Grocery Coupons and Philanthropy

What do grocery coupons and philanthropy have to do with each other? I use piles of them to get either free or almost free food to donate to the food bank. All you need to do a good deed that will impact the lives of an entire family at once is a stack of coupons and your time.

Most people would not consider that philanthropy and grocery coupons would have a nice synergy, although they do. While I was in college we were supposed to spend several hours a week doing community service as part of our graduation requirement. Our service could be anything we wanted to do as long as we were able to document the hours and report our progress at the end of the semester. Heading a project with other volunteers was also desirable in showing your management abilities for a better grade.

I lived in a poor state at the time, where child hunger was a particular issue. Most grocery stores in my area offered double grocery coupons, so long story short, a community service project was born. I enlisted the help of several other students and we started out.

2436 coupons, $56, 110 hours of community service, and 1256 pounds of food later I knew my project was a success. My true education: you don’t need money to eat; grocery coupons can do that for you. You don’t need money to do a good deed grocery coupons can do that for you too. As for the concept of incorporating community service into my formal education, the project was a success. I am still working on my project more than fifteen years later.