October 15, 2007
By Ginny Weidner
Great Lakes Scrip Center
Divine Mercy School in Faribault, Minnesota has always had one of the leading scrip programs in the country. They have been a strong customer of Great Lakes Scrip Center customer since 1998 with 160 to 170 families who participate in this Pre-K thru 6th grade school. Not surprisingly, Divine Mercy was one of the first schools to begin using GLSC’s free ShopWithScrip online scrip management tool.
Kelly Tutak has been the coordinator at Divine Mercy for less than a year, but has caught on quickly to the routine of weekly orders and Point of Sale purchases. According to Kelly, ShopWithScrip gives scrip volunteers a convenient way to gather family orders, aggregate them into purchase orders, and automatically transmit the information to GLSC.
Kelly says “the biggest advantage to ShopWithScrip is the elimination of entering each order individually”. Because ShopWithScrip gives her school a free online ordering portal, each family enters their own order at their own convenience from their home. This reduces her data entry time. Divine Mercy families have to have their orders entered by 8:30pm on Tuesday (a no-late policy is enforced). After which, she releases her purchase order to Great Lakes Scrip Center and receives her order from Great Lakes Friday morning and distributes her orders that same day
The families couldn’t be happier with this new “ShopWithScrip” program. It gives the families the freedom to enter their order when it’s convenient for them 24/7. And Kelly no longer has to worry about out-of-date order forms and product lists, because her families always have access to real-time GLSC product information.
Divine Mercy has their usual weekly orders but they also offer “point of sale” distribution at various times and various locations throughout the week. For the POS, they sell their two local grocery store certificates but the awesome part is they sell it at the high school, grade school, pre-school, parish office, after Masses on the weekends, and they’ve even made an arrangement for their local bank branch to sell it. Now that’s innovative!
Kelly tells us that “70% of the families’ program earnings go towards their school tuition and 30% goes to the school operations fund”. Their administration is extremely supportive, from the priest to the staff at the schools. They even have families who don’t have children at the school who participate in the Scrip program and donate their credit dollars to a family in need - it’s stewardship in action.
One of the most frequently asked questions with the new ShopWithScrip program, is “how does the coordinator collect the money for the orders”? Kelly tells us they have solved that dilemma with the following choices for their families. Divine Mercy families have several choices:
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Pay COD when picking up their order
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Send a check in with their student
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Use a credit card (subject to a 2% user fee)
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Automatic Debit/Checking Withdrawal from their bank account
Their local bank, has arranged the ACH/automatic checking withdrawl, which is great for the Divine Mercy families. The families can order their scrip and arrange payment to Kelly it right from their computer.
Needless to say, Divine Mercy School has an awesome scrip program and their families will attest to it with their tuition savings. All it takes is
dedication, volunteerism, commitment and now with ShopWithScrip, a little less time.