September 10, 2007
By Laura Tew
Great Lakes Scrip Center
The five-year old Scrip program at Country Club Elementary School in San Ramon, California was floundering when Julie Eseltine took over the job. Julie had wanted to find a volunteer job with her school so that she could make a difference. When she found out that the Scrip Coordinator position was becoming available, she jumped in with both feet.
However, because of problems with their past Scrip company, many families weren’t interested in participating. The challenges in Julie’s new job were obvious – find a new scrip provider, and overcome family skepticism about scrip. Soon after taking the job, she applied a fresh outlook to the program, and searched for another company on the Internet. That was how she found Great Lakes Scrip Center.
In two short years after finding GLSC, Julie turned the program around. Even though only a “small but active” group of their 600 families are participating, the Country Club Elementary Scrip program is one of Great Lakes Scrip Center’s most active users of the ShopWithScrip.com program. They have bought more than $53,000 in Scrip with this since its inception at the beginning of the year.
“From the beginning, I’ve had a really good feeling about Great Lakes,” Julie said. “The service has been friendly and the people have been helpful.”
Getting Families Motivated
From the beginning, the Scrip program proceeds at Country Club Elementary were used in the classrooms to help purchase those items not funded by the school’s tight budget. Families could contribute scrip program revenue directly to their child’s classroom. Julie quickly learned that this was a key motivator for families, and she continually emphasized the personal link between scrip participation and the quality of your child’s classroom experience.
Julie also keeps an inventory of the most frequently used cards on hand for those who are not very good at planning ahead. She keeps her families updated on current information with their Scrip program online school newsletter. She is always looking for new ways to market to her families so that more will come back to the Scrip program.
ShopWithScrip.com Makes A Good Program Better
“I was always looking for ways to refine the program, make it faster. When the ShopWithScrip came out, I was READY for it,” Julie said of GLSC’s new online ordering and tracking service.
Shopwithscrip.com is an online scrip management application. It’s free software that GLSC customers can use to keep track of family orders and generate purchase orders for GLSC and local retailers. Because it is available online, families can enter their own orders, so coordinators like Julie don’t have to. Julie likes the fact that she can simply review the orders and check to be sure payment has been received. Then, she releases the order to Great Lakes. With this program, the coordinator can also print reports and keep track of those items that their families order most.
Julie has some families that use the online ordering feature all the time. But many families just don’t plan ahead. For families who buy out of inventory, Julie records those family orders online “by proxy” and saves time.
She used to spend an hour ordering and sifting through all the paper that her families had to fill out to order. “ShopWithScrip has cut my time significantly,” Julie commented. “It’s not that hard. You can always get back to where you were and fix something. And if you really messed up, you can call for help.”
San Ramon’s Country Club Elementary has benefited significantly from Julie Eseltine and her efforts. Her natural business savvy fueled by her desire to help her school classrooms has made her Scrip program grow. With Great Lakes Scrip Center’s ShopWithScrip website and Julie’s desire to find new ways to market her program, Country Club Elementary can only continue to benefit. As long as school budgets continue to be cut, the benefits of the Scrip program become more important than ever.