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

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Little Guys

Although we rant about how participating in Cardz for Kidz! helps the entire family, it’s clear by our name and some of the smiles, that we’re focused on the little ones!

Speaking of little ones, it’s interesting to see how we’ve grown. Recently we’ve been partnering with a couple large corporations, but still, a lot of our cards have come from small to midsized companies and/or community groups.

In fact, we’ve taken it a step further and have been partnering with other small organizations. As mentioned in The Dream Team post, we’ve been working alongside Send a Smile Today to get cards to more children with and without cancer. Additionally, thanks to our connection via Instagram, we’ve also been working with Goods Giving Back, https://www.goodsgivingback.com/vendor/cardzforkidz/. They set it up where people can purchase products on their page and they’ll donate a portion of those sales to us, as well as the artists who made the product. Thanks to them, people can now help Cardz for Kidz! in many different ways:

Simply purchasing handmade artwork (e.g. jewelry) from our page on their site*
Making handmade artwork (e.g. purses) and selling it on their site – reimbursed for costs of making the product

If that’s not enough, they’re also making cards and introduced us to other midsized nonprofits who started making cards AND our midsized hospital in San Jose, CA!

Goods Giving Back isn’t the only growing group we’ve been working with however. If you check out our participants page, you’ll see a lot of other growing organizations you may not have heard of just yet. On the flip side, we’re just as thankful for the American Heart Association, Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly, Salvation Army, and Big Brothers Big Sisters for taking the time to make a total of nearly 300 cards! These nationwide organizations worked with the LITTLE GUYS to help us reach and impact more children. We’re thankful large organizations and expanding nonprofits have taken the time to help us reach more kids.

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!

*Consumers who purchase these products can see that the donation was immediately made to Cardz for Kidz!

Thursday, August 11, 2016

The Dream Team

Competitors. Opponents. Challengers. Rivals….

Michigan vs. Ohio State
Coca Cola vs. Pepsi
Ketchup vs. BBQ Sauce
Yankees vs. Red Sox
Democrats vs. Republicans
Samsung vs. Apple
BMW vs. Mercedes
Cats vs. Dogs
Cardz for Kidz! vs. Send a Smile Today

The definition of “rival” is: a person [or thing] who is competing for the same object or goal as another, or who tries to equal or outdo another; competitor.

Based on that description and some of the examples provided above, one could consider Send a Smile Today and Cardz for Kidz! rivals. Both of us are working towards the same objective, to get people (e.g. Girl Scout troops) to make uplifting homemade cards for people who are going through difficult times. Another similarity is both groups have specializations based on their founders’ personal experience; Send a Smile Today– reaches people battling cancer, Cardz for Kidz! - room to room deliveries, #EveryCardCounts.

With that said, it’s hard to imagine finding the Pepsi logo on the Coca Cola site even though they both sell soda. Or a Republican endorsing a Democrat even when the country needs to unite this election season. But despite our “differences”, if you check out our Participants tab, you’ll find the Send a Smile Today logo.

It works because we agreed that great minds think alike! Our methods may differ, but our goals are very similar. We both realized how helpful these cards can be during tough times and that we should help others going through trying times. We decided that if there comes a time when one of us gets extra cards and the other one is short, then we’d share between groups. So instead of being an ultimate rivalry like the old school Celtics vs. the Lakers, we’ll be THE DREAM TEAM and work together to get more homemade cards out there!

Larry Bird from the Boston Celtics and Magic Johnson for the LA Lakers worked together to win the gold medal!

#TheDreamTeam #UpliftingSpirits

Thursday, August 4, 2016

More Impressive

What do you think? As always, we update the Participants tab on our site on a quarterly basis. This quarter, there’s something new. For the first time, we’ll have TWO logos in our DIAMOND section!

And yes, technically, there could be three logos, if DePaul University allowed us to use their overall logo rather than strictly their DePaul Alumni logo, but we’re still impressed with the two!

Now, the two up there have similarities, but also some differences. First, here’s the current breakout for the amount of cards made as of 7/1/2016:

· Kforce – 1,138

· AAFCS – 1,139

Here are some comparisons:

Record Setting. Until last quarter, Q2 2016, Kforce had the record for the most cards made in a quarter, 675 cards (Q2 2014). Now the record is owned by AAFCS – 915 cards (Q2 2016).
All For One. The main reason we decided to acquire a hospital in Tampa, FL is because that’s where the Kforce office is located that produced all the cards. We wanted to say thanks and make sure their community was positively impacted. With AAFCS, they had at least 15 different chapters join in, and the most any one chapter made was 177 cards. When everyone pitches in, a lot can be accomplished.
Need Consistency. Kforce was one of the early groups to participate in Cardz for Kidz! and held its first event in Q2 2014. Equally impressive, even when the gentleman who started the first event at Kforce moved on, they continued making cards! AAFCS was able to reach the Diamond level within 3 quarters, Q4 2015 – Q2 2016.

