Who Do You Know?

It’s interesting. You may think to yourself, “I’m not artistic so I can’t help Cardz for Kidz! at all.” However, like we’ve said many, many times—that’s not true! Not only can you make cards these children, their families, and staff will love, but your connections are valuable as well.

Regarding connections, have you heard of the concept called six degrees of separation? It’s interesting to think that with the billions of people on the earth, there’s only six degrees of separation between you and everyone else. Which means you know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone that could connect you to just about anyone on the planet.

It’s a concept that’s been questioned a lot; still, while reviewing it we also found some studies that seem to prove it really is true—case in point, this Microsoft article.

Connections and/or networking have been helpful for us, too.

One example in support of this concept is the impact of Brett—a former coworker of our founder, Ike. One day, the two of them talked about Cardz for Kidz! and Brett then spoke with people at the Google Chicago office about Cardz for Kidz!; Google soon agreed to have some employees make cards. Brett soon connected us to Sally at Google. Sally encouraged the Chicago office to join in more and requested that we register on a financial platform so they’d be able to donate. Now, Google has had various offices join in to make over 500 cards. In addition, through that registration we’ve been able to partner with multiple groups—including our Secret Admirer, who has helped fund the purchase of multiple GO Karts. In addition, Sally’s family has been passionate about Cardz for Kidz!—ranging from her children making cards to her mother being a part of the executive board. Reviewing our history, we’ve been able to get creative advice, monetary donations from all types of companies, and thousands of cards from a variety of corporations, all sparked from our first connection, Brett at Google.

Here are some additional connection testimonials sparked by our registration on the donation platform.

• ·       One of our key participants is a special Sarah in Minnesota. She learned about our organization due to our registration at the request of Sally and Brett. Sarah’s made multiple cards and, thankfully, her time and donations have been matched by her company. What’s even more impressive is that she’s taken the time to research how to make cards in multiple languages, enabling us to fulfill our promises to our hospitals across the United States and the globe. Finally, she helped us secure our partnership with our hospital in South Dakota and is working on setting up another partnership in Minnesota.

• Another connection we have is with the AAA in Utah. It’s very impressive that when we had our record-setting quarter, four of the OVERALL Top 10 cards came from the AAA in Utah! What’s equally impressive is that our main contact at AAA, Sara, has been working on connecting us to all the different artists within AAA so they can fly out to Chicago and attend our upcoming Cardz WITH Kidz event. In addition, she’s working to help us expand our presence in Utah.

We’ve been using these types of connections to successfully expand and receive more quality cards. With these new participants, we’ve been able to steadily grow and have raised thousands of dollars to be able to fulfill card requests here in the United States, as well as send consistent shipments across the globe. Based on these donations, we recently purchased our fourth GO Kart—which brings us to $14,000 donated by a non-profit that doesn’t charge anyone anything and has high shipping costs due to sending cards around the world.

Another way we’d love to use your connections is to help reach more contacts at hospitals, homes and shelters. As mentioned in the beginning, we’re looking for locations with small to mid-size pediatric departments that may often get overlooked by other non-profits or organizations looking to make big donations—#toosmallnosuchthing. As listed above, we’ve had some people do some amazing things with their six degrees of separation, resulting in us gaining a bunch of new participants. But right now our question is: WHO DO YOU KNOW at locations with disheartened children who could use some smiles? Please reach out to them and let us know if they’re interested in receiving cards.

#upliftingspirits #whodoyouknow

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!