Front and Center

In previous blog posts, we’ve discussed how Q4 2016 was a record-breaking quarter in the history of Cardz for Kidz!. There were some great highlights—including the two phenomenal groups that made over 1,000 cards. Then there were some aspects that were less than ideal—such as receiving most of the holiday cards a little late. One way we were able to overcome those obstacles was thanks to the behind-the-scenes contributions of one of our Cardz for Kidz! board members, Robin Nwankwo. For example, as mentioned in the “We’ve Been Hiding” blog post, we delivered a total of 340 cards to different locations all over Lousiana. What we didn’t explain was how we were able to do that—it was all thanks to Robin Nwankwo! Prior to her trip down to Shreveport, she researched different senior centers, pediatric hospitals as well as shelters; then, in her free time, she hand-delivered those 340 cards. Then on a later date, closer to Christmas Day, she drove around the Atlanta metropolitan area and hand-delivered another batch of over 150 cards to similar locations.

As mentioned in the “We’ve Been Hiding” post, so far we’ve only added one of the six locations (specifically, in Shrevport, LA) where we have delivered cards to on our website’s map.

Similar to the “In Debt” blog post, an individual’s contributions remind us about how there are so many other people who should also be recognized and publically thanked. In addition to Robin’s pivotal support, there are other valuable contributors as well.

• ·         Erin Rea, Priscilla Oh, Thaddeus Green & Oju Ajagbe: We can proudly state that we now have over 100 blog posts! First, we want to thank Erin and Priscilla for being the primary blog post editors. The two of them originally agreed to review and edit all of the blog posts. Now that we’ve been trying to do them at least on a weekly basis, Thaddeus “Thad” and Oju have also agreed to help out. Thanks to their contributions, we’ve heard from others that they’ve been able to find our website via various search engines.
• ·         Eric Whobrey & Robert Brooks: We’ve received several compliments on the layout of our website! Although we originally paid to create the site, maintaining and/or updating it would be very difficult for us to do on our own. Thankfully, Eric and Robert are on board to provide valuable insight and have also taught us different ways to update the website as well as step in and make the detailed updates for us when needed.

There are a more people who have provided—and continue to provide—valuable support (e.g. SEO—Search Engine Optimization) and have asked to remain anonmyous. So although these people are primarily behind-the-scenes players for Cardz for Kidz!, we wanted to take a some time to make sure they’re FRONT AND CENTER and receive the recognition they deserve!

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!

Just Say PLS

OK, we’re a bit outdated in many things. For example, we’ve mentioned this before, but some of us who “work” behind the scenes at Cardz for Kidz! didn’t know who Elsa and Anna (#Frozen) were when a hospital requested them on cards a couple years ago. Then, before that, we were a bit confused when we started getting a bunch of yellow alien cards. Don’t worry, we caught up on both of those!!! So we’re catching up with kids, but we think we’re a bit outdated on how things are with teens (and even some grown adults) and how they text. Here are some acronyms or ways to shorten words we’ve heard of:

• BRB
• LOL
• BFF
• JK
• BTW
• TMI
• THX
• GR8
• 2nite

Now one thing we’re not so sure of is how do folks spell “please” when they’re trying to shorten it? Do they spell it PLZ or PLS?

We’re not so sure about which one of those we should use when we’re sending text messages to friends, but we do know how we should spell it when we’re trying to get an ideal set of cards, PLS.

The reason why comes from our most recent experience connecting with our current partner, PLS.

Since we get plenty of packages of cards, we LOVE it when groups include some type of note or letter that let us know where the cards are coming from. That helps us keep track of the card totals in our system. In addition, we LOVE it when groups set aside their Top 10. That ranges from placing them at the top of the box or placing them all on one side. One of the reasons we always post the Top 10 across all our sites is so all groups get confirmation that we have received their cards. Finally, we’d LOVE it if our point person could check to make sure the cards didn’t say ‘Get Well Soon’ and were all appropriate.

In the shipment of cards from PLS in Q1 2017 we received a total of 997 cards that were made by their different offices and stores across the country! As you can see in the image above, they included a note so we knew where they were coming from and who made the cards. Also, they laid the Top 10 cards at the top of the box and checked to make sure all the cards were appropriate for our kids. 

When we checked with our point person, Roseanne Segovia, at PLS  about her favorite part of leading the event here’s what she said:

The best part about expanding this opportunity to all of our employees was allowing different voices and messages to come through in the designs of the cards. It feels great to be able to make a child’s day better, and we wanted everyone at our company to have that chance. Hearing the excitement from our employees about how happy they were to contribute brings me a lot of joy, and I’m glad that excitement was reflected in the cards.

As we always say, it’s a two-way street. People have a great time making cards, and the kids/staff are appreciative when they receive them.

