Welcome to the Wonderful World of Box Tops!

List of Supplies:● Organization at home

○ Bag/box for uncounted Box tops○ Counting Sheet○ Baggies (for packaging - either purchase them out of your budget or re-use

baggies submitted by the students)○ Sharpie

● Dollar store prizes● Shiny gold paper (from Hobby Lobby) for Homework Certificates

Box Tops Schedule:● Summer: Read through btfe.com website and get familiar with all the tools. ● September: Early in the month, send home the first Box Tops flyer in the blue folders.

Make an announcement (or have Boxy annouce) that we have begun collecting. Purchase raffle prizes.

● October: Begin checking, collecting and counting Box Tops. Each Thursday, begin awarding Raffle prizes. The last Thursday of October (or first of November) award the student and Class with the most Box Tops for October. Package your first shipment of Box Tops into headquarters.

● November: Consider another Box Tops flyer to go home in Blue Folders. Submit first Box Tops shipment by November 1! Continue awarding raffle prizes each Thursday. The last Thursday of November (or first of December) award the student and Class with the most Box Tops for November.

● December: Continue awarding raffle prizes each Thursday. The last Thursday of December award the student and Class with the most Box Tops for December.

● January: Consider another Box Tops flyer to go home in Blue Folders. Continue awarding raffle prizes each Thursday. The last Thursday of January (or first of February) award the student and Class with the most Box Tops for January.

● February: Continue awarding raffle prizes each Thursday. The last Thursday of February (or first of March) award the student and Class with the most Box Tops for February. Package your first shipment of Box Tops into headquarters.

● March: Consider another Box Tops flyer to go home in Blue Folders. Submit second Box Tops shipment by March 1! Continue awarding raffle prizes each Thursday. The last Thursday of March (or first of April) award the student and Class with the most Box Tops for March.

● April: Tell students at flag salute that this is the last month for Box Tops for the year. Remind them weekly. Continue awarding raffle prizes each Thursday. The last Thursday of April (or first of May) award the student and Class with the most Box Tops for March. At this time, you will also award the student and class who submitted the most Box Tops for the year with their prizes.

● May: Place a sign over the Box Tops submission box that we are done collecting for the year. Package and send your final shipment to headquarters. Coordinate pizza party with teacher.

The first thing you will want to do, is to become the official Box Tops Coordinator for our school on the box tops website: www.btfe.com There you will create an account and designate yourself as a coordinator for the school.

From the Coordinator Homepage, you will find invaluable resources and timelines, so I would recommend playing around on the website a little during the summer to get familiar with the layout.

Collecting Box Tops1. Obviously, your main purpose is to collect the many box tops that come into our school.

2. It is up to you how you want to collect Box Tops. Some people prefer to print out the

collection sheets and send them home monthly in blue envelopes. You can find these on btfe.com. I prefered to send home letters every other month with two entry forms on the bottom to be placed in plastic bags with the students’ submissions. The papers tend to be a good reminder, and some students like to fill them in; however, when you need to pull off expired box tops, the papers can become more difficult to manage. I also found postage was more costly when we had more paper collections sheets. The baggies do not have reminders nearly as often, however, it is easier for you to remove expired box tops. No matter how you collect them, make sure you include a place for the students name, teachers name, and number of box tops!!!!!

3. However you do it, I strongly encourage you to suggest multiples of 10. For every 10 Box Tops submitted, the student is entered into the weekly raffle. Also, when submitting Box tops it must be in multiples of 50, so either way - 10 helps you easily sort and organize.

4. Students will bring in their box tops, and you can collect them from the Box Tops box located in the atrium. I would suggest doing this weekly.

5. Once you have the box tops at home, you will need to sort, confirm their expiration date and repackage them. Expect this process to take about an hour’s worth of work each week. If you do not count every week, expect it to take one hour for every week you are counting for. (For example, if you have 3 weeks of box tops stored up, it will take your approximately 3 hours to count and prep the box tops.)

