Thursday, December 29, 2016

Dream Come True


“OUCH” While rubbing my arm, “Okay, I guess I’m not dreaming.”

What sparked this - we were thinking this whole situation with the southwest region of UBS is really too good to be true. We must be dreaming. We had to pinch ourselves to see if we were dreaming. Nope, everyone’s awake.

Here’s why they’re so special –

Cards
As touched on previously (Heating Up & Nothing Needed), they were willing to join in and start making cards even before we had a location in their area. As of November 17, 2016, we’ve received a total of 530 cards, specifically from their offices in Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona. And so far, we’ve only been able to send 215 cards to those three states. When they joined in, we had only sent a total of 80 cards to any of those states. When we promised our contact that we’d try to get more spots out West, her reply was “We trust you to send the cards wherever needed.  We do have a children's hospital in Nevada – Sunrise – but it's totally up to you.  Our NM co-workers also agree that you can send them wherever you want.” (Unlike a lot of groups.) Amazing!

Cash
Then, we really thought we were dreaming. They also chose to support us with a recent monetary donation. The first email from UBS was them asking for our Federal ID number, but we weren’t sure that was for a donation! In mid-November we just received a donation that covered the cost to ship over 4,000 cards!


Now, if we had more groups like UBS who made our DREAMS COME TRUE we’d be able to efficiently reach kids across the country, as well as do some of the extras we’ve been trying to do – DVD Players and Art Supplies


To see more pictures and stories, please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Nothing Needed

“What if?"……“No never. That’d be too good to be true.”

That’s what crossed our mind when we were thinking about where we ship our cards and about some groups’ requests or requirements when they ask to join in. But before we explain why that crossed our mind, let’s provide a bit more detailed background information then what you can find on our About Us page. When things first started, our founder took the cards that were made and delivered them during his volunteer shifts at Lurie Children’s Hospital. Then as more groups started participating, he reached out to classmates who worked at Sinai Children’s Hospital and Advocate Kids to see if he could send cards there too. After creating a Facebook page, he started contacting more hospitals in the Chicago area as more cards were coming in.


Now here we go with some of our honesty, “100% open and honest”. After we started to grow a bit, we realized that we should expand our coverage and get hospitals outside of just the Chicagoland area. The first cities we picked were Atlanta, Cleveland, Brooklyn, and Ann Arbor. Then as mentioned in a prior post, we’ve drastically been working on expanding across North America and making sure that we have an even delivery across the United States.

Now the reason for providing all that background is that we want to highlight why we’re so thankful for groups such as UBS, Kforce and Minnesota State University. Recently, the word’s been starting to spread and a couple new groups have been hearing about our organization. Several of these groups have said they only want to join in if we guarantee to send cards to the hospitals in their immediate communities.

In comparison, with Kforce, their Tampa, FL office simply started sending us cards even though we weren’t sending cards to any hospitals in the state of FL. As we decided we could grow a bit, we immediately reached out to St Joseph’s in Tampa, FL. It’s been less than a year, but we’ve already sent those children 320 cards and that will consistently keep growing no matter where we receive cards. In addition, and the reason Kforce is currently our #2 participant with 1200 cards, what started with Tampa, has now sparked to multiple offices. For example, the Chicago office made 62 cards in Q3 2016 and although we don’t have a hospital in that city, their Dallas office made cards this quarter! And you can bet where we will look when we are able to expand again.

Then, with UBS, their SW region pitched in and in one quarter made over 500 cards. They shipped all of those cards to us even though we didn’t have any hospitals in their area. If you check out our Donate page, you’ll see the participation has been growing, so when we had enough cards and were able to spread west a bit more we decided to reach out to the Maricopa Integrated Health System in Phoenix, AZ. We confirmed we’ll send them a total of 200 cards (a combination of English and Spanish) a quarter and those will all be delivered room to room. 

Now, as you can see in the map above we’ve contacted a hospital in Minnesota before, but have yet to set up a connection. If Minnesota State University wins the next MarchGladness tournament, then we’ll definitely have to reward that group who was willing to impact kids across the globe, rather than strictly the kids next door. We can’t even imagine how much more impressive we’d be able to be if there were more groups who were willing to join in and felt that there was NOTHING NEEDED from us in order for them to start. Kids, no matter where they’re located, deserve to smile. 




