Over the years, we've raised thousands of dollars in "free" money for the church through our Grocery Receipt Program -- but we need a volunteer to carry this program on. (If no one steps forward, we'll have to discontinue this program).

Here’s how the program works: We've made arrangements with two local grocery stores. For every $5,000 in grocery receipts from their store, they give us a $25 (or $50) gift card for their store -- which we sell at face value to someone in the church who shops there, and the money from the sale is donated to the church. In other words: for every $5,000 in receipts, the church gets $25 (or $50) of "free" money.

We need someone to sort the receipts for the two stores, add them up (so they are in bundles of roughly $5,000), send the packets to the store manager, and "sell" the donated gift cards.

In the beginning, Marie Bensley did this -- and then she handed it over to Nora Coates. Nora handed it over to our church custodian (Tom), who did it for a year or so. But currently, we don't have anyone who can volunteer in this role.

I have a large box of receipts that have already been turned in, so I'm sure we have several batches of $5,000 for each of the two grocery stores. I can show you how it works, if this is something you would be willing to do going forward.

After catching up on the backlog of receipts, it probably would only take a few minutes of your time each month. And there's no rush . . . so you could do it at a time that's convenient for you.

Let me know if you think this is something you would be willing to help with.

~ Janni Kretlow (604-926-1621)