The school that Madison is going to next year collects Box Tops.  If you don’t know what Box Tops is, let me explain.  There are a ton of items that you can buy that have the image to the left on the box.  You collect these for your local schools, and they get 10 cents for every one you turn in.  Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when if you can get a bunch of people together, it adds up quickly.  Now, the school’s goal is to earn $750 from Box Tops.  Last year, they made $536, and I would love for them to meet their goal for this year (even though Madison is not even enrolled yet.  I understand that any extra money to the school with benefit her).  Now, there are several ways we can do this for our local schools.

First, you need to log into the Box Tops site and create an account.  You enter your state and your school or if you don’t know that, just enter your zip code.  I personally entered the school and state.  From there, you are able to see how your local school is going.  Now, how do you increase that number?  Well, you can collect box tops with that logo on it.  They also have a Marketplace.  Now, until recently, I did not know about the Marketplace.  This works so awesome too!  There is a list of stores that will give a percentage of whatever you buy from them back to the school.  There are stores like Avon, Gap, Kohls, Best Buy, Leap Frog, Target, and Walmart (this is just a couple of them — the whole listing is on the site).  All you have to do is log into the Box Tops Site, click on marketplace, then click on the store you want to shop it.  That’s it.  Once you checkout, the percentage you purchased will then be applied to your school.  If you are Christmas shopping online anyway, why not help out your local school (and if you don’t want to help any of them out, I’ll tell you the school we are sending our money too, and you can use them).

Did you know that Box Tops has donated more than $250 million to schools nationwide since 1996?  Would you like to help raise that number?  Then start collecting Box Tops and use their Marketplace to do your online shopping!  To help you get started, I am giving away a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble (thank you Barnes & Noble for your support of such a great program!).  What do you have to do?

Each one of these things will give you one entry:

1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.

For 5 additional entries,

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

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This contest will end November 26th at 8:00 pm CST and is for US residents. Good Luck!