Could Packaging Labels Pay for Your Child's Education?

It's true. A number of companies have programs in place where package labels can be exchanged for cash for your child. Most of the programs donate cash directly to your child's school. However, one program allows you to establish a college fund for your child and the cash from products purchased is deposited directly into that fund.

This article examines the most popular corporate education programs: General Mills Box Tops for Education, Upromise®, Campbell Labels For Education, and Tyson Foods Project A+.

Box Tops For Education

There are three ways parents can earn cash for schools through Box Tops for Education: clipping Box Top logos, buying through the online Box Tops portal, or getting a Box Tops for Education Visa® card.

The bright pink Box Top logos can be found on products ranging from cereal to facial tissue to plastic storage bags. Parents and students clip the symbol and turn it in at school enrolled in the program. The school redeems the boxtop for 10 cents.

The Box Tops for Education site, www.boxtops4education.com, also serves as an online portal for merchants such as JC Penney, Lands End, Sears, and even Walmart. Once you register at the portal and select your school, a percentage of the qualified purchases made through the Box Tops portal are donated to the school. Most donations run around 2%, but Zoobooks, for example, will donate 25% of purchases to the school.

The third way to earn cash for your school is to use a Box Tops for Education Visa® card. Using this card garners your school 1% of every purchase made.

According to the website, the following qualify as schools for purposes of the program:
· Any accredited public, private or parochial school, for grades K-8, in the United States that is organized and primarily operated for educational purposes.
· United States military schools, for grades K-8, worldwide.
· Accredited home school associations, K-8, in the United Sates that are organized and operated primarily for educational purposes and have 15 or more students.
This is a fairly easy program to participate in. You probably already have products with the Box Top symbols on them in your house already. Our family recently cut out $16.00 worth of box top labels for our school.
If you use this program be aware that the Box Top symbol has been shrinking. Some products have symbols that are only a fraction of the original symbol size. These new, smaller symbols are harder to spot and easier to lose.
The Box Tops program was started in 1996 by cereal maker, General Mills. The first products to have Box Tops were General Mills Cereals such as Cheerios®, Lucky Charms®, and Total®.

Upromise®

Unlike the Box Top program, there is nothing to cut out and send in with this program. When you create your online Upromise® account, you will register your credit, debit, grocery, and/or drug store cards. When you purchase participating products with one of the registered cards, a small percentage of the purchase price is credited to your account.

You can designate a participating school (a new feature), or individual students, as beneficiaries of your Upromise® account. An added feature is that you can have friends and family (think grandparents!) register their cards and get a percentage of their purchases credited to your child's account. Participating products vary widely and range from glue, to baby food, to frozen foods, to health and beauty products, and more.

Like Box Tops, the Upromise® site is an online portal to many of the same merchants as the Box Tops program. Percentages donated vary and can be as high as 15% at Hallmark Flowers. The site regularly runs specials, so that sometimes an extra percentage is contributed.

Upromise® also has dining and travel programs. When you use a registered card to dine at designated restaurants, a percentage is donated to your Upromise® account. When you book a trip through one of the travel services the Upromise® portal (which includes Expedia.com, priceline.com, Travelocity and many other travel-related sites) a portion of the cost of your trip is donated to your Upromise® college savings account. Why not put a portion of that cruise vacation aside for college?

The Citi® Upromise® MasterCard allows you to save 1% of any purchase made with the card (up to 2% of eligible gas purchases).

Something unique to the Upromise® program is the opportunity to open a 529 college savings plan and also to apply for student loans right through the Upromise® site. The 529 plan offered at Upromise® requires a minimum monthly investment of $50.00 a month. Donations received from purchasing products can also be transferred directly into the 529 plan.

Since individual students can be set up as beneficiaries of the Upromise® program and there is no specification as to what type of school they attend, this program can be a very helpful resource for homeschool students.

I chose to register my cards, but not get a credit card or participate in the 529. I have not bought any big ticket items (such as trips) through this program. Based on just grocery and drug store purchases, our family has accumulated just over $20.00 in two years.

The Upromise program has been around for five years.

Campbell Labels For EducationTM
According to their website, Campbells runs one of the oldest educations with over 30 years of school fundraising. By saving proofs of purchase from your favorite Campbell products, you could be earning free educational equipment for your local school.

Educational equipment offered varies depending on the amount of points earned. It can range from globes, to televisions and other electronics, to wall clocks, to computer software.

To qualify for the program, a product must be one of the Campbell family of brands which includes not only Campbell's products, but also Franco-American®, Pepperidge Farm®, Swanson®, Market Day®, V8®, and Prego® products.

The program recently simplified what you need to cut and submit. Rather than requiring whole labels (which can sometimes be difficult to remove), the UPC code is usually sufficient. However, lids are required for some products such as the pasta sauce. The number of points awarded varies with the product. Consult their website for point values of individual products and what it is that must be saved.

I did discover that homeschools are eligible to participate in this program. The home school must be accredited through their county or state and the program needs to receive a letter with proof of accreditation from the home school. Given the free merchandise and limited budget of some home school families, this may be worthwhile.

Campbell Labels For EducationTM offers many bonus programs. One of the largest is Labels for America Bonus offer. To get up to 500 bonus points for your school, you need to complete a volunteer project, fitness activity or educational program that promotes learning, caring, sharing, or student nutrition and wellness and submit a participation form to the program.

Tyson Foods Project A+

Tyson Foods will also donate money to your school through its Project A+ for each label received. Each label can be redeemed for a very generous 24 cents. A minimum of 100 labels ($24.00) is required for redemption and the program will award up to $12,000 per school each calendar year.

The project is only open to accredited public or parochial schools in the United States or to military schools in the continental United States or overseas. I could not find a mention of home schools.

Summary

Are you going to be able to totally fund your child's education with the programs? Based on my family's experiences, probably not.

However, these are likely products you are already using so why not participate? In other words, if they are giving away money, why not sign up to get some for your student or school? Home schoolers may also want to consider getting their families involved in the programs that allow their participation.

Always refer to the program websites for current promotions and information.