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Giving back to the community with your Sunday paper

July 4th, 2007 at 08:20 am

It's amazing what you'll find in the Sunday paper. While there might be political articles, recipes, and Dear Abby, if you dig deep through the paper, you'll find an amazing way to give back to your community.

In you are lining your litter box with the glossy inserts from the "junk section" as my mother-in-law so fondly refers to it, passing up the junk might mean that you're passing up a way to give back to your community in a very simple, non-evasive way that costs you nothing more than a little time and ingenuity, and will even yield you a receipt for your tax deductable donation.

Simply put, there is money in them there papers, and you just need a way to dig through it.

We have people on our site that will ferret the information for you, but even simpler than searching through Hotcouponworld is just taking 5 minutes to scan the ads and see what you can come up with that has a donatable value.

Some recent examples that you could have done from the past few weeks....

If you had the paper 3 Sundays ago, you would have had a coupon for a free can of dog food. Gather up the newspapers from friends and neighbors, redeem on your next store visit, and drop of the food at a local shelter. Sometimes, national stores like Petsmart or Petco will accept the donation and save it for their adopt-a-thons. There have also been coupons all year long for free cat food and treats, canisters of dog food, and a $1/1 Tidy Cat coupon could mean free litter if you just held onto them in your purse or wallet and watched for the right sale.

I donated an 8# bag of cat food I got with a free coupon to the local cat shelter in our little downtown area. They were thrilled. I took my boys and they got to pet the cats and visit (mind you, I am not a cat lover but my boys like cats, so this was a treat for them).

There are also senior agencies that place animals with seniors and free pet food and supplies goes a long way towards helping someone on a fixed income.

A few weeks further back, there was a coupon in the paper for a free razor! Absolutely free! It had a $6.99 value. Again, a simple gathering of some papers from friends or co-workers would have yielded you a handful of these freebies. 10 coupons gathered that would have otherwise gone into someone's recycle bin is now a $70 donation to a women's shelter. Again, nominal time for the clipping of the coupons, and an easy item to throw in your cart on your most recent shopping visit.

Other recent newspaper freebie have included chocolate bars, coffee samples, dishwasher tabs, sports nutrition bars, and more. In march, there was a coupon for a free blood glucose monitoring kid - a $74.99 value which could have easily gone to a senior center for an elderly person with geriatric diabetes or an agency that deals with low-income pregnant women who might be stricken with gestational diabetes.

Coupons aside, on a trip to Rite Aid this week, you could have gotten the follwoing items free after rebate:

Crest toothpaste
Secret clinical strength deoderant
Herbal Essences Shampoo
Ocean Potion Sunblock

Each of those items would have had an initial cash outlay, but without even having to lick an envelope, you could go immediately online to redeem the rebate.

Health and Beauty items are so desperately needed by foodbanks, shelters, and assorted low-income family agencies. People think about giving food, but fail to remember hygiene items. A donation like this that took just a few minutes on a trip to the local drug store goes a long way in someone's life who has need.

Taking it one step further....if you have a regular prescription and a low co-pay for the drugs, many chain pharmacies offer coupons to either fill a new or transferred prescription. We have low to no copays on our insurance plan. Getting a prescription for my husband costs 0 dollars, but I can nab a $10-$30 gift card for doing business with a particular pharmacy which has a prescription coupon. So for something I need everyday, I can take the gift card and either:

A. Donate it in whole to an agency to do with as they see fit.
B. Buy items to donate.
C. Buy the free after rebate items and double the value of the gift card.

Such a simple thing that takes a little know how, a little time, and a little willingness to stop and look through the paper to see what's free this week that you could obtain for no money can enrich someone else's life.

Happy shopping to you - and I'll see you in the check out line!

[i] Post created by Hotcouponmama[i]

1 Responses to “Giving back to the community with your Sunday paper”

  1. Susan Says:
    1183999853

    What a great reminder to to check though those newspapers for coupons to use to help others. I just checked the site mentioned, www.hotcouponworld.com and it looks impressive!

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