Now, the Happy Post

About a year ago, I talked about all the coins I had, and my plans to donate them to charity.  I'd had plans to send used Harry Potter books to kids in Fiji, but the school that was supposed to work with me on that kinda backed out.  (Or, more precisely, the woman who said she'd help collect the books never got back to me.  After repeated reminders.  I think she just didn't care as much as she'd said she did.)

And I didn't find another school to help with the books, and the coins didn't get rolled, and I let it drop.  :(

Well.  The nice people at Coinstar are running a promotion where (at certain machines) if you get your payment in an amazon gift certificate, they waive the fee.  In other words, full value for your cash if you turn it into an amazon gift certificate.  This seemed like the time to take in my coins.  I shop at amazon all the time.  I figured I'd get the amazon gift certicate to use for my regular online shopping (over the next year), and then donate an equal amount to charity. 

So.  I found my nearest coinstar machine that was doing the amazon promotion, and I hauled my coins down there.  (Not all of them -- I didn't bring home my office coins, so this was just the stuff at home.)

After what seemed like an hour feeding coins into the coinstar machine, it displayed the cheerful total of $318.38!  And printed me out a gift certificate in the same amount.

I took it home and tried to figure out what to do with that money.  The first thing I wanted to do was go back to donorschoose and see how much was needed to finish up that proposal I'd talked about before and buy them freezing kids in Chicago blankets and heaters.  And when I clicked on it, I found that that one was fully funded!  I guess other people were as moved by that one as I was -- and I was so glad to see they'd be getting the help they needed.

Which, of course, left me with $318.38 to donate and nowhere to give it.  I poked around donorschoose some more until I found a proposal that fit me perfectly -- helping a low income middle school start a Harry Potter book club.  For less than $318.38.  :)  Clicking the "Fund this proposal" button just filled me all the warm fuzzies in the world. 

And today, I emptied the coins from my pocket and put 'em in my empty coin jars, so I can do it all again next year.