Fast Fiction

As promoted a few days ago, I gathered up the two jars of change from the house and went to Ralph’s to pop them in the Coinstar machine to donate to charity for the tsunami relief. I chose the UNICEF Tsunami Relief fund. I think I might give some additional money to some other charities, to spread it around.

The total, as seen here amounted to:

Quarters: 143
Dimes: 272
Nickels: 183
Pennies: 624

That’s 8.62 pounds of change, if you’re keeping track. I was pretty pleased at the amount of silver in there too, which really helps amp up the value per pound.

Total Donation: $78.34 (that’s $9.09 per pound)

Things I did not donate that were in the change jar included two wheat pennies (one 1920 in pretty poor condition, a 1956 D wheat penny in good condition), five German coins totalling 165 pfennig, an old battery used for my glucometer, a barette, a Canadian penny, two Sacajawea dollars and a Susan B. Anthony dollar, and three pennies that were rejected by the counter because they were fused together with some sort of sticky substance.

As I hoped, they did not take out any fees for the donation. Unicef was the only charity listed on the system that had a specific fund for the tsunami relief, though I’m sure that the Red Cross is funnelling much of their current fundraising to the tsunami relief.

In other cool news, Viacom (and Paramount) are matching employee donations up to $500,000 dollar for dollar with money to the Red Cross. So, you might want to check with your employer to see if they have any matching donation system set up. (Viacom has also pledged $1,000,000 as well as other localized drives for donations within Asia with their networks there. They’ve also reformatted the MTV Asia Awards to be a huge relief fundraising effort in early February.)