6. Before you begin counting, you will want to create an excel or google docs spreadsheet to track all of the box tops for each student and class. Each teacher should have his/her own tab entered alphabetically. Leave the top row on all the teacher tabs for the date on which you will be awarding the raffle prize to begin in column 3. In column 1, list the

teacher name for EVERY student you input (this will later help you for raffle drawings). In column 2, you will put the student’s name. After all teacher tabs are created, you should have a tab called “Raffle” and a tab called “Winners”. I will put a link to the spreadsheet at the bottom of these directions.

This screen shot shows Bashor’s class page. Column 1 is always the teacher’s name, Column 2 is the students. From there, each column is the Thursday on which you will be giving out a prize. Along the bottom, you can see each teacher has his/her own tab.

Here is the “Raffle Tab”. See how when you copy to this page, you will include the teacher’s name. This will assist you in quickly identifying the student/class to award raffle prizes.

This is how I set up my “Winners” tab. I try to keep track of each weekly raffle winner, although, if I am rushing, I sometimes miss a week (or two…)

7. Once it's time to start counting, you will want to have a “counting sheet’ handy to help you. For me, I simply printed out a 5x10 table on a word document. You will also receive a big one in your coordinator kit if you like that one better. Start by sorting the bags/papers into classes alphabetically. Take a bag from whatever teacher you have highest in alphabetical order. You will go to your spreadsheet and enter the teacher’s name in column 1 of his/her tab. In column 2, enter the student’s name.

8. Now is time to finally check those Box Tops. You must examine each one to make sure the expiration date will not have passed by the date you are post-marking the package. In other words, if the next deadline to submit your box tops is March 1, 2019 - all box tops must have an expiration date of 3/1/19 OR LATER. Even if you are checking the box top on 1/1/19 and it has an expiration date of 2/1/19, it will be expired by the date your are mailing it in. That is the ONLY date that counts!!!!! In addition to the expiration date being current, it must be fully legible. You will also need to make sure the small code on the top left corner is fully visible.

9. Once you have determined that the Box Top is good, you will want to count it. Begin filling in your counting sheet with the good loose Box Tops. When you have finished that student’s bag, see how many Box Tops they submitted and enter that number onto their line in the spreadsheet under the most current Raffle Date. Continue this until you have counted all of that particular student’s Box Tops. Some students will submit multiple bags/sheets, some will put all of their Box Tops in one bag/sheet. For students who submit on paper, you need to again make sure they are all valid. If not, pull them off the sheet.

10. I always keep a bag of “extra” Box tops handy. These will come from 2 sources: the first is any Box Tops submitted that do not have a name or teacher on them. The other is from members of the community who donate them in general to the school (Lisa, the crossing guard, is a good example). When a student submits an expired or invalid Box top that needs to be removed, I try to replace them, as supplies allow. My rule of thumb is I will replace 20% of what they submitted. For example, if a student submits 10 Box Tops and 2 are no good, I will make them “whole” by using 2 of the extras. On the other hand, if a student submits 10 Box Tops and 5 are invalid, I will NOT make them whole. They will get credit for what they have submitted that is valid.

11. The counting sheet will also help you keep track of your loose Box tops to 50 (without actually counting) since the students will be sending them in in various amounts.

Expiration Date

Code

Remember to note on the page where one student’s Box Tops stops and the next starts so you can give accurate credit.

(here you can tell the first 30 belong to one student, and the last 20 belong to another because of how they are trimmed)

12. As soon as you are done counting that student’s box Tops, you will enter them on their line in the spread sheet. If a student submits a number of Box Tops that is NOT a multiple of 10, highlight that line in yellow. The next time you get an uneven number of Box Tops from that students, go back in time to see if they can be “evened out”. Once they are, put an asterix in that week (DO NOT CHANGE THE NUMBER OF BOX TOPS FOR THE WEEK, though) and remove the yellow highlight.

