Sorry, OCP

A few weeks ago, I tallied up coupons for shipping to an Air Force base in Okinawa on the train down to visit my mother. She voiced the same concern I had when I first started: how many of these coupons are actually useable for the recipients? I tried asking the folks who run the Overseas Coupon Program, but they didn't know the answer. She said I should stop wasting my time on clipping and my money on postage, and I was hard-pressed to disagree.

However, I've found a more effective way to help people with my unwanted coupons. I've joined a coupon forum, where I can offer up an envelope of coupons as a Random Act of Kindness. I could also trade them, which I may do after I move to a new apartment and find myself with less access to free Sunday circulars. So I continue to help budget-conscious Americans, just not necessarily of the military persuasion.

Caped Coupon Crusader

Okay, so I was wearing a hoodie, not a cape, but that doesn't make me any less of a coupon crusader, in a Robin Hood(ie) kind of way.

For the Overseas Coupon Network, I chop up 20 copies of two different coupon inserts. Some of them seem kind of obscure to send along, or to send along so many of the same one. So this afternoon, I swung by CVS to pick up their weekly sales circular and tucked little piles of coupons into the shelves where the products were stocked (hair dye, cold meds, nutrition drinks). I figured in the economy, even us regular ol' New Yorkers could stand to keep an extra buck or two in our wallets.

I'd like to send a shout-out to my fellow 10-Day Give Challenge cohorts - one of them did this as part of the cahllenge, and I decided it was worth copycatting.

Still in "Giving" Mode

That 10-Day Give may have finished up 6 days ago, but I haven't completely slacked off the way I thought I would. So far this week...

• On Thursday, I mailed $1080 worth of coupons to the US Air Force base in Okinawa. And today I collected dozens of coupon flyers and chopped them up. This week's selection was obnoxiously crappy, so the yield for the Overseas Coupon Program was pitiful.
• I made another Kiva loan, this time to a seamstress in Cambodia. What can I say, I envy her skills!
• Today I mailed the $245 I raised with charity massages to Thai Freedom House, which is currently struggling with a bad landlord situation, inflation, blossoming enrollment, and reduced contributions due to the economy.
• This afternoon I will be doing another charity massage, and the money from this one will go towards a joint project by Feed Villages and Village Volunteers, earmarked for the construction of grain/produce storage facilities to keep the food supply from the Community Garden Project available for their feeding programs year-round. They need $3100 to pull it off.

Day 10 of the 10-Day Give

I was busy on Day 10...

First, I raided the paper recycling bins on 28 floors of my building and fished out about a dozen coupon inserts to chop up for the Overseas Coupon Program - 2 hours and $250 worth. I'll be swinging by the post office tomorrow morning to mail three week's worth of snippings: $1080.

Second, I gave a rather odd looking old man one of my half-price Thai massages - that's another $50 for Thai Freedom House. At the post office tomorrow, I'll be buying and sending a money order to them for $245: $165 worth of massage donations + $40 tip donations + $40 from my matching offer. I'm not getting as much interest in this offer as I'd hoped - I was willing and able to do twice as many. So I'm thinking of starting a blog-that-looks-like-a-website for it. I don't want to put a link to my regular business website because it has my phone number on it, and I don't want calls at 3am from idiots who think "Thai massage" is a euphemism for prostitution.

And today, I cashed in two coupons on sale items at the pharmacy for a total savings of $9 - which I put into the little Japanese jar I've earmarked for monthly donations to The Baobab Home in Tanzania. What can I say, the name of this blog is "CheapCharity", so why shouldn't a charity benefit from me being cheap??

Day 4 of The 10-Day Give

I stumbled on Saturday, Day 2. I went for a 2-mile walk around midtown Manhattan in search of a homeless old person to give $5, but didn't run into anyone who fit the bill. Why am I being so picky? My rationale is that they're too old to work, they've lived through some awfully tough times (WW2, segregation, The Great Depression, etc), and things must be really bad either in their families or in their brain chemistry if this is what they're reduced to at their age.