Wow….what if everyone felt that way?!?!

#NothingNeeded #UpliftingSpirits

To see more pictures and stories, please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Three Generations

Thankfully Cardz for Kidz! has had a variety of families who have contributed in multiple ways. For example, we previously wrote about how a mother and daughter are both creative, #RunsintheFamily. In addition, we touched on how a husband and wife helped out in a variety of ways, #BestofBothWorlds. One similar factor with both of those families is that they both had TWO contributors. 

We always appreciate the time and effort each individual and/or family makes to Cardz for Kidz!, but today, we want to take the time to recognize Sally Anderson and Norma Hornick. Now here’s the background….

We were first connected to Sally through a contact at Google. Google has generously been able to donate cash and cards, as well as helping to improve our overall credibility. In addition to helping us expand our presence with Google’s Chicago office, Sally also helped set us up with the Benevity donation system. Cardz for Kidz! is set up on their site which allows multiple companies to make donations (e.g. recently received $50 donation from Hewlett Packard and they may potentially host an event). More important than the financial contributions, Sally has worked with different Google offices to make a total of 396 cards – including 5 different times with the Chicago office! 






What really distinguishes Sally from other is that she spreads the word “both” ways. She had her children make cards, teaching them to start young; then she told her mom, Norma Hornick, about our organization; Norma later made a total of 10 cards. Here are some of the impressive/distinctive factors about Norma:
  • Sally simply told Norma about the organization, without providing her with any direct point-of-contacts. Norma took it upon herself to visit the Cardz for Kidz! website and contact us on her own
  • When we were looking for new locations in PA, she provided ideas of potential hospitals and/or shelters in the area
  • She’s spread the word by telling her sorority, Alpha Delta Kappa, about our organization and they already hosted their first event




On another hand, there’s a sister who was touched on in the Runs in the Family post who just made a couple cards. Therefore, that could be three family members making it into the Top 10, that’ll definitely be blog post worthy, but as of right now, we think THREE GENERATIONS making cards and making a difference in many ways is very impressive! 

#ThreeGenerations #UpliftingSpirits


To see more pictures and stories, please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.orglike us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Heating Up

“Across the country” is a common phrase almost everyone knows or has at least heard. We’re working to establish partnerships in all 50 states. Thanks to the contributions of several key groups, Cardz for Kidz! presses onward, closer and closer, to that goal—specifically through a our new partnership with the Arizona Burn Center in Phoenix, AZ. But, before we touch on delivering cards to AZ or NM, we’ll provide some background on what it’s been like sending cards out west.


If you visit our website, www.cardzforkidz.org/about-us, you’ll find the history of our organization. One thing you’ll see is that we originally started in Chicago and several of our original hospitals are in the Midwest. Based on that, when you take a look behind the scenes – “100% Open and Honest” - you’ll see that dating back to 2010, the majority of the cards have been sent to children in the Midwest.




Now, the main difference is recently, we’ve been working on evening out our delivery and consistently reaching kids across North America. We’ve been focused on making some changes and have clearly seen some results this year:


Thankfully, we’ve continued to increase our presence out West. If you check out the map on our homepage, you’ll see several more smiles in California and Nevada. One of the main reasons is the production of the UBS Financial Services Inc. offices in Albuquerque & Santa Fe, NM and Phoenix & Tucson, AZ. Their offices made a total of 530 cards within two months—almost the amount made the entire third quarter of 2015 (Q3 2015).

Additionally, they more than returned the favor since there offices in New Mexico alone produced three times as many cards as we were able to send the kids impacted by the school shooting in Roswell, NM.

Due to UBS Financial Services Inc.’s dedication, especially during our non-peak time, we contacted the Arizona Burn Center, part of the Maricopa Integrated Health System in Phoenix, AZ, and sent them 100 homemade cards. Thankfully, they enjoyed these cards and now we will send them 200 cards each quarter!

Thankfully, we’ll continue to work to even out our delivery across North America. We know thanks to some steady partnerships, we’ll continue to work on our presence out West. We’ve sent some test packages and we feel the likelihood of even more partnerships are definitely HEATING UP.

