Cash For Kids - History

The Program | History | Store Display Contest | 2006 Program Presentation

"The Little Coupon That Grew"

While the food industry has always been recognized as one of the most responsive and generous of all industry sectors, its philanthropic activity was confined to individual company initiatives and acts of charity as opposed to organized giving on an industry-wide basis.

In 1979, Norm Bosworth, General Manager of Canada Dry, and John Toma, President of Dominion Stores, conceived the initial in-ad event of what eventually came to be known as "Cash For Kids". It was on behalf of St. John Ambulance (a favourite cause of Norm's) and offered shoppers a coupon in Dominion's weekly flyer ad which, when redeemed, would generate .15 cents for St. John Ambulance. It was phenomenally successful in selling more Canada Dry and raising money for St. John Ambulance.

When Dominion and Canada Dry saw how well it worked, Norm Bosworth took it upon himself to approach other suppliers with the idea and John Toma did the same with the other distributors.

Brian Davidson of Loblaws, Al Graham of Oshawa Foods and John Dunne of A&P formed a distributor committee chaired by John Toma. Bill Dunne, the largest food broker in Ontario at that time joined the committee to represent all Ontario food brokers.

A Marketing committee was struck to develop all the elements and support behind Cash For Kids. Mike Palmer, a found of Palmer Bonner (now Bozell Palmer Bonner) was given the task of developing the overall promotion package.

The distributor committee was responsible for designating a charity of choice. For their part, distributors agreed to waive their normal coupon handling charges on Cash For Kids coupons and to promote the event in all their stores with POS, PA's, etc. Bill Dunne worked with OFBA brokers to determine the role that food brokers would play in this industry initiative.

Brian Davidson and his committee had reviewed numerous causes and unanimously concluded that Variety Village (Variety - The Children's Charity) was the clear choice due to their work with challenged children and it's newly opened world-famous sports & training facility.

Cash For Kids is now the biggest in-store coupon campaign in Canada, involving over 50 brands, 2000 grocery stores and 40 million coupons. It hit a record level of redemption of 13.6% in 1999 and raised over $1 million for the children's charities of G.I.F.T.