the receipt and circled.

After several hundred receipts have had their sub-totals or recalculated sub-totals circled, then the volunteer would begin adding up all the amounts, in order to bundle the receipts in stacks of roughly $10,000. The entire process requires a lot of time and patience. We are so lucky to have people who help us with this arduous task.

However, the rewards for the work are great. We get credit for the amounts totaled on the receipts we send in to the company. We then can use the credits to purchase school supplies and teaching materials from a special catalog the company sends us every year.

I don’t know the dollar equivalent of the credit we receive as the merchandize in the catalog is priced in “points” and not in dollars. However, last year, we processed enough receipts to earn over 280,000 points. I don’t how many individual receipts our faithful volunteers processed, but I do know that the volume was staggering. The processing went on every day for months. We are so thankful for all the Shurfine patrons who gave their receipts for the program and we are so blessed for the volunteers who processed the bags and bags filled with the white slips of paper.

So what did we buy? First, we divided the number of points by the number of grade school teachers and let them chose items from the catalog. The teachers worked in pairs, to share points where possible. Through this program they acquired items both big and small.

We got cubbies, and a wireless PA system, a 20-foot parachute, and a “brain building” game. We found talking microscopes and talking telescopes, ant farms and butterfly pavilions, flip charts and flash cards. From the catalog our teachers ordered CD players and digital cameras, pens and file folders, staplers and hole-punches, soccer balls and basketballs. They ordered magnet cars and magnetic alpha-boards, dry erase markers and a 4x8 porcelain white board. Looking over the boxes, I found something called The ReMARKable Spin Wheel and something else called Carnivorous Creations. There were wiggly eyes and remoldable sculpting beads, reading comprehension sets and biomes of North America.

I could go on, but that gives you an idea. The items ranged from pencils to furniture. All in all we received over 120 free items for our school.

To Shurfine Foods, to Ron Radcliffe and our local grocery store, to the volunteers and workers who processed receipts, and to everyone who thoughtfully donated their receipts, I extend heart-felt thanks on behalf of the teachers and students of Hill City Grade School. The thousands of dollars of free materials will only make us better; these materials only make the educational experience richer and more meaningful for our kids. This is an amazing program, and I hope that we will be able to continue to collect, process, and reap the rewards from all those great receipts.