Cardz for Kidz! Uplifting Spirits, One Card at a Time: January 2018

Thursday, January 25, 2018

One Size Fits All

“I can’t ever find anything my size there. I’m a 2XLT shirt and a 38x34 pants and a size 14 shoe. Too big for standard stores, but too small for the Big and Tall stores.” Sound familiar? Or are you one of the folks who has an issue with being too petite for your standard store? With clothing, things are quite specific in terms of size, but thankfully it’s not that way with participating in Cardz for Kidz!.

Something that we always say when we’re recruting new groups to join in is “groups such as Google, Capital One, and the University of Michigan have joined in to help make thousands of cards for disheartened children and seniors across the globe.” If we’re being 100% open and honest, the reason why we say those types of groups is because they’re well-known and we think other groups will be more impressed if they hear that groups with that type of brand equity are joining in and participating in this small non-profit.

While looking into it, we did some research and found this article from last year called The 10 Most Valuable Brands in the World. We were pretty impressed. First, we can’t say who exactly, but our Secret Admirer is high on that list and they’ve made over 2,000 cards. After that, the top brand is Google who has made over 550 cards. Then there’s Microsoft who has made over 30. Based on our credibility and certification, we’ve been able to partner with the #4 company on the list via Amazon Smile as well – plus we received some cards from Whole Foods who’s owned by Amazon.

Now, even with all the data that shows how we could use those companies to verify ourselves, that’s not exactly what our immediate numbers show.

In fact, if you look at our data, you’d notice that right now our number one contributors are Independent Artists. Those are people making cards in their free time all by themselves, to small book clubs or get togethers. Through 2017, these people have made over 30% more than any other group.

We’re getting cards from all types of independent artists, but currently that’s being led by Diane K in Ann Arbor who’s made a total of 917 cards.

Next up is an independent association – American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences. We hadn’t heard of them until they started reaching out to host events. Now they’ve made over 4,000 cards!

In summary, we’ve seen that there have been some very successful events at groups such as Google and Microsoft. We’ve also received top cards from various independent artists or other small groups. It just goes to show that ONE SIZE FITS ALL when it comes to participating with Cardz for Kidz!.

#onesizefitsall #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!

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Terms and Conditions

“We have updated our terms and conditions. By clicking this link you agree to our full terms and conditions.” Have you ever seen something like that? When you open up the actual terms you try to see what they’re saying, but there’s soooooo much fine print that it’s impossible to understand. Or, if you actually do read through it, it takes hours to get through it all.

We’ve been thinking about this lately. Since we’re officially a 501c3 certified non-profit, we have to complete annual government paperwork AND have connection to legal advisors, which basically means we need to come up with our own “fine print” in order to be considered a sound non-profit.

To save you the headache, we won’t make you click on a link to read them, but here they are…____ ().

Yup, nothing.

Thankfully, as mentioned in the majority of our blog post, we always use the phrase – “100% Open and Honest.” We’re always keeping it completely open and making sure there aren’t any detailed and/or long-term commitments. For example, if a group makes cards one time, there’s no requirements for them to ever participate again. Although our number one goal is to get groups to continually make cards, there aren’t any contracts or binding fine print.

There ARE a bunch of added benefits to participating though. Like how making 1,000-plus cards moves you to the top level on our site (www.cardzforkidz.org/participants), or donating a total of $3,500 gets your logo put on one of our special donations to a hospital. There’s also GOKarts! Finally, Top 3 artists are invited to hand-deliver their cards to the kids - #cardzWITHkidz. But all of those are added benefits and not TERMS AND CONDITIONS. Let’s continue to work together to make Cardz for Kidz! Light-hearted and fun.

#termsandconditions #upliftingspirits

Thursday, January 11, 2018

Revolving Resolutions

First of all, Happy New Year!! We hope you had a fun AND safe time while saying goodbye to 2017 and welcoming in 2018!

We’re going to continue the New Year’s trend and post some of our goals for 2018.

