Litter-a-thon
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
The Litter-a-thon project has ended for this year, and the online payment form is now closed. Thanks for your support!
It’s been an annual tradition at BVCS for nearly as long as we’ve had a high school. But the Litter-a-thon is more than a tradition: it’s our way of expressing gratitude to live here in this incredible valley. It’s our way of expressing love for God and our neighbour. It’s our way of carrying our mandate to care for God’s creation.
We’re thrilled to look forward to this year’s Litter-a-thon. Thanks for being a part of this!
Some Important Changes for 2023
Why the changes?
There are two important issues that these changes are intended to address:
- Receipting puts a significant administrative burden onto an already-busy team. Generating receipts for 700+ individual litter-a-thon donations is actually quite complicated. We certainly do use software for this, but a significant portion of the time is spent parsing hand-written student record sheets, compiling donor payments across multiple student sheets, understanding discrepancies between actual and recorded donations, variant name spellings, and so on.
- Charitable tax receipting law requires that we have appropriate record-keeping and controls on the donations we are receipting. A typical litter-a-thon brings in anywhere from $45,000 to $75,000 ore more. We simply cannot receipt this amount responsibly without ensuring that cash, cheques and online donations are appropriately controlled and accounted for. While we’ve invested the time in past litter-a-thons to ensure we’ve been responsible with these receipts, we are also committed to improving the process. The risk for significant error in receipting (especially when students have not kept good records) is very significant.
Charitable Tax Receipts
We will issue charitable tax receipts only for donations received online. Donations by cash or cheque will not be eligible for charitable tax receipts.
This change helps us alleviate approximately 40+ hours of administrative time in tracking, entering, collecting and issuing charitable receipts. It also provides us with better accounting and receipt controlling.
What if parents want to sponsor their own child(ren)
It’s fine for parents to sponsor their own children. Just give your child cheque or cash. They’ll record the donation in the normal way,
Please take note: DO NOT SUPPORT YOUR CHILD USING THE ONLINE PLATFORM. If we receive donations from parents designed to their own children, we will re-direct those funds to another student or the general student fund. This is due to federal regulations about tax receipts (we can’t issue a receipt when the money is designated for your own child).
New Forms
Sample Litter-a-thon Sponsor Form. Click for enlarged copy.
This year we’ve created a serial-numbered, two-part carbonless form that will allow students to provide donors with a record of their pledge or donation. This will ensure better tracking for students and donors.
Each student will be issued their own booklet. Donors who are sponsoring more than one student and who wish to receive a charitable tax receipt can keep their copies of these forms and make one online payment (below) to cover all their pledges. Donors who do not care to receive a charitable tax receipt can provide cash or cheque to each student individually.
Do not provide cash or cheque to a student who is not able to provide you with a copy of your donation slip from their booklet. If in doubt about the legitimacy of a donation/sponsorship request, please call our office at 250-847-4238.
Sponsor
Sponsor
Students in grades 8 through 12 use the Litter-a-thon to generate funds for school activities including class trips, sports fees, special outings and so much more.
Student Safety
It’s our priority.
We take student safety very seriously, and that’s why we’ve created our safety plan. You can view and download our safety plan using the button below.
In planning the Litter-a-thon, BVCS has been in discussions with the following:
- Dawson Road Maintenance
- The Town of Smithers
- BC Ministry of Transportation
In order to enhance the safety of our students on the day of the Litter-a-thon, we will provide the local RCMP detachment with information about our event. We will also rely on local media (radio in particular) to communicate our presence to the travelling public.
The Litter-a-thon project has ended for this year, and the online payment form is now closed. Thanks for your support!