Centennial Students Raise Money for Dementia Care With Chipotle Fundraiser

A group of Frisco ISD students is spending a Tuesday evening trying to make life a little better inside dementia care facilities, and they are doing it one burrito at a time.

Aiding Alzheimer's, a student-run organization based at Centennial High School, is holding a fundraiser at Chipotle on Tuesday, Sept. 1, from 4 to 8 p.m. Twenty-five percent of sales during those four hours will be donated to the group, according to the event flyer.

The restaurant is at 9625 Coit Road in Plano, near Coit and State Highway 121. It sits on the same road as Centennial itself, which is at 6901 Coit Road in Frisco.

Where the money goes

Organizers say funds from the evening will be donated to dementia care facilities in the Frisco area, and to facilities in rural communities where they say access to activities, supplies and additional support can be more limited.

The group describes itself as student-led and says it was created to bring more care, connection and resources to people living with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. In a submission to this site, organizers said their work with senior communities had shown them how much small acts of support can mean to residents and to the people caring for them.

Those descriptions come from the organizers. Aiding Alzheimer's is a student group rather than a registered charity with public filings, and it does not have a website; it can be found on Instagram at @aidingalzheimers.

How to take part

Showing up is not quite enough, and this is the part that trips people up.

Under Chipotle's fundraiser rules, an in-person order only counts if the customer tells the cashier they are there for the fundraiser, or shows the flyer on a phone or on paper.

Ordering ahead works too, but only for pickup: place the order on the Chipotle app or website during the four-hour window and enter the code HBFL7N6 in the promo field. Delivery orders do not count toward a fundraiser, and neither do orders placed at another time or at a different Chipotle.

One more line of fine print is worth knowing before Tuesday: the flyer states that event sales have to reach $150 before any donation is made at all. A slow evening does not mean a smaller check for the group. It means no check.

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Why it matters here

Frisco has a growing number of memory care and assisted living facilities, and dementia care is a quietly expensive part of family life for many households in the city. A high school fundraiser will not change that arithmetic. What it does is put a group of teenagers in front of the problem, and send whatever they raise to places that rarely make the news.

The event runs 4 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 1.