Four new ways of raising funds are being explored this year. We invite you to participate in all of them and suggest more.
1.) Switch your electricity provider from B.G.E. to Viridian. This is an extremely easy way for you to help the school, help the environment and save money on your electric bill every month. Because of utility deregulation, Viridian, an energy company based in Connecticut, introduced its services in June, 2010. They have a program for non-profits that allows the non-profit to receive two dollars per month for each user that signs up through them. Please use this link (forthcoming-after PTA board approval) to sign up. Also encourage all your friends and relations to sign up with Viridian through the school. There are no start-up or cancellation fees, no contracts and you can cancel at any time with no penalty. You will never notice the difference, except when you go to pay your bill. BGE still sends you a bill but your electricity provider will now be listed as Viridian. If you sign up for their twenty percent renewable energy plan, you can expect to see savings of around 16% percent over BGE rates. Viridian also offers a one hundred percent renewable energy plan whose rates are slightly lower than BGE rates, but you are guaranteed that 100 percent your energy consumption is coming from wind power.
2) Bring in your unwanted music CDs and DVDs. We can sell these in bulk to a company called iPodmeister (really, and they are legit) and expect to make around sixty cents per item that is in good shape and in its original case. Over this past summer I sent in nine hundred and thirty-eight CDs/DVDs and received 638 dollars. Not a bad amount for stuff that might otherwise go to a landfill. More information pending PTA Board approval. You can volunteer to help organize this.
3) Send in your used ink toner from inkjet and laser printers or take them in yourself to Office Depot. These are worth three dollars a piece at Office Depot. You must sign up for a Worklife Rewards program, free, and bring in a maximum of five ink cartridges per day to recycle (that’s a theoretical maximum of $105 per week, per account). After three months, they send you an Office Depot gift card that you can then give to your child’s teacher to purchase supplies. Or drop them off at school and volunteer to coordinate part of the program. You don’t need PTA Board approval to get started on this one. Note that Staples has a similar program but they limit you to 20 cartridges per month and only pay $2 per cartridge.
4) Selling used books online. Instead of shipping off your books to the thrift store or the recycling bin, take a moment and look up their price on amazon.com. You can even get your kids to do this, it’s fun. You can enter the isbn number into the search box and up comes your book. You’ll see instantly what it is selling for used. If it’s selling for more than ten dollars, send it in to the school so that we can post it on our seller account (pending PTA Board approval) and put it up for sale. Eventually most books will sell and it’s a nice trickle of income.
