Round Up For Kids
By: WROC
Updated: June 24, 2008
Local Wal-Mart and Sam's Club Stores Launch Round Up Campaign
To celebrate two decades of partnering with children's hospitals across the nation, local Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores are inviting customers to "Round Up for Kids" during their 20 Years of M iracles Campaign, Friday, May 4, to Thursday, May 31.
The idea is simple: if customers opt to round their bill up to the next whole dollar amount, the difference will be donated to help kids at Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong. (For instance, a $23.11 bill becomes a flat $24, and the extra 89 cents works charitably.)
Locally, 11 Wal-Mart stores and Supercenters and 2 Sam's Club locations anticipate raising tens of thousands of dollars through the month-long "Round Up" campaign.
"It's one battle in the war against kids' illnesses and injuries, and we plan to fight it at the registers," said Ethan Minkel, local Wal-Mart market manager. "Our Rochester area stores will use the small change that most customers won't notice, to leverage big changes that hospitalized kids will."
Wal-Mart stores, Supercenters and Sam's Club locations have proven stalwart advocates for Golisano Children's Hospital since 1991, when they first plugged in to the Children's Miracle Network (CMN), a non-profit alliance of premier children's hospital in North America that's known for making sure local dollars stay to benefit the community in which they are raised. During the 16-year stretch of local partnership, Rochester-area stores have raised more than $2.3 million - for the most part, one dollar at a time.
On a national scope, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have supported CMN since 1987, reaching out to more than 127 million customers who visit its stores across America, or who log on to its online stores. In these 20 years of partnership, its associates have raised more than $388 million for CMN hospitals; $30 million of that was raised last year alone.
