Buxton Center Elementary School in Buxton, Maine, which serves approximately 560 students, raised $5,245 through the 2025 Hannaford Helps Schools program.

With nearly 560 students, our school is a large community. Hannaford is the most convenient shopping option for us, and as a result, many families shop there. We encouraged families to collect the School Dollars that were printed with their receipts. To spread the word, we sent emails and posted reminders on Facebook.

The Hannaford Helps Schools program was pretty easy. Many families scanned the School Dollars at home, but some just sent them in to the school, which was also fine. Our board members then scanned these collected School Dollars to enter the necessary information and redirect the funds to our school.

"To spread the word, we sent emails and posted reminders on Facebook."

I oversaw most of it. However, if School Dollars came in while the PTO was all together for a meeting or activity, we would all just scan them. We also have a communications coordinator who shared many of the posts on Facebook.

We promoted on Facebook and other platforms. Typically, most School Dollars were $3, but when someone earned a School Dollar worth $6 or $9, we made sure to give them a special shout-out. We asked people to share the School Dollars they earned with us so we could acknowledge and thank them publicly.

We also sent out a mass email. The school administration is able to send an email for us if needed. Every couple of days, we would share something on Facebook to remind people to bring in their coupons. We described how to redeem the coupons or simply encouraged them to bring them in; just sharing the ease of it, that it literally takes less than a minute to do each one. Just click on the school and put in the 6-digit code.

"We described how to redeem the coupons or simply encouraged them to bring them in; just sharing the ease of it, that it literally takes less than a minute to do each one."

I'm sure we did the same things last year and communicated the same way. This year, however, the PTO handled it, and the volunteers took on a lot of work.

We have over 150 staff members at our school. When we celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week, we make it Staff Appreciation Week and plan different activities each day. Our staff loves food, so we organize plenty of food-related events.

We also offer a variety of fun activities, including special events for the children. For example, on National Kindness Day, we gave all the kids kindness tattoos. With National Pencil Day coming up, we’ll be giving everyone a pencil. There are also other lighthearted national days that we celebrate just for fun.

Additionally, we fund all field trips and field day events.

I think it worked out really well, and I'm glad we achieved the outcome we did. I'm also grateful that the community was able to help us as much as they could.

Posted February 11, 2026.