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In January 2005 we introduced
a full SCRIP program here at St. Brendan.
Our SCRIP program offers gift cards and certificates to many local and
national retailers. The retailers
agree to sell the gift cards and certificates at a discounted rate to St. Brendan. St. Brendan in turn sells the
certificates and cards to the parishioners at face value. We then split the rebates 50/50 between
the parishioner's school tuition, MFF (Ministry of Faith Formation) fees,
Life Teen event fees or your half of the rebate can even go to the parish
ministry you are most involved in such as Boy Scouts, Elizabethan Ministry to
name a few, and a newly created Tuition Assistance Fund.
By way of example, Giant
Eagle offers a 5% discount. St.
Brendan buys a $100 Giant Eagle gift card for $95 ($100 less 5%) and then
sells it to the parishioner for $100. The parishioner pays $100 for a $100
gift card. The $5 difference between
what St. Brendan bought the card for and what the parishioner paid for the
card will be shared $2.50 to the parishioner's tuition or MFF account and the
other $2.50 will go to the Tuition Assistance Fund (TAF).
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The goal of the program is to
offer parish families two ways to help reduce their tuition/ fees; through
their own earned rebates and by applying for tuition assistance from the
TAF. The establishment of a Tuition
Assistance Fund has become a valuable resource for those parish families who
are struggling with the ever-increasing costs of tuition at Catholic
schools. Last year nearly $50,000 in grants
were made out of the fund! This year
we anticipate over $40,000 in scrip rebates will be earned towards the TAF.
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You don't have to be a
school or MFF family to take part in the scrip program. You can designate the 50% of the rebate
that would normally go to tuition to go to your favorite parish
ministry!
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A typical family of four can
easily earn $ 274 annually towards their tuition and fees by using
certificates for every day needs. Let's assume the family of four does their
grocery shopping at Kroger, buys their gas at Speedway, buys their clothing
at Kohl's and eats out once a week.
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Tuition
Account
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Tuition Assistance
Fund
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Kroger
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$400/month @5%
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$240
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$120
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$120
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Speedway
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$100/month @4%
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$48
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$24
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$24
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Kohl's
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$100/month @5%
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$60
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$30
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$30
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Restaurants
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$200/month @10%
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$240
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$120
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$120
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Total Rebates
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$274
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$274
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You can see by the above
example how easy it is to earn. These
are just the everyday places imagine if you are remodeling your home and use
the Home Depot or Lowe's scrip! There are over 50 different vendors with
discount rates ranging from 3% to 19% in the program.
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Kroger has made it even
easier for those of you who would like to participate but don't want to have
the hassle of filling out an order form and writing a check for items you
would normally charge to your credit card.
Kroger now has a refillable card, which allows you to buy a $50 card
from the program just once and refill it with funds at the Kroger store
service desk. This allows you to
charge the refills to your credit card (refills can be made in any
increments) and also gives you the flexibility of filling it right at the
store with no pre-planning needed.
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All you need to do to
participate is complete an enrollment form and begin to place your
orders. Orders can be placed through
your children at school, dropped off at the drop box in the church or after
the 8:45 and 10:30 masses on Sundays.
Orders placed by Sunday will be ready for pickup Thursday at the
school or can be picked up the following Sunday after the 8:45 or 10:30
masses.
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Please consider participating
in the program. This is such an easy
and painless way for us to help each other with no real out of pocket
expense. At the least consider purchasing
a re-fillable Kroger card.
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Any questions you might have
can be directed to Amy Manning (amymanning@columbus.rr.com
or 777-9655), Denise Golonka (kendenise@columbus.rr.com or
529-9111), Maggie Zink (mzink@columbus.rr.com) or Patty King ( pattyking1@columbus.rr.com or
771-8516). You can also learn more about the program through the Great Lakes
SCRIP website http://www.glscrip.com.
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