Now what do you think is MORE IMPRESSIVE, one office originally being the only group dedicated to making over 1,000 cards OR a group of people inspiring other small groups of people across the country to join in in making cards? We think both models accomplish our goal – to make more cards and uplift more spirits.

#MoreImpressive #UpliftingSpirits

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Solemnly Swear

'Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?'
'I do'

With this post we’re giving away the punchline in the beginning, but we’re making a promise… That we might regret later! We promise that we’ll post pictures on at least one of our social sites of the cards that we receive from the different groups and/or independent artists. Seeing it from our perspective, we get thousands of cards each quarter. Often people don’t sign their names on the cards and the vast majority of people do not sign what group they’re a part of, but no matter what we'll try. Here’s a special situation.

Originally the purpose of posting the Top 10 cards per event was to help us remember where the cards came from. Since we make a big deal about inviting the top artists to come to Lurie Children's Hospital to play games with patients, after the judge selected the OVERALL Top 10 we could just look through our Top 10 cards per event album on Facebook and find those cards. Then we contact our point person and work to get a hold of those artists.

Now, based on our promise, we can work together to make sure those pictures have a dual meaning. First, as mentioned, we’ll be able to find the artists at the end of the quarter. Second, for your sake, you’ll be able to tell if the person running your event actually sent the cards, Seal the Deal.

Thankfully, we saw some pictures people posted on Instagram and other sites about their cards. We double checked our records and noticed that we never got cards from that group. Then there’s another time where we recall we checked in with a group because we happened to be in the area. They confirmed they happened to have just made some cards. Turns out it was 150+ cards that were for a holiday that passed a couple months ago.

But, we do want to make it clear that we understand it’s a bit harder to host an event and we’re very grateful. We’re always trying to ease the process (e.g. put together a sheet that has links to Amazon where you can purchase the art supplies).

Even more importantly, we work to make sure that the people who have helped get the events up and running at the different groups get the first choice on whether or not they’d like to attend the Cardz WITH Kidz event if their group makes 1000+ cards.

Thanks again, Trevor!

All in all, we’re thankful for everyone who steps up to take the lead on hosting an event with their friends, coworkers and or just themselves. We understand depending on the size, prepping for the first one can be at times a bit intimidating. But, we know that it is A LOT of fun and very rewarding to participate in Cardz for Kidz! since you get to use markers and glitter pens AND know you’re impacting a child. In order to help make sure the second part stays true, we SOLEMNLY SWEAR to do everything possible to post pictures of cards we receive whether or not there’s enough to post a Top 10. Actually, to make it even more official, we pinky promise we will! Here's an example-

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Socially Connected

Recently, our founder and Director of Strategic Outreach were discussing how Cardz for Kidz! needs to expand our social presence. For that, the Director connected with some of his personal contacts and learned that Snapchat was rapidly expanding and that we were missing out on a lot of potential connections by not having a presence there.

Here are our current sites:

Then, of course, we have to modify our website at least once a quarter based on the Participants tab. For some insider information, one tool we use to reduce the time needed to stay connected is Hootsuite. The benefit is that we are able to post on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all through Hootsuite.

Similar to Instagram, we don’t think we’d be able to simply schedule posting of videos in the evening to post the next day if we decide to use Snapchat. No matter what, if staying SOCIALLY CONNECTED by creating a Snapchat account will help us create more smiles, we’ll get to work. Keep an eye out on our other social sites and website for an announcement for Snapchat.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

True Princess

Here we go again… Some more 100% open and honesty. To tell you the truth, if someone read all our blog posts, they’d know EVERYTHING about ANYTHING related to Cardz for Kidz!. Unfortunately, when we were checking the viewership, we noticed that not too many people have seen the posts. Either way we’re going to keep at it and keep our fingers crossed that someone special will see one of our special posts…..Maybe this one!

