Find Our Most Frequently Asked Questions Below
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Questions about the Gene Grawe Fund:
The Gene Grawe Fund, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization created in 2005 for the purpose of assisting families, Catholic or otherwise, with the financial costs of pursuing a Catholic elementary and secondary education. It does this by sponsoring a scrip sales program. "Scrip" refers to the gift cards from participating retailers who have agreed to rebate a small percentage of the gift card sales back to the Gene Grawe Fund for later distribution as tuition assistance for students participating in the Fund.
For administering the program, the Gene Grawe Fund, Inc. retains a minimal amount of the rebates received from scrip purchases. The retained funds are used for maintaining gift card inventory, fees, supplies, and other expenses.
All five of Quincy's Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Specifically, they are:
Quincy Notre Dame High School
Blessed Sacrament School
St. Francis Solanus School
St. Dominic School
St. Peter School
No, the tuition awards are participation-based. A student and their family must participate in the Gene Grawe Fund to be eligible to share in the tuition awards. The degree to which a student's family, extended family, and friends participate in the Fund, will determine the dollar amount of the tuition award that student receives. Simply put, the more Gene Grawe Fund gift cards that are purchased in a student's name, the more tuition money that student receives.
The Scrip Year now runs from April 1st of one year to March 31st of the next year. For example, the Scrip Year for tuition for the 2022-2023 School Year runs from April 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023. The Gene Grawe Fund tuition award announcements for an upcoming school year are made within a few weeks after the Scrip Year ends. The tuition awards are then paid directly to each school. Parents must still make sure that any tuition due in excess of their student's Gene Grawe Fund award is paid in full by July 1st.
1. Each student receives 2% of the face amount of all gift cards sold in that student's name paid with cash or check at the GGF office.
2. Each student receives 50% of the rebate for all gift card purchases on RaiseRight.com using PrestoPay.
3. Then, the remaining funds (reduced by the Fund's administration fees and the awards above, and increased by any donations and undesignated gift card sales) are shared as follows:
4. 50% is shared equally by all students who had over $5,000 in designated gift card sales.
5. 25% is shared equally by all students who had over $10,000 in designated gift card sales.
6. 25% is shared equally by all students who had over $20,000 in designated gift card sales.
Those percentages are the rebate amounts that the retailer has agreed to discount to the Gene Grawe Fund. Basically, if a merchant has agreed to a 10% rebate, then the Gene Grawe Fund only pays that merchant $90 for a $100 gift card. The GGF then sells that gift card to someone for the full $100 thereby securing a $10 rebate that will be used to help fund the tuition awards.
Absolutely. After all these years, many people are now so used to shopping and paying bills with the Gene Grawe Fund gift cards, that it's simply no problem for them to continue even after their student is no longer enrolled in a Quincy Catholic school. In that case, the rebates from their gift card purchases go into the Gene Grawe Fund's general fund. You can also designate one of the Catholic schools to receive your rebate earnings. In that case, your designated school will receive the funds as a donation to use in any way they see fit.
Every year, during Spring school registration, all students and their parents are extended the opportunity to participate in the Gene Grawe Fund. Extended family and friends only need to know the student's name when they purchase gift cards at the Gene Grawe Fund office. Please see the next section of FAQs below that explain the process of setting up your account with RaiseRight.com to enable you to make online purchases that will provide rebates back to your designated student and the Gene Grawe Fund.
There are no extra or rollover funds. Except for the operating funds retained for running the Gene Grawe Fund, there is no leftover money. Our tuition award model is designed so that all rebate funds are fully distributed every school year and each student starts the next Scrip Year with a zero balance account.
No you do not. We have people living all over the United States who support their extended family and friends back here in Quincy who have students enrolled in the Quincy Catholic Education System. Many no longer have nieces, nephews, or grandchildren in school so the undesignated rebates they generate go into the general fund for all participating students to share in.
