And who said a penny doesn’t go far today?
Well, don’t tell the people of Fort Scott, Kansas, that! Last Tuesday evening, volunteers began placing pennies on the ground and before they finished on Friday night, the parking lot of the Fort Scott Middle School was covered in a 40-mile-long chain of pennies! You read that right—40 miles of pennies!
Their line of pennies is the longest line of pennies ever assembled (according to the Guinness Book of World Records), eclipsing the old mark by more than five miles. The previous record was 34.57 miles, set in Malaysia in 1995.
The penny program was part of an effort to raise money for improvements at Fort Scott’s Ellis Park. So, how much is a 40-mile line of pennies? Well, it comes to $33,790 to be exact. And, all of that money will go toward $4 million in projects planned for the park.
Have you ever tried a fundraising campaign like that? Did it work? How well?
I’ll never forget what happened in a Vacation Bible School in the church I once attended. The children were challenged to bring their coins to Bible School and told to drop them in a blue bucket (for the boys) and a pink bucket (for the girls). I’ll never forget the excitement of watching the children bring rolls of pennies, standing over their chosen bucket, opening the rolls up, and dropping the loose change into the bucket.
Oh, how their sacrifice touched my heart—that is, until I realized that I had just witnessed them unrolling the pennies and dropping them in by the hundreds—and knowing that I would be the one who had to count all the loose change!
Still did my heart good! And oh, it really thrilled the bank tellers as well!
I suggested we do this at VBS a couple of years ago. We had a penny war. Pennies counted positive and everything else was negative, and we also did it boy vs. girl.
ReplyDeleteSo, as a female, I would put pennies in my "pink" bucket, but I might put a $10 bill in the blue one. The boys would then have to come up with 1000 pennies just to get back to 0. The group with the highest positive amount of money "won."
We raised more money that year than ever, and we had a lot of fun. But, counting it and rolling it was a huge pain!!!
NOW, however, my bank has this machine you can pour the change n and it counts it for you!
I save all my change. The quarters are mine...I am saving for a new bike. The others go to missions of some kind. I have been able to help my daughter go to Romania and Greece by doing that and have also helped the local CPC with their baby bottle drive. Gotta be a sermon in there somewhere about the power of one multiplied.
ReplyDeleteI love penny saving. We save all our change. My day use to do that and it financed a really nice vacation for him every year. Don't think my change will get me very far--especially these days.
ReplyDeleteI like Bill's idea to give to missions that way. selahV
Bill...I like your idea...somewhere, sometime back, I heard that the "average" American "throws" away $75 a year! We lose it, we drop it, we leave it in our clothes, etc.
ReplyDeleteYou know, if that is true, there's someone out losing a lot...because I try to watch every penny I have!!!