To kick off our newly adopted Drake Neighborhood Bulldog Bucks program and to encourage student interaction in the Drake community, we have organized a spring semester promotion to encourage visits to the local businesses near campus. The objective  will be to visit either eight off campus Bulldog Bucks merchants, or a total of eight Drake neighborhood businesses (tracking businesses not on the Bulldog Bucks program by using a hashtag with a posted photo – #dogtowndash) during the spring semester. We’ll  run this program from Feb. 1–May 2, and the first 100 students to complete this challenge will earn a T-shirt!

Feel free to contact studentservices@drake.edu if you have questions about this promotion. You will be contacted by this email address with challenge updates and a pre/post-program survey. Participants will also be alerted when they have completed the challenge.

**Troubleshooting tips:

• If your card did not work at a participating business, please make sure that you have BULLDOG BUCKS loaded to your card, not Flex Dollars.  Only the Bulldog Bucks account can be used off campus, Flex Dollars are for on campus purchases only.
• If your card did not work at a participating business, please make sure that you have enough in your account to cover the full purchase – the system functions like a debit card, and will not let you overdraft.  If there are not sufficient funds, it will deny the transaction, even if you have a small balance in your account.
• If you would like to use Bulldog Bucks on a partial purchase, you can ask the merchant to type in your balance into their card reader, and then pay the remaining balance due with another payment method.  Please note that the merchant does not have the ability to check your balance, so you will be responsible for letting them know what amount to type in.

Thanks for your participation, and support of our amazing neighborhood businesses!

— Sara Heijerman, Student Services Center