Since the folks behind the scenes at Cardz for Kidz!  do this in their “free” time, we’re not so sure we’ll be able to stay up to date and watch all the new cartoons, so we may be a bit behind. Also, if we get some texts we may have to use Google to figure out what some of the more detailed acronyms means. But we know whenever we have a request and need some ideal cards, we’ll JUST SAY PLS and they’ll be on their way! You may want to check out our Participants tab while you can! When we update their totals at the end of Q1, PLS is going to go from being in the Silver section all the way up to a Diamond participant!!!

#JustSayPLS #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 page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

All Accomplished

WOW! We were very shocked (yet extremely happy) to learn that we actually reached ALL of our 2016 resolutions! Here are our four goals accompanied with what our actual numbers were at the end of the year.

1.      Uplifting their Spirits—“Have less than 1% of the cards be discarded for erroneously saying ‘Get Well Soon’.”

·         We calculated the results and thanks to the superior quality of your cards, we only had to discard 0.8% of the record-setting number of cards we received. THANK YOU for not writing ‘Get Well Soon’ and for making sure that we received the majority of these cards on time.

2.      Hospitalized and/or Traumatized—“At the end of 2015, we had a partnership with 28 different locations with children. Amongst those destinations, only two of them were for abused children. In 2016, we’d like to double that number and send a total of over 150 cards to children who are abused and/or orphans each quarter (all while increasing the amount of hospitals we connect with).”

·         Our goal was to send at least a total of 600 cards to children who were abused and/or orphans—while making sure that we increased to four different partnership destinations by the end of 2016. Once again, we not only met, but also surpassed our goal! All in all, we delivered nearly a total of 1,100 cards to the following SIX partnership locations:

o   Orangewood Foundation™: Foster and Community Youth Services

o   The Gift of a Helping Hand Charitable Trust

o   Family Programs Hawaii

o   Women Against Abuse

o   Alameda County Family Justice Center

o   Camden County Women’s Center

·         And that total does not even include the children we reached in Haiti, as well as the students affected by the school bus accident in Tennessee.

3.      Across the Globe—“In 2015, we sent cards to FIVE different countries (USA, Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, and Haiti). We’d like to increase that by two to SEVEN different countries.”

·         Thankfully, we were able to, once again, exceed this goal. We sent cards to: the USA, Mexico, Canada, Nigeria, Haiti, Saudi Arabia, Honduras, and Australia!

4.      Homemade Cards—“OK. Wow. We may have to decrease this a bit, but right now our goal is to get 7,800 cards.”

·         All we can do is laugh! We thought we would have to decrease this goal, but as you can see in the chart below, we surpassed our goal of 7,800 by over 70%!

For 2017, our desire is to maintain this progress! We want to continue to have to discard less than 1% of the cards created; reach 10 different countries; and receive 15,000 cards. Let’s work together to see if we can attain these ambitious goals!! Looking back at 2016’s goals, we really thought there was no way we could reach them…yet, they were ALL ACCOMPLISHED and MORE!!

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!

Cheering For You

As usual, we’re going to start this blog post off right: being 100% open  and honest. If you look at the bottom of this post, you’ll see the links to our main website, as well as our six different social media accounts. We also have accounts on Pinterest and Snapchat that we don’t use very often. Although our president is pretty active on Twitter, we decided we should probably focus on Instagram and Facebook. With both platforms we can concentrate on posting pictures in our free time and have them show up throughout the day. We can recognize different groups for their participation plus give people ideas for what they could include in their cards. We first started increasing our activity on Instagram in April of 2016. Let’s look at some “Before” and “After” pictures showing how things have progressed.

Before:

After:

One of the key differences between the “Before” and “After” pictures is the “2 likes” vs. the “2 likes and 47 others.” In addition, the “After” picture is an Instagram post focused on the cards created—not the creators or recipients! One of the main differences is the recent increase in followers on our Instagram account. Now here’s where the honesty comes in. Do you want to know one of the main reasons why? It’s thanks to the “@a_little_helps_a_lot” account: this organization connects cheerleaders who are interested in volunteering and giving back. They’ve been encouraging their followers to get involved with Cardz for Kidz! and make cards. Right after they posted information about how we were going to partner together, we immediately saw an increase in followers and started getting more likes on one of our targeted social media platforms. Actually, they’ve been helping us on both Instagram and Facebook. Here are some of their “Helper Bees” posting on Instagram about making cards:

They have also been sharing some of our Facebook posts—specifically the posts where we request for people to make more cards:

https://www.facebook.com/alittlehelpsalot05/

No they haven’t made a world renown number of cards, but YES they have gotten people across the globe to make cards—we’ve even received cards from one of their followers in Australia!! Thanks to this fruitful partnership, we’ve been able to connect with some of their followers, including Bella—who’s made some amazing cards; if Q4 2016 wasn’t already a record-breaking quarter, she’d probably have multiple cards in the OVERALL Top 10! Here are some of her creations:

In summary, we’re VERY thankful that our friends at A Little Helps A Lot continue to help us in many different ways. Not only do they encourage their followers to make cards, they pretty much said, “We’re here and we’re CHEERING FOR YOU and the children you reach!” And for that we’re forever thankful.

