All over the frugal blogosphere, I run across coupons and deals on how to pay little or nothing for all kinds of products. Often, I’m not at all interested because I never use most of the products. A recent post by Money Mate Kate reminded me of the other possibilities.
Kate is asking people to help her play Robin Hood. No, she doesn’t want to steal from the rich, she just wants help with getting coupons which will allow her to acquire items (particularly toiletries, which aren’t covered by food stamps) which she then gives away. If you’d be interested in printing the coupons and mailing them to her, check out the article.
Or, couponing/CVSing for charity is something you can do on your own. It requires time, a printer (except for some CVS stuff), a CVS card (if you’re going to do the CVS part), and some money.
With the recession, more and more people are out of work and more churches, charities, and shelters are cutting their budgets due to insufficient funding. Items obtained through deal hunting can be donated to groups (though check beforehand what they take), or you can put together care packages like Kate does and do your best to give them away to people who need them.
The biggest reason to coupon for charity is that you can make your money go a lot farther than it might go if you gave it directly. Many charities are good at stretching a buck of getting deals, but I’ve seen some CVS reports where the blogger got over $100 of toiletries for a couple bucks. That’s a fantastic ROI.
To help Kate, all you need is a printer and a few cents for printing/postage. You can even read reports of what she does with the items afterward.
If you would like to try the CVS “game,” here are 3 places to get started.
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When I try CVSing I almost always find the items associated with the good deals to be out of stock. I think I’d be more successful if I still lived in an area with a high density of CVS stores. They are few and far between in my current vicinity. Probably I should ask about the rain check policy, but the only CVS that is very convenient to my home often has sick people waiting to see the nurse at its Minute Clinic not far from the customer service area, so I’m reluctant to linger there.
I have run into out-of-stock items too during popular sales. It’s not just CVS, it happens at a lot of stores.
In any case, the coupons for charity is a good concept. Say you have a $10 for 10 get 11th item free at Meijer – one of the eligible products is toothpaste for which you have an appropriate coupon. Now you have free toothpaste in addition to one item toward to your 11 item goal.
Further spinning this off … a lot of couponers know about the military coupon campaigns. How about circulating your coupons to local families you know are in need? There is a coupon swap box at my neighborhood library, for example.
.-= Monroe on a Budget´s last blog ..Angel Food Ministries announces Thanksgiving box =-.
I buy 7 or more Saturday local papers and give coupons anonymously to a thrift shop. They can either give coupons to poor people or the rich people in the church can donate money and match it with coupons to do food drives, etc. or Christmas gifts for the poor at Christmas. I can’t give alot of money but I sure can collect tons of coupons. It is a sort of hobby for charity for me. Instead of having garage sales I give donations to Thrift store and I am usually blessed way beyond reason more so than if I had a garage sale myself.
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