Maggie Cohn, a BNB Board Member, has as her day job the management of the Mission Hill Main Streets program (www.missionhillmainstreets.org). She has let us know about an initiative that is being taken up by all 19 Main Street districts in Boston - it's called the Community Change Card, and this is how it works:

Businesses in Main Street districts (www.bostonmainstreets.com for more info) agree to participate by offering a rebate to all customers who come in with a Community Change Card. Rebate offers vary from business to business, but they are intended to encourage residents to patronize local businesses. Rebates are not given at the time of sale - card holders will receive their rebates (accumulated from various participating businesses) quarterly or annually.

Individuals register for the card by going online to www.bostoncommunitychange.org. There, they sign up and designate a
non-profit or Boston school to receive a percentage of the rebate amount. The rebate is divided among the individual card holder, the Main Street program in which a participating business is located (so obviously this will change depending on where you are shopping), the non-profit administering the card program, and the selected non-profit.

So sign up for this card, designate BNB as your non-profit of choice, and then go out and patronize businesses that accept the card. This will begin to generate a funding stream to BNB and the more of you who do this, the larger the stream!

SHOP AT GIVELINE, AND BNB GETS $

We're not sure who signed us up for this, but thank you! Go to http://www.giveline.com/default.asp?v=V022739816 to buy books, music, home & garden supplies, and more, and Giveline will donate some of their proceeds to BNB. They tell you with each purchase exactly how much money will be donated. Put that URL into your browser favorites, and check there first when looking for that special item online.

USE GOODSEARCH FOR ONLINE SEARCHES, AND BNB GETS $

Here's yet another way to funnel some change in BNB's direction. Do your online searches at www.goodsearch.com and they will donate half of their profits from each search to BNB. This only comes out to about a penny per search, but if 100 of use do a few searches a day, that will be dollars every day coming to BNB. They also show you how to add Goodsearch to your browser toolbar and then you can easily use it as your default search engine.