NAMI - Athens, An Affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Ohio

home
support
information
community
projects

THE KROGER COMMUNITY REWARDS PROGRAM

 

As of May, 2009, Kroger-Ohio ended its great Gift Card Rewards program, through which it tracked participants' spending and gave NAMI five percent of the total. The participants to whom we distributed cards were causing Kroger to send over $13,000 annually to NAMI Ohio - of which NAMI Athens received half.


To replace the Gift Card program, Kroger has initiated a much simpler one which tracks spending through the customer's Plus Card - the card the customer scans to get discounts. Like the Gift Card Program, the Rewards Program costs the user nothing but, unlike the old program, the customer registers once and that's it for the next year. No loading.  Nothing to do until we all are asked to re-register the following May.


Register NOW by clicking on the logo below, and following the instructions.

 

 

 

The instructions provide direction for negotiating the registration process at www.krogercommunityrewards.com.  Note that our organization name is NAMI Athens, and our Non-Profit Organization (NPO) number is 81774.

 

Your participation is important.  As of late 2009, the Kroger Rewards Program had proven far more lucrative than the Kroger Gift Card Program. Since NAMI Ohio does not run this program, participating affiliates get 100 percent of the rewards. As of the first quarter 2009, NAMI Athens was earning about $100 per registered card or $16,000 in total on an annualized basis. This has allowed us not only to survive the economic crisis but even to prosper.

 

Registered participants help support many worthwhile efforts, including:

  1. Training Police: Each year, our local CIT Committee, of which NAMI is a part, runs a five-day Crisis Intervention Training program to teach SE Ohio police officer to recognize "offenders" in mental health crises and take them for help rather than to jail. In the last several years, over 125 officers have earned their CIT pins. However, with cutbacks in funds coming from NAMI Ohio, the 317 Board, etc., we might not even have been able to run CIT in 2009 had it not been for the Kroger money. With that money, however, NAMI Athens not only took up the slack but actually expanded what we normally do - for instance, bringing in an additional great outside speaker. In 2009, twenty five officers were awarded their CIT pins - bringing the total number of police equipped to help the mentally ill in our region to one hundred fifty.

  2. NAMI Courses: Unlike most NAMI affiliates, we now can afford to offer all three of the great multi-week NAMI courses for family members and persons in recovery. We can now offer child care and a light supper to the parents of troubled children on the nights they take our Hand to Hand course. Without these, many could not attend. We can do the same for the H2H support group which has spun off from that course. In addition, we can afford more needed advertising for our Peer to Peer course for persons in recovery. And, though fiscal problems have caused NAMI Ohio no longer to train P2P mentors, we were able to send one person to a NAMI-Virginia mentor-training center in Richmond.

  3. The Ridges Cemeteries Project: Though we get good support from the ODMH for our stigma-busting project to renovate the old Mental Hospital Cemeteries on the Ridges and to improve the Nature Walk between them, we were able in 2009 to do even more - thanks to the Kroger money - than would otherwise have been possible.

  4. The NAMI Recovery Conferences: Every other year, NAMI runs a day long conference on "Recovery and Hope: Consumer and Family Perspectives on Mental Illness." Each conference costs over $7,000 to run - most of which came in the past from local university/college and mental health co-sponsors. Now attracting around 170 attendees including many nurses and other professionals in training, they are well worth the money. Following the last one, however, we were told by many of the co-sponsors that, because of fiscal problems, such funding would not likely be forthcoming in the foreseeable future. The Kroger money, however, will easily allow us to continue holding these great educational events.

Want to help?

 REGISTER NOW!
 

 

Contact NAMI - Athens
Appalachian Behavioral Health Care, 100 Hospital Drive, Athens OH 45701
Phone: 740-593-7424   e-mail: namiathens@gmail.com