Swifty has come up with a fairly clever way to help out those hurricane victims.
Take all of those jars/cups/piggy banks full of spare change you’ve been collecting and bring them to a CoinStar machine, which will let you directly donate all of that cash to the Red Cross. You’ll be suprised how much that change you’ll never spend adds up to (my last trip was over $40!) and it’ll help out the folks that need it most. If you don’t know where one is, there’s a tool on the CoinStar website that finds the nearest one.
Update: Based upon the suggestion of , I emailed Coinstar to find out if they are planning on skimming money off of donations to the Red Cross during this disaster. Here’s what they said:
Dear Mr. Stratton,
Thank you for your inquiry regarding the American Red Cross’ relationship with Coinstar. In order to offer this very valuable service to the American Red Cross, Coinstar must retain a nominal program fee. Even with this service fee, Coinstar is able to pass through 92.5% directly to The American Red Cross and the Disaster Relief Fund..
The American Red Cross agrees to this and has named Coinstar its premier national supermarket-based coin-counting partner because of the various benefits. The American Red Cross feels very strongly that this minimal cost is worth the convenience afforded to donors and more importantly the access it provides to coin donations that would not otherwise be available. Coinstar donations are similar to credit-card donations, donors receive a tax-deductible receipt for the full value of their donation, but a nominal service fee is retained to implement the program.
Additionally, Coinstar transmits the funds to the American Red Cross on a daily basis, which means that the funds can be put to work right away! We appreciate the work of the American Red Cross and are honored to be a partner in their important mission. Our mutual efforts on this and other initiatives throughout the year exceed the value of this nominal fee.
Again, we appreciate your inquiry and welcome you to use this convenient, cost-effective method to send your spare change to a worthy cause.
_Sincerely,
Wiley Scutt
Coinstar Customer Service_