BURNSVILLE, Minn. — There is so much uncertainty with the 2020 school year but one thing that is constant year after year: the growing need for school supplies.
"There's a lot of stress, a lot of worry and a lot of concern, and if we can help bring some aspect of their stress down that's what we want to do," said Lanae Paaverud, who is in charge of Genz-Ryan's "Genz Gives" program.
The plumbing, heating and cooling company is looking to ease the burden on teachers by offering up $20,000 in Target gift cards with the company’s Classroom Cash contest.
"We decided to do Classroom Cash last year and it blew up," said Lanae. "It was amazing the amount of support that teachers got, just the amount of comments and well wishes and support was just really heart warming."
This year, the company will award two teachers with $1,000 in Target gift cards and 90 teachers with $200 gift cards.
The process to apply online is simple:
Just go to the Classroom Cash contest page, put in some basic info, and share a picture of the nominee with why they are a fantastic teacher. Submissions must be for teachers in the following Minnesota counties:
- Anoka
- Carver
- Dakota
- Goodhue
- Hennepin
- LeSueur
- Ramsey
- Rice
- Scott
- Sherburne
- Washington
- Wright
"Reading all of these nominations is so fun and heartwarming to see parents nominating their students teachers, teachers nominating colleagues, it’s a lot of fun," said Lanae.
The deadline to nominate a teacher is Wednesday August, 12th 2020 at midnight. Then the public votes for nominees on the company's Facebook page for a week, from Friday, August 14 through Friday, August 21.
Last year, the Classroom Cash contest had 63 nominations and the owner of Genz-Ryan saw just how big the need was, and awarded everyone who applied.