Make some Change for Katrina victims

The Discovery Educator Network partnered up with Habitat for Humanity when they launched a program called Making Change for Katrina. Here’s the quick explanation of what it is:

We focused on spare change because Coinstar estimates there is $10.5 billion in uncirculated spare change sitting in U.S. homes. We thought if we could collect even just 1% of that 10.5 billion we could help Habitat rebuild a thousands of lives! We’ve partnered up Coinstar (those green coin collection machines in supermarkets that turn your spare change into paper bills) with Habitat for Humanity. It’s so easy– go to any Coinstar pour spare change in, choose donate to MCK and within 2 days your money will be buying lumber, nails, and bricks to help Habitat voluneers and homeowners rebuild in the Gulf.

Before I moved, I grabbed my change jar and took it over to the local grocery store to do my part. Since we’re heading into the holiday season soon and we’re also approaching the end of the tax year, I thought I’d repost the trip that I originally put up on the DEN blog. This is how easy it can be to do a small part to make a big difference.

My wife and I moved on Friday. We weren’t quite sure what to do with our change jug because it was far too heavy to just throw into a box. So instead, we decided to take it over to our local grocery store and put our change to good use.

I’m not exactly a master at estimating things, but I figured there was probably bout $40 worth of change there. That’s the great thing about Coinstar though. There are over 12,000 of these machines located around the country in local grocery stores and convenience stores. While I can get my change counted from my bank for free, I made the decision to cash it in at 10:00pm at night. Banks were closed, Coinstar was open.

Since the DEN has been working with Making Change for Katrina, I decided to turn my change into a donation for Katrina victims. I figured that every little bit helps and there are people who could use the change a whole lot more than I can right now.

A couple more clicks and I started to pour in my change. What is it about change counters that are so much fun?

It didn’t take me long to realize that I had way more than $40 there. There’s a little ticker that counts it up as you’re pouring it in. Counts up how many of each coin there has been as well as a running total.

Next thing I knew I was passing up $50, $75 and $100. Honestly, I had no idea there was so much change in there! It took about 10 minutes for the entire jar to get counted and when all was said and done, I wound up with a whopping $120.25.

A couple of seconds later it spit out a reciept for me that I could use as a record of my tax deductible donation. Looks like I had

203 Quarters
368 Dimes
220 Nickels
2170 Pennies

Oh yeah, I also found a plastic nickel, a nut, a peg from Mastermind and some foregn coin (can anybody identify it)? Didn’t seem to want to let me donate any of those to Katrina vicitms!

The entire process took no more than 10-15 minutes and at the end of the day, it felt pretty darn good to use the loose change we had around the house to make a $120.25 donation to Habitat for Humanity by way of Making Change for Katrina. I may not buy a house by itself, but every little bit helps. Got a change jar at home? Use it to make some change of your own!

1 Comment(s)

doctorj
10/31/2006

Thank you so much for your caring and your contribution. I live in the area affected by the storm and it is needed badly. Thank you again for restoring my faith in America and its people.

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