History of the Penny Project

On December 29, 2006 while walking home from work, I found a $20 bill in the crosswalk. Obviously excited about this little discovery, I also wondered if we as Americans had come to value money so little that we were just dropping $20’s in the street without noticing. My walk home is quite lengthy, so I thought about America’s relationship with money and decided to do a little social experiment.

I decided to see how much money I could find on the ground in one calendar year by picking up all the pennies, nickels, and other stray change one occasionally sees on the street. Sort of a quirky New Year’s resolution! And maybe I’d even end up with enough money to do something fun at the end of the year!

I thought it would be much more interesting to keep track of the money I found on a spreadsheet rather than just throwing it in a jar (yes, it’s true…I’m a nerd at heart!). This would allow me to see what days were good for finding money, if one season was better than another, and any number of other random facts I could ascertain by studying the spreadsheet!

I never intended to collect money from anyone else…but one day I was going to lunch with my friend Illeny and got very excited about finding a penny en route to the restaurant. I told her about my spreadsheet and that I’d already found several dollars in change just walking back & forth to work. She thought this was funny and decided to play along! So a new column was born on the spreadsheet.

Since I have no shame about picking up pennies wherever I am, a few other friends soon found out about my experiment and although they mocked the idea of a spreadsheet, once they saw it…they wanted in too! One friend even forwarded the spreadsheet to her finance department and asked why they weren’t this organized?! They were intrigued and decided to weigh in by predicting the influx of tourists would cause a spike in found money over the summer months!

Pretty soon I had friends and family all over the country searching for pennies and sharing their stories (and their pennies) with me! Some people were inspired to write poetry about their pennies, others sent pictures when they found pennies in odd places. Eventually all of these stories found a home on a blog called “The Pretty Penny” for everyone to enjoy! It was obvious…people really liked finding pennies and putting them together for a bigger cause!

And so, “The Penny Project” was born with the goal of taking found money abandoned on the street and turning it into something great! To date we’ve raised over $112 (which isn’t too shabby considering most of our “donations” come from gutters and Metro bus floors). We’re working to grow our reserve fund so we can begin using the money to teach kids about financial literacy and charitable giving.

If you’re interested in more information or want to know how you can donate, e-mail us at the_pretty_penny@yahoo.com.