So I made up for it by doubling my efforts with coupon clipping for the Overseas Coupon Program. Instead of one round of the paper recycling bins on 27 floors of my building, I did two - and that worked out superbly: I hit the motherload on the 11th floor. Someone reads a lot of different Sunday papers and hadn't thrown them out for a couple of weeks - I got multiples of RedPlum, SmartSourch and P&G. Last Sunday, I clipped $202 worth of coupons and it took an hour to snip, sort into two piles, and add up the value. This week it took 3 hours and yielded $629. I could have artificially boosted the total by including coupons that I suspect are useless (do you really think they stock $50 bags of organic dog food or gourmet Amish pasta at the Air Force base commissary in Okinawa??).

I also got another lovely email from Terri @ The Baobab Home yesterday. I'm planning to go to Kenya and Tanzania for my first ever trip to Africa, and I'm wondering how possible it would be to drop in and maybe bring hard-to-find-locally supplies. Apparently they've got a fundraising auction in TriBeCa next month, how cool is that!

Lisa @ Thai Freedom House also contacted me this morning, letting me know that the $120 I sent a few weeks ago plus $100 that a yoga instructor raised in a similar fashion helped her school/food programs through a rough patch last month. Between global inflation and the growth of her charity, their monthly expenses are currently $1500 instead of the outdated figure of $1000 mentioned on her website. So far I've raised $195 and am hoping that I'll do one more massage-for-charity before I mail her a check at the end of the week.

Matching Mayhem & Clipping Craziness

This past Saturday, I gave a charity Thai massage to a fellow Thai masseuse - someone who's actually Thai and is technically a competitor. We advertise in the same places, but we have different catchment areas in NYC with only a tiny overlap. I almost didn't respond to her inquiry for that reason, but decided I was being a whole lot picker than Thai Freedom House would be about where their donations come from. I'm very glad I did, because not only did she turn out to be a lovely person, but she paid $90 - that's the $50 minimum plus an additional $40, which I match when the time comes to mail my monthly donation in. I told my mother about this, and she said "who would know if you didn't match it? heck, who would even know if you kept or sent the money?" (she was just playing devil's advocate - it wasn't actually a suggestion!). I said that karma would hit me back so freaking hard I'd metaphorically find myself with a fat lip and a black eye. She laughed and totally agreed. Anyway, between the annoying guy on Thursday, this Thai woman, and my matching, TFH can expect no less than $195 this month.

Last night, I raided the recycling bins in my building and collected 4 sets of the same Sunday coupon insert. I figure that this plus whatever I scrounge up next week will count towards one of my 10-Day Give activities. So far, my ideas for that challenge are:

• Kiva loan
• Thai Freedom House donation
• Overseas Coupon Program
• Women For Women (maybe) sign-up and start
  

Clipping for Corporals

I just discovered the Overseas Coupon Program, where you mail your expired manufacturers coupons to certain participating U.S. military bases, listed on their barebones website (which I interpret as a sign that they don't waste much time with administration). Apparently, the expiration dates are extended by 6 months for foreign commissaries, though of course you can send current coupons. I guess the idea is that it can be a "no effort" way of saving our not-poor-but-not-comfortable military families a significant chunk of change.

I'm planning to select an Air Force base in a wealthy country like Japan or England, where the dollar doesn't go very far at all. Why Air Force? Because my dad served in the USAF during the Vietnam War. But even if he hadn't, I'd still do this program - I just wouldn't be picky about which branch I was sending to.

The cost to me is limited to domestic postage. And hey, there's a slight "green" aspect to this too - I don't buy newspapers, but many of my neighbors in this 38-story building do. So on Sunday evenings, all I have to do is rummage through a few dozen paper recycling bins, pull out the Smart Source inserts, and have at it with my scissors during whatever TV show I watch that night.