Mission Statement
At Common Cents, we are on a mission to create innovative solutions and programs that foster children to learn to love themselves, love others and love learning.
We envision making school during a child’s compulsory first decade so compelling, indispensable and enjoyable an experience that all our children would willingly sign up for another ten years.
Since the inception of the Penny Harvest in 1991, participating students have collected $8.1 million in pennies, awarded 16,131 grants and volunteered more than 29 million service hours to support causes for children, the environment, healthcare, human rights, the elderly and disaster relief.
Today, nearly 1,000 schools in broadly reaching areas such as New York, Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Washington participate in the program.
Simply put, our mission is to raise a new generation of informed, capable and caring young citizens by turning pennies into dollars and dollars into deeds.
To learn more about Common Cents and The Penny Harvest, please visit www.CommonCents.org.
Description
Our signature programs are:
THE PENNY HARVEST, in which hundreds of thousands of students and supportive adults organize local penny collection drives and transform this wasted resource into ready-to-use funds for the benefit of their communities.
STUDENT ROUNDTABLES, in which small groups of student leaders assess the needs of their communities, identify worthy organizations and service leanring projects and then work as teams to decide how to use the fruit of the Penny Harvest to best meet those community needs.
COMMUNITY ACTION PROJECTS, in which we work with participating schools to help them design their own volunteer initiatives and, with the help of Penny Harvest funds, get directly involved in improving the quality of life in their neighborhoods.
