The penny’s days are numbered in Canada and charities across the country are taking advantage of every last one. Though the end of the copper coin is near, the wearing process of collecting and rolling them has just begun.

The Royal Canadian Mint struck the last penny May 4 and will start phasing them out this fall when it stops distributing them to financial institutions. Since each one-cent coin was costing the government 1.6 cents to produce, this will bring savings to banks, retailers and consumers.

It will also bring in thousands of tonnes of pennies to be redeemed, presenting a huge fundraising opportunity that some charities have already started embracing.

“Everybody has pennies,” says Kate Marshall, National Director of Marketing and Communications at Habitat for Humanity.

“It’s a really easy way for people to get involved and to feel like they can contribute to affordable housing in their community. So, it’s been a very positive experience for us.”

She says her organization jumped at this chance to fundraise right after the budget announcement March 29, when Finance Minister Jim Flaherty encouraged the population to donate their copper change.

“Free your pennies from their prisons at home, and those jars they’re in, and give them to charity,” Flaherty told reporters. At the time, some estimates were saying the move could bring in up to $5 billion for nonprofits.

But how can you get your charity to the forefront of these donations?

Get creative

Marshall says the key is keeping your ear to the ground and having an open mind when seeking opportunities to collect pennies. If you can find unique ways to engage with your community and open up the chance for people to really get involved, they will.

The so-called “penny drives” that result are already taking place in schools, hospitals, offices, and neighbourhoods across the country. Though it’s too soon to tell how many pennies have been collected, the response has been positive.

In other countries, the collection of these lower-denomination coins has helped many charities raise funds. Nonprofits in New Zealand ran successful drives to collect the five-cent coin when it was removed from circulation in 2006, and charities all over Europe got people to donate their local currency coins in 2002 during the changeover to the euro.

These penny drives can take different forms, the most basic and obvious of which is point-of-sale collection. Essentially, this means simply placing jars or cans in convenient locations for people to drop their loose change. If your charity is hoping to benefit from the redemption of these copper coins, this is a quick and easy place to start.

You first have to decide where you’re going to place collection containers. This will often vary depending on the nature and size of your organization. Some larger charities will keep them on the reception counters of their various offices or centres, while others will seek out more public places like gas stations, libraries and grocery stores.

The Tapestry Foundation for Healthcare, for instance, which is collecting pennies in Vancouver, has drop containers displayed at five of the seven hospitals and residences it supports.

These containers can be ordered in bulk online, or can easily be made at home for smaller scale drives. If you’re making your own containers, they should be clear so that the pennies can be seen, and have a plastic lid so that a slot can be cut out. They should also have bright labels or be accompanied by colourful signs that describe the fundraiser and attract attention.

Habitat for Humanity has placed collection jars at its own retail outlets across the country, but is also working closely with Old Navy, who stepped forward as a national partner early on in their efforts. Marshall says they’ve also had a ton of companies, schools, and kids clubs proactively contacting them to see how they can help.

Since studies have shown Canadians could be hoarding several billion pennies in their homes, you want to get these drop containers out as early as possible. You also want to make it easy for those people with jars full of pennies at home to get them to you.

One of the best ways to do this is to pick a day and set up a booth or several booths in your target area, and make it known to the public that you’ll be collecting pennies for your charity. The more notice you can give and the more you can advertise the locations and timeframe of this event, the more pennies will roll in.

Spread the word

No matter what event you’re organizing, try to use social media to spread the word and don’t hesitate to reach out to your local media outlets as well. If your story gets picked up it can generate a lot of energy in your community and have a huge impact on your penny drive.

Another way to create excitement around your fundraiser is to organize a friendly competition. This usually involves assigning teams and having them compete against each other to collect the most pennies, and can work in a number of environments.

Most often you’ll see schools taking on these kinds of penny drives, pinning classrooms against each other for the ultimate prize of a pizza-lunch, and sometimes even rewarding the student in each class who brings in the most pennies, or the student who designs the best poster. This is a great way to engage kids, and their contagious energy often spreads out to their families and everyone else involved.

You can also use this competitive edge by organizing a penny war. Again, two or more groups compete to win a fundraising competition, but in a penny war, pennies are good and all other money is bad. The value of any pennies collected by a group count positively towards that group’s point total, while the value of other coins or bills are subtracted.

So, in a competition between the Red team and the Blue team, if you wanted the Red team to win you would place pennies in their jar and put nickels, dimes, quarters, or five-dollar bills in the Blue team’s jar. At the end, the team with the highest remaining penny balance wins the penny war, and all the money collected goes towards your charity.

No matter how you go about collecting pennies, at some point or another chances are you’re going to end up with jars and jars full of these old copper coins.

So what do you do with them?

Rolling, rolling, rolling

The biggest challenge you’re likely going to face is getting them rolled and counted, which is something you should think about before even starting your penny drive. These fundraisers require a lot of manpower and a lot of volunteers, so make sure you have enough support before you begin collecting.

“We’ve got retired people rolling pennies. We’ve got kids at schools rolling pennies. We’ve got all kinds of different groups helping us,” says Marshall. This is a great opportunity to reach out to your community and to get people involved in an easy and tangible way, and it will also help spread the word about your fundraiser.

Once you’ve sorted out how to get all those pennies rolled, you might want to look into opening a savings or checking account at a local bank so that they can be deposited periodically throughout your fundraiser. You want to avoid storing large amounts of pennies in one location for an extended amount of time and get them straight to the bank once you’ve collected them.

And the rest is just common cents!

Photos (from top) via iStock.com. All photos used with permission.

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