Do you CHIP?

“Do you want to CHIP?”

If you have ever shopped at the Willy Street Co-op, you have probably been asked this question. In fact, every customer who walks through the checkout line is given the opportunity to CHIP.

For those who say ‘yes’, CHIPing, as some call it, entails adding a one percent donation to the total cost of a customer’s grocery purchase.

That small donation then goes to Community CHIP, a sister organization to Community Shares of Wisconsin, to raise funds that support over 60 nonprofit organizations across Wisconsin.

Partnering with Willy Street Co-op’s east and west locations, Community CHIP serves as a consistent, dependable fundraising stream for Community Shares of Wisconsin and their member nonprofits who receive the donations, Executive Director of Community Shares of Wisconsin Crystel Anders said.

These donations are particularly important for nonprofits without access to other kinds of funding, such as local, state or national dollars.

“[CHIP] is a great way for nonprofits to raise small amounts of money from individuals in a cost-effective way,” Anders said. “It allows any shopper at the Co-op to be a donor.”

And the donations add up fast.

By adding one percent to a 25 dollar grocery bill, a customer donates 25 cents. For a 25 dollar grocery bill once a week, a customer donates 13 dollars annually toward helping nonprofits provide a wide range of services, like supplying housing for the homeless or providing school students with fresh fruits and vegetables.

So when hundreds of people donate 13 or more dollars a year, it makes up a significant amount of Community Shares of Wisconsin’s budget each year.

“The hundreds and hundreds of people that say yes to CHIPing makes a big difference,” Anders said. “CHIPing in is a way people can chip in small amounts of money; and when you pool your money, you can give a significant gift.”

This year, Community Shares of Wisconsin anticipates Community CHIP will raise over $150,000, Anders said. This amount far surpasses donations raised during Community CHIP’s first year in 1970, back when the fundraiser had a different name and purpose.

The Community CHIP fundraiser of today was first conceived during Vietnam War as a campaign to raise money for jailed protesters to post bail, Community CHIP President Candace Weber said.

When the protests ended, the fundraising campaign, called The Bail Fund, had remaining funds, but no jailed protesters.

Bail Fund group members, most of whom represented community organizations, Weber included, transformed the jail bond campaign into Madison’s first umbrella fundraising organization to support multiple local nonprofit organizations.

They named it the Madison Sustaining Fund.

Later, in the early ‘80s, Madison Sustaining Fund and another local organization with a similar mission to serve local nonprofits called Aid to Wisconsin Organizations (AWO), merged to become Community Shares of Wisconsin, Weber said.

When they merged, the jail-bond-inspired fundraiser became incorporated as a separate, but sister organization with Community Shares of Wisconsin and received its third and current name, Community CHIP.

Since then, Community CHIP has transitioned from change jars placed near cash registers into a sophisticated system of adding onto grocery tabs.

Along that way, Community CHIP has partnered with multiple businesses, grocery stores and organizations across Madison, but few partnerships were as productive or fruitful as the Willy Street Co-op, Anders said.

When Community CHIP first partnered with Willy Street Co-op over 10 years ago, the Co-op and its owners were committed right away, Co-op Director of Cooperative Services Lynn Olson said. 

“It was never a question whether we would or wouldn’t [participate],” she said.

Up until 2009, over 90 percent of donations came from the Willy Street Co-op, Anders said. Now, all donations come from the Co-op following Community CHIP’s decision to focus on a single partnership with the Co-op’s two locations.

While the Co-op and Community CHIP share a mutually beneficial relationship, Olson said there is one “wrinkle.”

Donations to Community CHIP are not tax deductible.

Unlike the majority of Community Shares of Wisconsin nonprofit organizations that are categorized as 501c(3) organizations, Community CHIP is a 501c(4) organization that prevents people from tax deducting their donations, Anders explained.

The two groups continue to explore options to the problem.