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!

We've Been Hiding

Once again we have some more honesty for you…..

We were working on some social posts and requesting that people look at the map on our homepage! While working on that Google map, we realized that it’s actually VERY misleading …sorry about that. 

Screenshot taken on 1/13/17

First, without background information, you’d simply glance at the legend at the right and assume we simply worked with hospitals then made some shipments to ‘Special Destinations’. When we originally created those labels, we were strictly focsed on pediatric patients at small to midsize hospitals. Unfortunately, unlike other portions of the site (e.g. adding smiles to the map), updating the legend is a bit more difficult. We’ll work with some advisors and we’ll try to update that as soon as we can.

Second, there’s a lot that’s missing! To be “100% open and honest”, there should be WAY more green hearts on the map. For example, yes we have a hospital and a smile in Seattle, but we contacted five other places. Should all those hearts be on there? Then there are other locations alongside the East Coast that we decided to hold off on since we didn’t want to overshadow the locations we currently are partnering with, as well as our special deliveries. But as mentioned in one of our team members Facebook posts, shown below, it can be pretty tough to get in touch with the right person at the hospital, explain Cardz for Kidz!, and get them to confirm they’d like to consistently receive cards. 

Finally, what about what we discussed last week with all the special one-time donations when we had the record setting influx of cards in Q4 2016? Based on our numbers, we delivered a total of nearly 1,500 cards between two locations in Ann Arbor, MI, 14 locations in the metro Atlanta area, and six places in Shrevport, LA. To be a bit defensive, we did add one for Shrevport to the map to represent some coverage.

In summary, we’ll always make it clear for you where your cards could go. Not only will there be a smile on the map, but we also have those places listed on our About-Us page and whenever there’s a tragic situation that requires cards, we try to announce it on our social sites before we send them (example below). But in terms of some of the background work trying to get all types of locations to sign on, WE’VE BEEN HIDING a bit. Sorry about that! Now if you tell a friend to visit our site and they claim we only work with hospitals because they saw it on the map, hopefully you can explain! 

Best Nightmare

via GIPHY

http://gph.is/1gEXIfC

OK, since it’s basketball season too, we decided to use that “video” clip. We’ve been touching base on all the positives about Q4 2016 and how it was record setting and how we’re not sure if it will ever happen again, but with this post we want to quickly touch base on how it was the best nightmare ever.

Yeah, we know that sounds kind of odd, but while we were thinking about it, there’s NO way we can say in any way shape or form that receiving cards is bad or “the worst”. Therefore, although this situation had us a bit startled at night and parts of it weren’t a dream come true, it was the BEST quarter ever. Here’s what happened:

As you can see in a lot of our different charts and what we’ve mentioned, the fourth quarter of 2016 went WAY beyond anything we had ever experienced before. We had a feeling something was coming, so we consistently tried to post something across ALL of our social sites asking people to send us their holiday cards at least two weeks prior to the holidays so we could have enough time to get them to the different locations on time. In addition, we have a special PowerPoint that we often send to people who are hosting the events that provides some “insider information”. One of the slides encourages people to use Card Stock rather than construction paper since those types of cards last longer.

Here’s where the “nightmare” comes into play. Turns out that unfortunately, the majority of those requests were not listened to by some groups. L We started to get a bunch of holiday cards that wouldn’t last till the next year since they were on thin construction paper just a couple days before Christmas. In addition, the cards didn’t say ‘Happy Holidays’, but directly said ‘Merry Christmas’.

In order to stick to our promise and do our best to make sure that #EveryCardCounts, we drove around the Atlanta area and dropped off nearly 800 cards to different senior shelters, homeless shelters, and places for abused women and children on 12/23 and on Christmas Day. Another reason we used the word “BEST” rather than “worst” was how excited our “helpers” were to contribute down at one of the homeless shelters.  The security guards at the door let us in and a young boy and girl volunteered to help us deliver them to everyone in the room. They kept coming back insisting for more cards to give out, but we kept our eye on the room and saw that everyone in the shelter already had multiple cards. In the end, one of the little girls asked, “what about them upstairs? They need some!” After checking with the staff, we learned those ladies and families were strictly off limits since they had been physically abused; only certified men who were employees were allowed to go up there. We decided to give our helper an extra bag of 30 cards to take to those women. She was excited.

Now, we have Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, and several other large holidays coming up. Although it turned out pretty well and we were able to still hand out most of the construction paper cards on time, that was a bit startling and we’d love to avoid more of those BEST NIGHTMARE ever situations.*

*saying “most” because we’re still receiving some Christmas cards.

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 page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!

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!