No, we no longer mail gift cards. The cost of shipping and the risk of loss quickly erode the slim margin the Fund operates with. It's best for out-of-towners to make full use of the hundreds of online merchants and nationwide chains on RaiseRight.com. Many national retailers have RaiseRight's instant ScripNow! eCards that can be purchased ahead of time or even while waiting in the checkout line and then scanned by the cashier straight from your smartphone using the RaiseRight mobile device app. We do it all the time at places like Lowes, Wal-Mart, Texas Roadhouse, and so on. Some online merchants like Amazon.com are setup to instantly transfer your ScripNow! funds from RaiseRight.com to your gift card balance on the retailer's website. Within seconds the money is there!
The Gene Grawe Fund office can only accept cash or checks. Years ago, we tried accepting cards, but quickly realized that the fees associated with accepting cards wiped out our thin margin of profitibility. In many cases, the card transaction fees alone exceeded the merchant rebate causing the Fund to lose money on every purchase. In the end, it was self-defeating and hurt the very people we were trying to help. However, RaiseRight.com can accepting credit/debit cards. Read about it in their FAQs below.
When you order and pay for physical gift cards from RaiseRight.com, the fullfillment notice is actually sent to the Gene Grawe Fund office here in Quincy where the cards pulled from stock, sealed in an envelope with your name on it, and placed in our safe until you stop by to pick them up. We do not mail out gift cards under any circumstances. If you live, say in Oregon, then you have a problem if you're not coming to Quincy or have no family in Quincy that would be willing to pick them up and mail them to you. However, RaiseRight.com has certain hard gift cards that they can mail.
We recommend keeping your zero balance gift cards until you've checked them a few weeks after last use. Merchants make refunds and returns back to the payment method used. Restaurants place holds and make multiple charges as meal costs, bar drinks, and tips are processed in the first few days after dining out. Sometimes, it doesn't always add up today to what the waitress saw yesterday. If a few dollars end up on the card and it's now in the local landfill, then it's your money down the drain. When multiple cards are used to pay for a transaction, that complicates things even more. But, you'll never know it if the cards were thrown out. I had a card tossed at a restaurant. Fortunately, I had the number written down at home from a bill I had paid. When I ran it the next day, it had a $3.56 balance.
The Get My Spending tool on GeneGraweFund.org does just that. All Gene Grawe Fund families with students in a Quincy Catholic school are given a 9-digit account number when they first register their children with the Gene Grawe Fund. That account number is entered into the Get My Spending tool which returns a date and the total amount of purchases made at the Gene Grawe Fund office from April 1st through that date. It does not include your online purchases at RaiseRight.com. And even though the Get My Spending database is updated on a regular basis, the total amount shown to you may not include your most recent purchases. Finally, the total amount may also contain purchases made by friends and family in your child's name.
Support for the Gene Grawe Fund is normally achieved through the purchase of its gift cards. However, the Gene Grawe Fund, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that can accept monetary gifts from any source such as religious, youth, and community organizations; bequests from estates; funeral memorials; and donations from individuals. Today, most charity websites offer an online giving capability, like a Donate button, to accommodate those who wish to use a debit/credit card to make a personal donation or a memorial donation for an upcoming funeral. The Donate button is only for processing donations and cannot be used to purchase gift cards.
Several years ago, one of our members stumbled across a very unique wallet with a huge card capacity. Click here to read an article about it on our website.
This another good reason not to let a cashier toss your zero balance Visa card. If you use your GGF FiveBackGift Visa at one of the 50 or so merchant partners of FiveBackGift.com you earn a 5% reward that is credited back to your Visa as a Promotional Load. Read more about this in our Tips article.
We usually recommend shredding them. Some cards will only return their remaining balance when the card number is entered online. However, some cards will link to an online transaction history that can show dates, times, amounts, locations, and businesses where the transactions occurred. We've never seen any that returned personal identity information or what merchandise was purchased. So I guess the best answer is to use your own judgement based on your spending habits.
The Gene Grawe Fund office follows the Quincy public schools. If the Quincy public schools are closed, we will be closed. For closings that occur on non-school days like Saturday, holidays, teacher conference days, and during school breaks, you can check the frontpage of our website and the weather closing lists at WGEM.com and KHQA.com. We will also send out a quick email announcement to everyone on our newsletter email list. To make sure you're on that list go to the Home page of our website and add your name and email address. If your email address is already on the list, it will tell you.