More honesty. If you think about it, it probably should be a BIG deal if your card gets selected into the OVERALL Top 10. For example, in Q2 2016, we received over 2,500 cards. Those came from groups ranging from Girlson the Run in Alaska to AAFCS in Alabama. We receive some AMAZING cards from universities, creative agencies, and retired educators. If you can say, “Even with all that, I made it in the OVERALL Top 10, was voted into the Top 3 ,AND was invited to come to deliver my card to a patient”, that’d be impressive.

Now, here’s another way you can help… Bald Disney princesses. If you make a quality card with bald Disney princesses on card stock, we promise we’ll hold your card to the final round. We work with children with all kinds of disorders ranging from real bad colds to cancer and we’re not showing favoritism. We think each illness is tough and each child deserves a card. But, we’re willing to help more if you help uplift a pediatric cancer patient.

It’s unfortunate. While we were looking for this picture, again, we saw it was on a blog post where someone wrote how horrible it is and how they hated it. We read through it a bit more and the second reason why was that the author felt people were just thinking, ‘That’s a cute pic, it’s a shame people have cancer’ and moving on. Based on our request, that won’t be true. You’ll actually be taking the time to make an uplifting card for a disheartened child rather than simply commenting on a picture. Therefore, you’ll be making a difference. In addition, at the end of the post, a couple of women who had cancer commented on how they loved this picture. With that in mind you’re helping out.

Now, we’d love it if there’s someone who could make at least two of these cards. One of them will be set aside and automatically put into the running for the OVERALL Top 10. Sorry, it’ll still be the judges’ choice if it makes it. Then, please reach out to us and we’ll give you the name and you can make a card for another TRUE PRINCESS we know and we’ll send the card to her.

#TruePrincess #UpliftingSpirits

P.S. Just to clarify, our people often get confused, but our hashtag is true - Every Card Counts. It actually has a double meaning. In summary, we count where each card is coming from and where it’s going to AND since each hospital promises they’ll deliver it to a patient’s room, every card is important. We just make a big deal about the Top 10 and Top 3 artists because those people are invited to come make cards and play games during the Cardz WITH Kidz events. Don’t worry, even if your card isn’t in the Top 10, it’s still producing a smile.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Know the Results

Recently there was a conversation between some of our “staff” and our intern while we were setting up the new Patreon site, www.patreon.com/CardzforKidz. The baseline for this discussion was how can we start to increase donations without scaring away current participants.

This conversation was primarily sparked as we now have international shipping fees based on our partnerships with special locations in Canada and Mexico (Dr Sonrisas, St Joseph’s Health Center, and Reseau Selecion).

We’re trying to think of creative ways to raise funds besides our Donate page and our GoFund Me page. Also, as we point out on ALL of our videos Cardz for Kidz! is completely free for everyone…..but us. So, yes, thanks to some people (e.g. David and Shante), some groups have been able to provide the best of both worlds – cash & cards, but as expected that’s been rare.

Since we’ve received a bunch of cards from Central America, we decided to do a test package to Honduras! After our test shipment of cards to that country, we realized that although those smiles are priceless, it’s VERY expensive and hard to do! Therefore, we’ll likely have to revert to our original plan and hope that people are willing to Carry a Bit More.

As you can see, now that we’re shipping cards to our northern and southern neighbors, as well as increasing the number of destinations in the USA, our shipping costs are continually increasing. Finally, we have our promise that we’ll make sure that every destination we work with has at least one DVD player and the Lion King and we agreed we’d help another hospital make sure they always have enough Beanie Babies to fill Noah’s Ark.

Now, even with all of that talk about how essential monetary donations are, we still think cards are better are both ends. So here we go with more of our “100% open and honest” talk. We’ll give you a glimpse into our backend analysis for Q2 2016 as of 6/29/16.

$520 for shipping fees
$222 Cardz for Kidz! stickers for the back of cards
$14 transportation to and from the children’s hospital

Unfortunately, as of June 29^th we had received only $65 in donations in Q2 2016. Now the distinct benefit of delivering a card is, you know, the results! Every hospital, shelter and/or home that we partner with understands that they need to deliver all the cards room to room.

With that official pinky promise in mind, you know that as long as you don’t write ‘Get Well Soon’, your card is going to impact and reach a disheartened child.

In summary, we’d love it if some of the corporations and groups we partner with added financial support, (please note how we used added not replaced) but we still think creating quality cards is what’s most rewarding for everyone involved. With those card donations, you KNOW THE RESULTS of your labor will be a smile.

#KnowTheResults #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!