March Gladness

Welcome to RetailROI March Gladness


March Gladness

Every year millions of people enjoy playing a bracket for the NCAA basketball tournament. We thought, wouldn’t that be a blast to do that with a purpose. Here’s the deal.

The RetailROI March Gladness pool has a purpose.

  • Have some fun in our industry and among family and friends
  • Win great prizes and bragging rights with your colleagues
  • Build a school in Haiti for 90 children (If we get 750 people to participate we can build a school)

That’s it! 750 people, $20 each builds a school in Cayes-Jacmel, Haiti that has already started with 90 children. Right now all 90 children meet in a single room borrowed from a local church. The goal is to build a separate 8-10 room school house and a couple of support buildings. With a building, this first group of 90 could quickly grow to 150 within the first year. The entire project can be completed for $15,000 USD or 750 brackets in the tournament.

About Trezo and Children’s Hope

Trezò (Creole for “Treasure”) is a Nashville-based non-profit organization that supports an intimate, community-based day school in Cayes-Jacmel, Haiti called “Espwa de Jeunes” (Children’s Hope). The school provides a place of safety, education, nutrition, and healthcare for a small group of children (currently 90). Founded in 2011 by two US nurses and a Haitian national, Trezò is built on the principle that lasting hope for Haiti will come from Haitians. The school’s founder, administration and staff are all Haitians, there is a Haitian curriculum and Haitian food. We provide what they lack – seed money and some skills training – and the Haitian community owns the project. The school is open to children of all religious backgrounds and is called “Espwa de Jeunes (Children’s Hope) in the native Creole.”

The most desirable land can be purchased for $8,000 and is available immediately (400 brackets buys the land). They can build the 3 buildings and buy the land for a total of $15,000 (750 brackets). The primary building will be 8-10 rooms that will house grades 1-6. A second building will be a small guest house for visitors including restrooms for the kids. The third building will be a small kitchen/storage building. All of this for $15,000.

If we really blow it out of the park there is a need for a long-term water solution and solar installation for electricity long-term. But first priority is building the buildings so school can continue during the daily rain storms.


More specific information about Trezo can be found at www.trezo.org or you can email trezochildren@gmail(dot)com

Prizes

Prizes

We have thousands of $ of prizes.The winner gets $600 Apple Gift Card or $600 gift card of another retailer of your choice. Next we have thousands of dollars of prizes that include iPad Mini’s, Kindle Fire HD, thousands of dollars of gift cards from retailers such as Home Depot, Academy Sports, Apple, and many others. A complete list of current prizes are listed in the tab below. If you would like to donate a prize from you or your company to help grow the prize pool, please contact Greg Buzek at greg@retailroi(dot)org. Questions about the tournament can be sent to Nichole Riley-Doud at Nichole@retailroi(dot)org.

Here is a list of the current prizes for the tournament. This list is building daily. Currently 28 prizes.

  • Grand Prize - $600 Apple Gift Card or Retailer of Your Choice – Donated by IHL Group
  • Second Prize - $500 True Religion Gift Card - Courtesy of True Religion Jeans
  • 3rd and 4th Prizes - Apple iPad Mini - Courtesy of XCCommerce and Free for Life
  • 5th Prize - Amazon Kindle Fire HD – Courtesy of Power Thinking Media
  • 6th-9th Prizes - $200 Gift Card to Apple - Courtesy C-Core Consulting Group
  • 10th Prize - $200 Talbots Gift Cards - Courtesy of Ceridian
  • 11th Prize - Amazon Kindle Fire – Courtesy of Epicor
  • 12th Prize - Amazon Kindle – Courtesy of Oracle
  • Other prizes include:
    • $150 - Gift Card to Home Depot
    • $100 - Talbots Gift Cards - Courtesy of Ceridian
    • $100 - Gift Card to Best Buy
    • $50 - Talbots Gift Cards – Courtesy of Ceridian
    • $50 - Gift Card to Target - Courtesy of Target
    • 12 - $25 - Gas Gift Cards to Shell and/or BP
    • $25 - Gift Card to Build-a-Bear Workshop Courtesy of Build-a-Bear
    • $25 - Talbots Gift Cards – Courtesy of Ceridian
    • $20 - Gift Card to Burger King - Courtesy of Burger King
    • 3 - Copies of “Be Extraordinary - Crush Mediocrity/Spark Curiosity” by Justin Honaman with CDs
    • 3 - Copies of Orginal Justin Honaman CD’s.