Directly, no. The Gene Grawe Fund is affiliated only with Quincy's four Catholic elementary schools and QND High School. However, maximum participation in the Gene Grawe Fund during a child's elementary and high school years will significantly offset those tuition costs. Then, the money you save could be invested and later used to help defray college expenses at QU.
Scrip Year is the term widely used in the scriping (gift card) world to designate the time period during which a school related charity earns its rebates from gift card sales. The Gene Grawe Fund pays its portion of your child's tuition to the child's school at the beginning of each school year. However, the Gene Grawe Fund is not a bank and cannot grant credit. So the tuition funds must be earned before they can be paid to the school. Those funds are earned during that school year's preceding Scrip Year. Our Scrip Year starts on April 1st of one calendar year and ends on March 31st the next year. That Scrip Year is then followed by its associated school year which starts in August.
We know the 2% and 50% thing can be a bit confusing at first, especially for new supporters of the Gene Grawe Fund. But it's done to give you the opportunity to earn more rewards based on a particular purchase situation. We actually already have a tip on our website that explains it all. Just click, tap, or touch here to read it.
Questions about RaiseRight.com
Scrip is any substitute for legal tender. Scrips have been used throughout history for payment of employees and for use in local commerce at times when regular currency was unavailable. For example, in remote coal towns, military bases, ships on long voyages, or occupied countries in wartime. Many forms of scrip have been quite common, such as company scrip, land scrip, vouchers, subway tokens, arcade tokens and tickets, and even those "Green" Stamps from the 1950s and '60s. The most common form of scrip today is prepaid debit and gift cards like those sold by RaiseRight.com and the Gene Grawe Fund.
The website RaiseRight.com belongs to the Great Lakes Scrip Center (GLSC) in Kentwood, Michigan, USA. It is the Web portal through which participants in the Gene Grawe Fund can make gift card purchases for 750+ national and online merchants. The GLSC was created in 1994 as a way to shift school fundraising from an after school student responsibility to a parental responsibility. It has been an amazing success in the 29+ years since. The GLSC has helped over 50,000 non-profit organizations like the Gene Grawe Fund, Inc. raise over $900 million dollars just by encouraging their members to change their shopping and bill payment habits.
The RaiseRight mobile device app can be downloaded and installed from the appropriate app store for your device: the Apple Store for iPhones and iPads or the Google Play Store for Android smartphones and tablets. Click here to be taken to the RaiseRight website where you can learn about the RaiseRight app and be texted the download link for your mobile device. RaiseRight, it's the easiest way to buy scrip for over 750 merchants at RaiseRight.com. Do it from home or while standing in the checkout line of a participating merchant.
We have a complete Step-By-Step tutorial to assist you in enrolling at RaiseRight.com. Click here to read the article on our website.
For every cart checkout RaiseRight.com only charges $0.29 cents. You could be buying a $10 gift card from just one merchant or a $1,000 in gift cards from 10 different merchants and you still only pay $0.29 cents.
We now have a complete Step-By-Step tutorial to assist you in enrolling at RaiseRight.com. Click here to read the article.
In today's world, many families have multiple bank accounts. Currently, RaiseRight.com only allows one bank funding source for each customer account. So any bank account that you want to use for online scrip purchases will have its own RaiseRight.com account and a unique email address. Truth is, having two different RaiseRight.com accounts works a lot better for our family than trying to transfer money between two different banks. That can still take 5-6 days.
PrestoPay is the instant payment processor used by RaiseRight.com. When you setup your account at RaiseRight.com, you will link a checking or savings account to PrestoPay. When you purchase gift cards on RaiseRight.com and use PrestoPay to pay for them, a debit is made to your bank account and your gift cards are immediately available to you.
Yes. However, they must charge a 2.6% fee to cover the cost of processing the transaction. While this convenience may be useful to some, everyone should keep in mind that purchasing any gift cards that rebate less than 2.6% back to the Gene Grawe Fund will be a net loss for the student.
Yes. Just click, tap, or touch here to read their FAQs.