#HeatingUp #UpliftingSpirits

To see more pictures and stories, please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!
                                        


Delivery by Quarter, 2011 to 2016.



Thursday, October 27, 2016

Still Enough

Once again, we’re going to be 100% open and honest. We’ve got it documented that we’ve delivered well over 20,000 cards to disheartened children or solemn seniors across the globe. With that said, we doubt that we’ve changed 20,000 lives. In fact, we can’t even 100% guarantee we’ve uplifted 20,000 spirits…..with that it’s more or of a 99.9%. If you think about it, even if some kids don’t enjoy their cards, some cards excite much more than one person.

 An Elsa card excited an entire family at Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor.

With that in mind, some may question why we make such a big deal about our other main hash tag, #EveryCardCounts. Why do we spend the time to calculate how many cards each group makes and remind the group how many smiles they create? The first reason: its all first person!

We work with each hospital and shelter we partner with to let them know we understand all about HIPAA, patient and child protection/privacy laws. We tell them that our goal is to make it as EASY as possible for them to receive cards. It’d be a dream come true, if more hospitals were like Franciscan Hospital in MA and tweeted or sent pictures, but we won’t put any pressure on them. With that in mind, the majority of the pictures you see of patients in their rooms with their cards are all taken by “staff” at Cardz for Kidz!. So, when we highlight that your cards are helping kids and their families, it’s not simply hearsay. It’s not simply an estimate. It’s something we’ve experienced. 
We’ve seen the smiles. We’ve seen the tears of joy.

Although we’re only 99.9% sure we’ve uplifted over 20,000 spirits due to your work, based on these smiles, we think that’s STILL ENOUGH….for now!




#StillEnough #UpliftingSpirits

To see more pictures and stories, please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Our Hashtag is Calling

Based on the amount of followers we have on Instagram, we understand not everyone’s seen our hashtags, so we want to provide you some of our must have hashtags for that social site-


Hashtag: “A hashtag is a type of label or metadata tag used on social network and microblogging services which makes it easier for users to find messages with a specific theme or content.” (Wikipedia)

One of the things that we like about Instagram is that we’re able to use a lot more hashtags compared to Twitter. If you look at some of our original posts, we simply had a couple hashtags and weren’t getting many likes or comments. We thought of some on our own, but also asked others for some insight on what we could use (e.g. @thefarwoods & @exit21nemesis575).  Since we use so many, we wanted to briefly explain why we use some of them for the majority of the posts:
  • #UpliftingSpirits- need we say more? That’s part of our mission statement* and it will always be our main goal. We’re trying to uplift the spirits of the disheartened children, but also encourage the people who are making the cards. This hashtag isn’t necessarily for trying to get more followers or likes, but simply trying to convey what we believe.
  • #EveryCardCounts – another key theme we’ve touched on. As discussed in a couple prior posts, there’s a double meaning. First, all the cards are delivered room to room so each card is important. Then we track where all the cards are coming from, so we tally how many cards each group has made. This is another hashtag that’s nearly exclusive to us.
  • #CardsforKids – this hashtag is something that we primarily use on Instagram. As mentioned in the Last Letter blog post, we understand that a lot of people who participate in our events may not know they’re participating in Cardz for Kidz! events. With that in mind, we’re using this to help connect with people who are simply interested in making cards for children.
  • #VolunteeringIsFun – a win-win situation. That’s one of our goals. We want to make sure that participating in Cardz for Kidz! is something people look forward to. We’re using this so people who enjoy volunteering and are looking for other fun volunteering events can easily find us.
  • #MakingADifference & #MakingSmiles – we grouped the two of these together since they’re a bit similar. We feel that based on taking the time to make these encouraging cards you’re making a difference in the lives of families by helping them smile during some of their most difficult times!
  • #DoGoodFeelGood – we align with both parts of the hashtag. By participating and making these cards for disheartened children we know you’re definitely “doing good” and the benefit of joining in and participating in Cardz for Kidz! is something you can “feel good” about!
  • #HomemadeCards & #HandmadeCards – both of these are pretty simple. We’re all about trying to find people who are passionate about making cards from scratch!!
  • #EncourageOneAnother – since we’re primarily encouraging groups to work together we feel that participating in Cardz for Kidz! helps everyone. Not only are you uplifting kids, but you’re encouraging your friends, coworkers, classmates, and/or family to do something positive!
  • #HelpingKids – that’s #1. Although some folks say we may be forgetting the fact that we’re sending cards to ‘solemn seniors’, #CardzFROMKidz, but still we feel that whether kids are making cards or receiving cards we’re helping kids either learn to give back or uplifting their spirits if they’re in the hospital.
  • #ArtsAndCrafts – with this one we’re working to find people and groups who are interested in making homemade artwork and crafty projects.
  • #SpecialNeedsKids – this was more recently added and it’s used to include that we’re reaching out to kids who have any kind of special need. We’re not going to refer to them as disabled, handicapped, but just referring to them as special.
Hopefully, when people start to look through Instagram or if we have enough room, on Twitter or Facebook, they’ll start to see we’re talking about or posting pictures of things others care about. If you look at each Instagram post, you’ll see they’re all pretty long, but you’ll never see some of the standard hashtags of #like4like or #follow4follow. We’re not simply trying to get fans, but we’re trying to get cards!