This is a good example of a class that had uneven numbers of Box Tops. As you can see, Evan first submitted 15 on October 19th. Then, on January 30th, he submitted 25. The 5 extra in each case made for a full 10. His yellow highliight was removed, he was entered into the raffle

3 times (instead of two for the week of January 30th: 20/25 for 1/30’s entery + 5 for 1/30 and 5 for 10/19 = 30 total Box Tops or 3 raffle entries).

13. After you have entered all the Box Tops for that day, you will want to transfer the students over to the “Raffle” list for a random drawing. For every 10 Box Tops the student submitted, he or she is entered into the raffle drawing. Copy both the teacher name and student name boxes. Then, go to your Raffle tab and paste that information chronologically into the Raffle tab. If a student submitted 20 Box Tops, paste their information 2 times, etc.

14. On Wednesday night, have a member of your house (or Boxy) randomly choose a number from the Raffle tab (ex: pick a number between 1 - 500). You can also use a random name picker from the internet, but I found they could not hold as many students as we had submitting or they otherwise caused problems on my computer. If you have a site you like, by all means, use it! I found it was easier just to pick a random winner. Keep track of these winners on your “Winners” tab. I do try to pick a new “random” winner each week - that is in your discretion, though.

15. At the end of the month, you will need to tally the student who submitted the most box tops for the month. If it isn’t obvious, you can use the “Sum” function to add up that student’s line for just that month. Likewise, you will need to find the class who submitted the most Box Tops for the month. Again, if this one isn’t obvious, use the sum function for that month only. In order to make this easier, I hide all previous months but the one I am currently working on.

16. Now it is time to award the prizes! You will award the raffle prizes each week at flag salute. The student and class who submitted the most Box Tops for the month will be awarded the last Thursday of the month (or first Thursday of the following month).

17. The raffle prizes should be small - I buy a whole bunch at the dollar store in a variety of age and gender and gender-neutral appropriate types. The raffle winner and student who submitted the most Box Tops both get a dollar store prize. The student who submitted the most also gets a “Homework Pass” certificate (which allows them out of one homework assignment). I print the certificate on shiny gold paper to make it more attractive. The class that submits the most Box Tops for the month wins a popsicle party. The best deal I have found are the budget bags of 18 pops at Albertsons - usually $5-7 total. You will coordinate the day with the teacher. See the attached label for popsicle’s to attach to the bag. The bag is then put in the chest freezer in the Faculty Lounge.

18. At the end of the year, you will tally the student and class that submitted the most Box Tops for the year. For the student, I usually give them 2-3 themed prizes in a gift bag and a certificate for yogurt, whale watching, food, etc. Whatever the office has on hand. In the past I have done a “Summer Fun Pack” of different bubble toys, a “Bug Catching” theme with different bug catchers and a “Boardgame” theme. ALL of which are from the

dollar store. The class that submits the most for the year wins a pizza party. I get the pizzas from Costco. End of the year prizes are awarded at the end of April to give you time to coordinate the pizza party with the teacher.

19. If you do not already have a “Boxy” to award the prizes at flag salute, you will need to find one. Some Boxys want you to go with them, and actually make the announcements themselves. Others have had the principal do it. Others have had you go with them, but they do the work. And, some do it all on their own. All up to you and your Boxy. The Boxy costume is kept in the MPR under the desk in the back corner of the PTA area..

20. You will need to mail the Box Tops into the organization 3x a year. There are two deadlines you must meet: November 1 and March 1. We also usually submit at the end of the year (on or about May 1) with any Box Tops collected through that time.

Budget Guidelines:

Box Tops has a $200 budget which is typically broken down as follows:● $40 in prizes (approximately - I buy slightly more than needed to cover different age

ranges so I will have something no matter who wins)○ $25 in weekly raffle prizes○ $7 in monthly prizes○ $3 in end of year prize

● $4 in gold paper for certificates● $35 in popsicle parties - covers 7 throughout the year● $60 in shipping costs (3 shipments at approximately $20 each)● $50 for end of year pizza party● $10 for miscellaneous supplies: baggies, boxes, etc.