News

Sears, Kmart use loyalty program for charity

July 20, 2010

While many Americans have had to scale back charitable giving during these financially difficult times, their desire to give to those less fortunate has not wavered. In fact, a new consumer survey, commissioned by Sears and Kmart, reveals that a majority (81 percent) of Americans remain generous at heart and admit that if they received a large sum of money, such as a prize or gift, they’d likely donate a portion of the funds to a charity, non-profit or other aid organization. Therefore, to celebrate the upcoming first anniversary of Shop Your Way Rewards, Sears and Kmart have announced the Shop Your Way Rewards "What Would You Do with One Billion Points?" contest, to give one customer the chance to win up to one billion Shop Your Way Rewards points — half to keep and the other half to donate to charity.

Shop Your Way Rewards members can enter the contest by submitting a 45-second personal video message describing what they would do with One Billion Points. All videos will be posted online at www.billionpoints.com, where America will vote to determine the winner. The prize pool will start at 100 million points, and for every video submitted, another 10,000 points will be added — up to one billion points. The contest winner will take home 50 percent of all of the points in the prize pool, and they will also decide how the remaining 50 percent of the points will be donated to charity. For the charitable component, the winner has two options:

• Give all of the charity points to one or two of Sears Holdings Corp.’s charity partners (Rebuilding Together, St. Jude or March of Dimes).
• Give half of the charity points to a Sears Holdings charity partner and the other half to a charity of their choice that meets the qualifications of the contest rules.

Video submissions and the initial voting will continue through Oct. 5. The top 20 vote getters will move on to a final round of voting, which will result in a single winner, announced by mid-November.