We’ve learned that people aren’t necessarily going to start following us based on our hashtags (still less than 350), but hopefully they’ll realize that we’re thinking about similar things and understand that OUR HASHTAG is CALLING - we have similar passion points!

#OurHashtagIsCalling #UpliftingSpirits


To see more pictures and stories, please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

*Cardz for Kidz! is an organization dedicated to uplifting the spirits of hospitalized and/or traumatized children across the globe by delivering inspiring homemade cards.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Do The Math

Just like last week, we’re confined and we have to start off by telling the truth! Tough job! The two gentleman who helped get Cardz for Kidz! off the ground and are featured in one of our introductory videos are both marketing majors. Therefore, they’re BIAS! Similar to other folks, one of them was under the impression that when it came to people interested in business (e.g. marketing, finance, and accounting), marketing folks were the nice ones. If you check out the Participants tab on our website, you’ll see the logos for several renowned marketing or advertising agencies and/or organizations (e.g. Ogilvy, PHD, CIMA).

In Q3 2012, all of our cards came from either 5 different marketing/advertising agencies or people who made cards in their free time. Fast forward to present. Everything’s changed!

Recently, what opened our eyes is a completed a press release that we sent to a couple of news stations down in New Mexico. It was all about how UBS Financial Services helped produce 484 cards within one quarter. We took a deeper look and noticed that we’ve been getting a lot of cards from financial groups. Here are some examples:


Need more? Okay. The bias marketing in us may simply say ‘employees from General Motors global headquarters participated’, but to be honest, it was only a portion of their accounting department! It’s a stretch, but if you want, you could add on Quicken Loans, PLS and Capital One.

So, although we can try and stretch the truth and say, “Yeah, there may be some marketing folks who work at those large accounting/finance/economics firms who are starting it, we can DO THE MATH and understand that people in those mathematical professions care and give back just as much, if not more!” Thankfully, everyone can have fun joining in.


To see more pictures and stories, please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

Thursday, September 22, 2016

The Last Letter

Here we go again! With this post we had this AWESOME idea on how we were going to explain how/why it’s so hard to find our website and Facebook page using standard search engines. How most people who participate in an event will never know they partook in a Cardz for Kidz! event; how when we’re creating Instagram posts, we always use the #cardsforkids hashtag in order to get people who may be a bit confused.

We had all of that in mind, but we remembered our promise that we touched on in our previous blogs - to always be 100% open and honest. So, we’ll start off the real reason we spell our name, Cardz for Kidz! then how it aligns with our hashtags and our theme!

 (disappointed sigh). Honesty.  

We touched on this before, but our founder actually wasn’t creative enough to think of the title ‘Cards for Kids.’ It was one of the other people at his church who were a part of the first event that’s referred to on our About Us page. After encouragement, our founder decided to make it a 501(c)(3) certified non-profit. But, first, he created a Facebook page.

