Tell A Friend

As usual, with this blog post, we’re going to be 100% Open and Honest! Special thanks to Google…we think...since we’ve been growing. Well, we know we’re thankful to the different Google offices for hosting their events and making nearly 500 cards. We’re looking forward to moving their logo up to the Platinum group on our participants page. Also, having their logo on our website helps give us some type of credibility. Finally, they helped set us up on the corporate giving website Benevity which has helped us connect to some corporations. All of that is AMAZING, but that’s not what we’re originally referring to. We’re not talking about Google Inc, but referring to Google.com!

It’s been touched on before, but, in the past, we simply worked with groups where we had direct connections. Or maybe there was a bit of stretch – someone knew someone, who knew someone who was willing to get it going. Thankfully, that’s been changing recently. Now we’ve been hearing from groups that simply learned about us by finding our website online!

Every now and then, we try to check in to see how some of these new groups heard about us. Some of them will let us know that it’s via our social sites, others say it’s through social sites we do not have a strong presence on (e.g. Pinterest), and, finally, some who say they first heard of us by using a search engine (organic search).  If you notice at the end of the blog post, we do have several different social sites and we try to link those all back to our website as much as possible. Then, on our site, we try to use keywords and link to other sites, but we’re not sure if that’s the vital part. 

Thankfully more groups have been reaching out to us online and letting us know that they’d like to join in. But, since everyone who “works” at Cardz for Kidz! does this in their “free” time we can’t respond to those messages right away.

We were told that we may be able to get more cards if we started to pay for keywords to drive people to our website and encourage people to participate. Although Search Engine Marketing is great and is DEFINITELY growing in marketing, we believe we should invest those dollars in ways that will directly impact our kids and have a direct ROI – smiles on kids’ faces. We’ll continue to do all types of Search Engine Optimization tricks we’ve heard of, but you spreading the word is WAY more efficient! We’ll continue to use little creative optimization tricks on our end in order to receive more cards, but we still know the most effective way for us to reach more kids is for you to TELL A FRIEND. Let’s work together to make a bigger impact!

#tellafriend #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+ or LinkedIn pages! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

Had To Say Something

It’s interesting. There are some groups who LOVE having their logos up on our website. Then when we post something on our social sites they like and/or repost/retweet it. As we’re growing and driving more people to our website, we love the fact that people can see some of the groups who’ve donated their time and resources to impact disheartened children across the globe. In our eyes, putting their logo up on our website, creating a Facebook album, and recognizing them across our other social sites is the least we can do. For the most part, it’s a win-win. Everyone loves to see we’re recognizing their hidden creativity and caring AND we appreciate their dedication.

Now, please notice how we said, “some groups who LOVE”, which means there are others who don’t. There was one group when we originally were starting to put together our site, who stated that it would be too long of a process to get their global brand’s permission to put their OFFICIAL logo on our site. These days a logo means a lot. You’ll see that if we don’t get permission we often try to write in text similar to that group’s actual logo so you can glance and know who it is. Here are some examples:

There is one group who when they first started making cards told us they were interested in joining in, but we couldn’t tell ANYONE they were joining in. Therefore, we couldn’t even search through Word and try to find some special font to match their logo! Through their team work, this group is currently one of our Top 10 contributors. Originally we referred to them as our “Anonymous Donor”, but we thought that was a bit too boring. We had to think of something more fun, energetic, connecting. Something we can all relate to and would be our dream come true, something like a “Secret Admirer”. If you checkout the PowerPoint presentation that you can download on our How-To page, you’ll notice that we reference our “Secret Admirers” as one of our Top 10 contributors!

As of April 25, 2017

As you can see, they’re making a lot of cards. What you can’t tell from the chart, is the overall corporation donates money to us per hour that their employees are volunteering/making cards. Therefore, not only are they actually giving us cards, but they’re helping cover backend costs as well. Since we’re being very secretive in this post, he’s our 100% Open and Honest comment. The whole point of the Carry a Bit More blog post is that we wanted to fulfill the “across the globe” part of our mission statement. The only issue was that originally our only “consistent” donations were from a couple family members (end of the year for taxes), then extended to a couple sporadic donations via our registration on Benevity. Now based on our “Secret Admirer's” consistent contributions we feel confident responding to kids in Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Australia, Philippines, and other special locations as well. Here are a couple pictures of kids who have received cards even though we didn’t have anyone to #CarryABitMore.  

Since we connect with kids so much, we had to think back of a saying we all were taught when we were young- “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Well thanks to our ‘Secret Admirers’, we’ve received well over 1,000 cards and thousands of dollars which helped us expand our goals and send cards across the globe. In addition, now we’ve set our goals higher and want to do even more for some of the locations we partner with. Now this group asked us to be silent, but isn’t that the opposite of what we were taught when we were younger? We just HAD TO SAY SOMETHING because there are just too many positives. They’re helping make our dreams, and the kids’ dreams come true!

One last thing – quantity and quality. This last quarter we received over 3,000 cards and of course, one of the OVERALL Top 10 cards was made by our “Secret Admirers”

#hadtosaysomething #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+ or LinkedIn pages! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!