** There is one prize per user name. You will receive the best prize even if
multiple brackets are winners. We want to spread the wealth.

Rules & Scoring

Scoring:

    • First Round: This is the play-in round and no points are awarded. All brackets must be in before the first game on Thursday. At that time the tournament and picks are locked down.

    • Second Round: The weight for each correct pick is 1. The seed of the winning team is added to the correct pick total. This is to encourage risk taking and upsets So if you pick a 12 seed over a 5 seed and they win, you get 1 point for the win plus 12 points for a total of 13 points for that game.

    • Third Round: The weight for each correct pick is 2. The seed of the winning team is added to the correct pick total. This is the same as the second round. Our goal is to have chaos in the first two rounds and hope that everyone is still in it by the Sweet 16 regardless of how good they are at choosing the best teams.

    • Sweet 16: The weight for each correct pick is 15. There is no bonus applied. From here on out it is straight point scoring. No adders or bonuses for the picks.

    • Elite 8: The weight for each correct pick is 24. There is no bonus applied.

    • Final Four: The weight for each correct pick is 40. There is no bonus applied.

    • Championship: The weight for each correct pick is 70. There is no bonus applied.

    • Tiebreaker: The total score of the Championship game.

  • Maximum Brackets: You can have up to 3 brackets. $20 each or 3 for $50.

Constitution: Together we can make a HUGE difference. Please do not share the password. We will match emails to payments. No payment, no winning of the prizes as that would be stealing from the children. Let's have fun and change a world for a child. Thanks.

Questions: can be forwarded to nichole@retailroi(dot)org

FAQs

1) Can I pick my teams yet?

You can register now and CBS Sports will send you a link when the teams are picked on March 17th. At that time you have 4 days to complete your picks which must be picked by 10:59am EST on Thursday the 21st.

2) If I play multiple brackets, can both win a prize?

You will win the prize for the best bracket. The goal here is to help as many people win as possible, not give all the prizes to one person. So even if you play 3 brackets, it is your best bracket that decides the prize.

3) Is there anything special about the scoring?

No, standard scoring for the pool as points increase as the games get further along.

4) Can we talk smack?

Yes, absolutely and that will be part of the fun. This will be monitored, so use respect. We may have younger age kids playing with their parent for fun so please use discretion. But if you want to talk company smack among friends, by all means go for it.

5) Are prizes only for the winners?

We are adding a couple of fun prizes. There will be a prize for the worst score after we get to the Sweet 16 and a prize for the best score at that point. If there is a tie, we will throw the names in a hat and pick the winners.

6) What is tie-breaker for final?

We will use total points as the tiebreaker for the final games. This will be used for any ties for the top prizes.

7) Can I learn more about the school and how to get involved?

Yes, first see more about the school here on our page. At that point if you would like further information you will see instructions on how to get in touch with the people in the US that are handling the project.

8) How will we be updated of progress?

The service will automatically email reports out to the participants after each round of games.

9) I don’t want to play, but can I contribute to this cause?

Yes, absolutely, simply go to our Donation Page. Enter “Haiti School” in project field and Thank You!

10) Is this a tax deduction?

If you play a bracket, no. Technically this would be entertainment. The point here is to have fun and build a school. If you need to be ultracompetitive and win at all costs, skip it and play elsewhere. Our goal here is to build a school through simple $20 from each person. Together we can make a HUGE Difference.

11) What happens if we have more players than needed for the school?

Well that is a good problem to have. The second project after this school is building a computer lab for 200 young girls in Liberia with a charity called More than Me. Learn more about the incredible work of this charity at www.morethanme.org Then the third project is a refresh of the technology at the RetailROI computer lab at Plan Escalon in Honduras. More on this project here.

We Made It - Thank You!

We have raised enough money to build the school for 90 children in Cayes-Jacmel, Haiti.

Brackets are now closed.
If you would like to make a donation, please go to our Donation Page

Trezo School - Haiti

Later RetailROI will work to bring enhancements like computer labs and first world teaching to these children who have lost so much.

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