Cashing In On Savings

Rebate Allowance Program

In an industry where every dollar counts, keeping spending costs as low as possible without sacrificing the quality of a child care program is every Director or child care facility owner's primary concern. This is especially true when it comes to food and equipment costs.

The Rebate Allowance Program can help. "All that is required by a centre is to submit their monthly invoices from their food distributor. All the food companies are concerned about is usage. Operators don't need to concern themselves with prices," says Child Care Specialist Barbara Zimmerman, who operates the program.

The Rebate Allowance Program works with companies like Campbell's Soup, General Mills, etc. to give back a portion of the product purchase price to the daycare. "Large centres and daycare chains can save anywhere from $100 a month up," Zimmerman says.

While not all centres and dayhomes meet the delivery allowance requirements of food distributors to be able to use the RAP, they can work with their child care support group or agencies to pool resources and take advantage of the savings. It may require a bit of coordination to store and distribute the bulk orders to centres and family dayhomes within an organization, but the savings may well offset the initial setup. Zimmerman is certainly willing to assist anyone interested in utilizing the Rebate Program. All it takes is a quick phone call to Barbara at 913-663-3801. Or, send her an email: Barbarazimme@hotmail.com

Online Fundraising

Another option for smaller centers and family dayhomes is to get their parents, staff, and local community to utilize programs such as Schoolcash.com, or Safeway's eSscript program.

By signing up your centre with the Schoolcash.com program, anyone can shop online at the over 250 brand-name stores on the SchoolCash Website and up to 30% of their purchase will go back to the school or group of your choice--at no extra cost! Sign-up is a snap too. They'll even provide handouts and logos to help remind staff and parents to use the service. Visit them at schoolcash.com for
complete details.

Safeway's eScrip is proven to be a fantastic resource for fundraising where participating business partners contribute a percentage of your grocery loyalty cards, credit card, and debit/ ATM card purchases to the school, group or organization of your choice. You can print off a complete list of participants in the program to hand out to parents, staff, family and community members to take advantage of the savings. To learn more, visit their Website - eScript.com.

Fundraising and Cost Saving Secrets
Do you have a cost saving or fundraising program that helps your daycare save money? Share your information in other childcare.net visitors in our Discussion Forms, a popular Member Services feature.

Tip...for programs that only support school-based programs, try registering as a preschool.