Please keep this a secret since it’ll make us look bad, but at the time he didn’t realize what he was doing and actually was trying to create a Facebook GROUP rather than a page. We discussed this during our prior post, but here was the process. First, he searched for “Cards for Kids.” That was taken by a group who was raising money to help kids support their schooling. Then, he looked into “Cards 4 Kids.” Unfortunately, we can’t find the link anymore, but that was also taken by a group who played poker or other card games to raise money for kids. As a third option, we tried “Cardz for Kidz.” Since no one had that, we created that ‘Group’. At the time there was only 1 group with those names – now there are multiple. We could’ve just created another “Cards for Kids” group!
[Please note it took us 45+ minutes to write this paragraph since we were searching Facebook looking for the original groups!]

Later, we figured out the difference between a Facebook page and Facebook group. We reached out to some other groups who had “Cards for Kids” or similar titles to see if they wanted to work together (e.g.  we specialize in getting groups together they work to get independent artists), but they weren’t interested.

 (sigh of relief).  Now that’s off our chest we can pretend. 

We’re sorry. We understand since spelling those words with z’s isn’t common, one can often forget. Also, since there are so many different ways to write ‘for’ (e.g. for, 4, four) it’s tough to get that right. But, hopefully this helps.

As we always say, #EVERYCARDCOUNTS. With that, there are two meanings.
  • First, we can touch on the cards themselves. If you follow us on social media or check out our participants tab, you’ll notice that we often talk about which groups have made the most cards. That’s because we count each of the cards that comes in. We can say, simply having a card come in and NOT tracking it so we can recognize the group, is the LAST thing we’d want. Therefore, we’ll use the LAST letter rather than a S. Cardz not Cards!
  • Second, and even more importantly, we’re all about the children. Each card is important (aka “counts”) because those are being delivered room to room. We take time to primarily find smaller hospitals, but no matter what size hospital we’re working with, they have to pinky promise us they’ll hand deliver all the cards. We want to make sure the kids who are confined to their beds based on the testing or conditions can be uplifted as well. Let’s pretend we’re using the LAST letter for the second part of our name, because having a child feel alone is the LAST thing we want. Kidz not Kids!


Now, if you’re trying to think of what to include between the Cardz and Kidz, just remember that we’re trying to reach as many kids as possible, i.e. #EVERYCARDCOUNTS. Based on that, we’re delivering/reaching way more than 4/four kids. Currently we’re stuck at 4 continents (Africa, Asia*, North America, and South America**), but that’ll change soon.

We understand folks who haven’t read this blog post may still think of the letter “S” when they hear the words cards and kids, but we’re hoping that you remember we’re using THE LAST LETTER a couple times for a couple reasons!



Here are some examples that show remembering how to spell our name can be pretty difficult:

Post on Facebook


Subject line of email (blocked out the company):

#TheLastLetter #UpliftingSpirits


To see more pictures and stories, please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

*Location in the Middle East is not on the map…..yet. Waiting for clearance.

**Were unable to get a hold of the gentleman who hand delivered the cards in Colombia to get the name of the location so we didn’t add the destination to map on our homepage.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

A Special Name

We needed some honest feedback. Since some of the behind the scenes folks are interested in market research, we decided we should check with the ladies before we started this blog post. Here were the responses based on the “poll” aka Facebook status:
  • “Here’s an anonymous question I’ll need for an upcoming Cardz for Kidz! blog post. Ladies, (men, it’d be interesting to hear your perspective too), what was the first thing you thought of when you found out you were pregnant? I thought it was an obvious answer, but after my first set of responses I’m a bit surprised and I may not be able to write it!!!”
    • “This is going to be awesome.”
    • “Sam is going to be so excited.”
    • “Oh my God! What do I do now? Am I ready for this?”
    • “First time – Holy Cow! Second time – Yay!!! Third time – Awesome! Fourth time (with sick kids puking) – Oh no!!! lol”
    • “Excited, then scared and nervous. Maybe all at the same time!”
    • “But I’m not married.”
    • “First Time – ‘OH MY GOD!’ Second Time – ‘OH SH!T!’ And there won’t be a third time!”
    • “Sh!t. I drank my @ss off all weekend. I hope I didn’t screw up my baby.”
    • “Thank goodness. It’s about time.”


