How exactly do boxtops for education work?

It’s a promotion that General Mills and other companies use to encourage you to buy their products. My kids’ elementary school had an active collection program, use to make $10,000 or so a year by people turning them in.

The company gets free advertising by the school parent’s club pushing families to buy the brands, then the company gets a deductible contribution when they give money to the school, plus extra good will by supporting education.

It comes from the advertising budgets of large corporations (General Mills, Kimberly Clark, etc.)—and it is typically used to fund purchases of sports equipment. Each box top has a value printed on it.
Schools gather them up and submit them (each school has to have a co-ordinator, usually someone who is in charge of fund raising at the school already) who gets a login to the redemption site then they get a check they can use (typically deposited into accounts run by the Parent-Teacher fund raising group at the school) for supplemental items..like soccer balls, white boards, iPods, etc.

When a boxtop gets turned in, the school redeems them and can claim the associated money. The companies use them to promote the products, and the money is a small precent of the profit margin. The ten cents of a box top is actually coming indirectly from your pocket. A lot are not even turned in, so that part often remains pure profit for the company. The school gets money, the company makes money, everybody’s happy.

I did it for my son’s school.
I counted all the box tops, packaged them and sent them when they said too..
I stopped because too few parents made an effort to participate.
General Mills wants people to believe they care about education.
Unless you can motivate other parents it is hard work for little money.
I had to keep the box tops, count them and check expiration dates. I had to take them to the Post Office and the amount the school got was not enough. They are ten cents a box top.

The process has been explained thoroughly, but I’d like to share how our community gets involved with boxtops.

Our local grocery store has teamed up with our grade school and now has a collection box for the boxtops. The entire community gets involved in the process, not just the family members of the school aged children. We live in a very small town, but much of the population (especially the elderly) are very supportive of the school system here. I like this collection process instead of sending the tops to school with my child once a month.

We do it the way @jonsblond does as well as collect them at all of the schools (Elementary, Middle and Highschool) in town.