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BY VAN BEALL

At Glen Mar UMC in Ellicott City, the “Extreme Fundraising” program is raising extra money for ministries at no additional cost to participants.

Extreme Fundraising programs include rebates, discounts, recycling of used electronics, Internet-based programs and the familiar collecting of labels and box tops.

The cumulative total of free money generated through these no-cost programs at Glen Mar UMC recently surpassed $82,000. This hefty amount of money required only minor changes in daily behavior and did not cost anyone an extra cent.

The most formidable and lucrative fund-raising effort is the gift card program. Members of the congregation purchase gift cards every Sunday for merchants they already plan to use, such as grocery and gas merchants, restaurants and many national retailers.

The cards are purchased by Glen Mar at an average discount of 5 percent and sold to the congregation at face value. In three years the congregation has purchased more than $1.2 million of gift cards, generating a windfall of more than $60,000.

Members of the congregation would have spent the $1.2 million at these merchants anyway, but by shopping with gift cards for these everyday purchases, many thousands of extra dollars have been sent to UMCOR in response to disasters and humanitarian needs, plus extra money has been provided to many other ministries of the congregation.

For additional information on how this program works, visit www.ShopWithScrip.com.

Three grocery chains support non-profits with programs allowing shoppers to register their grocery loyalty cards. Members of the congregation support two elementary schools in Baltimore’s less affluent neighborhoods by registering their Giant card at www.giantfood.com.

The principals at the two schools have received checks totaling over $5,500 in three years. Safeway Club cards can be registered at www.escrip.com to generate cash payments, which Glen Mar uses for mission ministries. To date over $9,000 has been received through the eScrip program. The Food Lion store allows shoppers to register their MVP cards at www.foodlion.com, also generating cash rebates.

The Trash for Cash program focuses on recycling printer cartridges and cell phones that would otherwise be discarded. Phones are mailed to recyclers, while most printer cartridges are now recycled at Staples or Office Depot. This effort has generated more than $6,800.

Other items that are turned into free blessings are the familiar Campbell’s Labels for Education and General Mills’ Box Tops for Education. Both support important outreach ministries at two schools in Appalachia, and provide them with more than $800 for educational resources.

The final component of Extreme Fundraising is Internet-based profit sharing. Many websites provide cash rebates for using their site as a portal to other merchants’ sites. Rebates can exceed 15 percent.

Glen Mar focuses on www.Igive.com and www.goodsearch.com. Both sites also pay approximately one cent every time one uses their Yahoo!-based Internet search engine. Do you Yahoo? If you do, let it generate a penny for your ministry. So far, checks worth 25,000 pennies have been used by ministries.

Each program described requires only slight, but purposeful, changes in behavior. Each purposeful act, including shopping with a gift card or dropping off an empty printer cartridge, has cumulatively blessed many hundreds of people across the county, the state, the nation and the world.

The total additional price to the congregation is zero, but to the hundreds of additional beneficiaries, these efforts seem priceless.

For additional information on these programs, contact Van Beall at 410-531-7170 or .