by Natasha Khairullah
Staff Writer
For the past month and a half, 10 of Jacksonville’s non-profit charities have been receiving monetary donations by the hour.
The 10 charities, including Ronald McDonald House, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the MaliVai Washington Kids Foundation and Kesler Mentoring Connection, are all participating in Redbox’s “Feelgood Movie Program.” The program that was launched April 15 allows renters to donate the first night’s rental fee of $1 to one of the charities by entering a promotional code that corresponds to the organization.
According to Redbox’s Vice President of Marketing Greg Waring, the program is going strong with the top three earning organizations currently standing as the Ronald McDonald House, YMCA and the Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida.
“Originally, this was only scheduled to be a month-long project, but because of the success we’ve seen, we extended its duration by another month,” said Waring. “So people still have a few weeks to take advantage of this.”
To date, Waring said the total amount earned by all charities combined is almost $500.
The promotional codes are posted on each Redbox and will remain posted until the program ends. Waring said customers can reuse the codes as many times as they’d like and added that the availability of the codes has significantly helped increase the amount of donations.
Redbox Automated Retail LLC introduced its system of kiosks nationwide in 2003 and is currently the nation’s leader in automated DVD rental services and hopes to surpass Blockbuster in number of locations by early this summer to become the nation’s number one renter of DVDs by location.
Each fully automated Redbox kiosk offers the new movie releases for only $1 a night plus tax. Customers can keep the Redbox DVD for as long as they’d like for $1 per night plus tax, and return the DVD to any Redbox kiosk nationwide. If participating in the “Feelgood Movie Program,” the first night will always go to the charity of the renter’s choice.
Waring said the “Feelgood Movie Program” was started in conjunction with the Jacksonville launch in order to help get customers exposed to Redbox’s services as well as to show appreciation for the community’s support by benefiting some of the community’s organizations.
“For us, the (Feelgood Movie) program was a win win situation,” said Waring. “We’re getting them (customers) to try Redbox while supporting great causes.”
Although only introduced to Jacksonville in April, Redbox already has 60 locations throughout Jacksonville.