PTA & Giant receipts/rewards/A+ program question

[Anonymous]

Please bear with - we have a completely new, novice PTA board. And a lot of the prior year's stuff is hard to find.

How do your schools handle the Giant rewards program? My understanding is that parents register their discount card. The school gets the money. And then the school turns it over to the PTA.

Is there any splitting of the money with the school? is there a norm?

I am in touch with the financial specialist at school and I have looked through Giant's site.

Honestly, my aim is to ensure the PTA gets the money (for budgeting purposes). We throw the money right back at the school with landscaping, field trips, mini grants etc. But if the money goes only to the school, we have to get cracking on different fundraisers and expend less effort on this one.

Please share your experience on this.

[Anonymous]

DO you think the goals of the school and the PTA are so different?

[Anonymous]

At the elementary school my children attended, the PTA encouraged people to sign up for the Giant and Safeway programs, but the school was the direct recipient of the earned rewards. That was fine, because as the PTA, we were trying to earn money for the school and associated programs for the students, so it was all going for the same goal.

[Anonymous]

OP here - Our goals are not different. But for budgeting purposes- I really just want to know.
"We throw the money right back at the school with landscaping, field trips, mini grants etc."
We may fund less somewhere (media center or field trips) and ask that they tag the money for that. Our pres has a regular meeting time with the principal and I think our goals knit very nicely together.

[Anonymous]

At our school the money went directly to the school as discretionary spending. In our case the school wanted to fund mobile computer labs. I think they earned about $7,000. Our PTA did coordinate the forms and the registration with Giant.

[Anonymous]

Maybe the PTA can have a meeting with the Principal and agree on how the money will be spent, or what %age of money could be earmarked for field trips.

A few years ago - we had the PTA set up a table for all the important events with laptops, where the parents would come to school (back to school night etc.) and then they registered the parents on the spot.

The biggest problem with the Giant card is that while they will take your phone number at the check-out counter, they need the actual Giant Card number to register for A+ Bonus Bucks...

I would suggest that the PTA sends forms to the parents so that they can fill in their Giant information and send it to the PTA...Then someone can input that information on the site. Run through one registration so you will know what is being asked.