We were shocked! Those weren’t the answers we were looking for. We thought folks’ original response would be ‘I wonder if it’s a boy or a girl’?

What started this whole thought is that we had a conversation and someone asked us if we “ever thought about naming him?” When we asked what him they were referring to, they looked at us like we were crazy and mentioned that obviously it’s the little boy in our logo.



For some background, we tried to make our logo as ambiguous as possible when our artists were creating it. We made sure it was a shade darker, bald rather than with hair, and that the card covered up a possible shirt.

As touched on in our prior post, True Princess, just because our buddy doesn’t have hair doesn’t mean they’re a boy. They may still be a true princess! With all that in mind, we can’t refer to our logo as “it”, “he/she” or “they”. Our logo needs a name. Can you help us think of A SPECIAL NAME? One that wouldn’t make people immediately think of one gender and/or race! Please comment below.

  
To see more pictures and stories, please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Bright Morningstar

We promise you’d be surprised if you knew about ALL of the behind-the-scenes “traditions” we have here at Cardz for Kidz!. Those range from how we prefer to store the potential Top 10 cards in our homes to the preferred bag we use to deliver the cards!


Morningstar has been a big supporter of Cardz for Kidz!, and in a special way.
Something we have learned is that almost EVERYONE who participates in making cards has a GREAT time doing it. Also, it is VERY EASY to put together an ‘event’. If you read through the How-To tab on our site, http://cardzforkidz.org/how-to, you’ll get an explanation on how to host an event AND files that can be used throughout the event – plus we are always willing to answer any questions people have. Still, even with all that ease, if the main sponsor and/or person who started Cardz for Kidz! at the company leaves, that group’s participation usually drastically decreases and/or stops.

Our original contact left Morningstar in July 2014, and, since then, other people have stepped in to continue the program and make nearly 200 cards (197 to be exact). We can compare that to one of the early groups, who made 395 cards, but when there was a change, they haven’t made any since. In fact, employees at Morningstar have created their own events to make cards in their free time as well. For example, one employee made cards with her comic book club, and we were told that’s where one of the OVERALL top 10 cards came from in Q1 2016! 

Also, if that’s not impressive enough, with nearly 100 groups who have hosted events, Morningstar was one of the first 10 groups to support Cardz for Kidz! AND our founder was not directly connected to them when they held their first event. Our original contact at Morningstar stepped in on her own, and they started strong; 101 cards three years ago, Q2 2013!
It’s not just quantity, but quality that is important. As we touched on, Q2 2016 was a record setting quarter! 

Although we received nearly 3,000 cards, Morningstar created TWO of our OVERALL Top 10 cards!!! 

‘White Baseball’ card and ‘Purple Star’ card!

Based on their continued commitment and bright smiles, we’ll refer to them as our BRIGHT MORNINGSTAR, since they’ve been able to consistently find people to step in and make cards!

Here’s a link to their album on our Facebook page, but here are a couple of those pics. They just need 85 more cards and they’ll get their own exclusive event at Lurie Children’s Hospital - Platinum Participant!





#BrightMorningstar #UpliftingSpirits

To see more pictures and stories please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook page, follow us on Twitter , visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube or pictures on Instagram!

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Impact on Families

So, many of the folks behind the scenes at Cardz for Kidz! volunteer or work at pediatric hospitals and are able to see where some of the cards go. For a while, we delivered the cards room to room, but were always too timid to take pictures. Then, we saw that other groups and the hospital had pictures of patients, so we decided to give it a try.

After we didn’t get criticized/rejected/rebuffed from that experience, we decided to take pictures after one of our more recent Cardz WITH Kidz event. Here are a couple pictures of patients and their families: 



Those pictures don’t fully encapsulate how excited the families were to be classified as Very Important Patients ( VIPs).

For this post, we definitely wanted to share the family pictures because we thought, “what if?” What if artists could actually see the impact they’re having on patients’ families in their rooms, the excitement they’re bringing? We’re sure we’d get even more cards. Please remember that we are only able to show you quotes from hospital staff and smiles from patients, but you’re IMPACT ON FAMILIES is even bigger than you think.

#ImpactonFamilies #UpliftingSpirits

To see more pictures and stories please check out our website www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!