So far, we’ve been on a roll. In 2016 we accomplished all of our goals -- #allaccomplished. Then the same thing happened in 2017, where we were proud to say that we reached all of those goals as well. We know you’re curious…Here’s how well we did:

Goal #1: To discard less than 1% of cards that mirror the ‘Get Well Soon’ verbiage or other content that goes against our mission. In fact, we actually did half of that at 0.5%!
Goal #2: Receive 15,000 cards. Once again you amazed us and we got more than that --18,307 to be exact!
Goal #3: Send cards to kids in at least 10 different countries. Going with the trend, we actually surpassed that!

o Cards were delivered to the USA, South Africa, India, Australia, United Kingdom (England & Wales), Canada, China & Hong Kong, France, Singapore, Philippines, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Nigeria, Jamaica.

Special Delivery in the Philippines

Magical Moments in South Africa

Similar to the first time we created our New Year’s resolutions, we’ll use our mission statement to create our goals this year.

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.

1. Uplifting the Spirits – Have less than 0.75% of the cards be discarded based on saying ‘Get Well Soon’ and other similar verbiage.

2. Across the Globe – In 2017, outside of our locations in the United States, we had a quarterly partnership with a Ronald McDonald House in Australia, Dr. Sonrisas in Mexico and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Canada. In 2018, we’d like to expand our partnerships to not only make special deliveries to multiple countries, but we’d like to have official quarterly partnerships with at least 2 more countries, which would bring us up to 6.

3. Homemade Cards – OK. Now we’re definitely going to be pleading for your help! We’re data folks, so our goal is to receive 25,081 cards. You’re probably wondering to yourself how we got that specific of a number. Well, we keep track of where every card is going and where it’s coming from. We couldn’t do an average since 2015 to 2016 was an increase of 123% growth, so instead we simply used the growth from last year which was 37% based on our 18,307 cards.

Our desire is to reach as many disheartened children AND solemn seniors as possible. We’ll always strive to get more cards, but we wanted to provide you some information on our REVOLVING RESOLUTIONS so you can help us accomplish them.

#revolvingresolutions #upliftingspirits

Thursday, January 4, 2018

What's On The Inside

Be honest -- What do you think when you hear these types of comments?

"Well, at least he’s a really nice guy.”
"They’re just a great person!”
“You’re still beautiful on the inside.”

Often, these comments are used to focus on their inside attributes. But let’s be honest -- haven’t you seen a couple where you were a bit surprised that they were together? What happens though, when you talk to the two of them? They tend to describe their natural connection. Their connection on the inside.

Now we’re not talking about true love here, but we have to agree that it’s what’s on the inside of the card that’s most important. That’s one of the reasons why we created a poll and asked for people to vote for their favorite 3 cards overall. We always make sure to include a picture of the outside and the inside of the card. In addition, we include text showing exactly what the artist wrote on their card since that’s equally important.

We believe in this so much that we actually created an entire album on Facebook and post examples of cards with amazing messages weekly. We know the start of the week is often tough, so we titled it our #MondayMotivation album.

If you look at the album on Facebook you can see all kinds of beautiful, encouraging quotes.

Then there’s the story about one of our founder’s most memorable moments. It happened years ago when he was handing out cards at Lurie Children’s Hospital. He actually had his coworkers make the cards that he delivered that day. He looked over their artwork and judged which cards came from the creative department, compared to others that were from accounting or less artistic groups. While handing the cards out, he would try to explain to the kids why some of the cards didn’t look as good as others, how the company was big, how some people were operations, and how… Then out of nowhere he was interrupted by one boy who opened up his card. The child said, “I can tell he tried really hard.” Definitely one of the most touching moments he has ever experienced! A little goes a long way.

While it’s often the beautiful picture on the outside that gathers the judges’ initial attention when they pick the quarterly Top 10, we know that if you want to impact the entire family, it’s WHAT’S ON THE INSIDE that really counts. An uplifting message on the inside, along with a creative outside, will go a long way!

#whatsontheinside #upliftingspirits