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

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Go Postal

First, we got to start off by saying we’re sorry. We understand by using some of the terms/phrases in the blog post we may offend and bring up some tough memories for people, but we REALLY have to get something off our chest!

As always, let’s start with some 100% open and honesty. If you look on our How-To website you’ll see the address for where people should ship the cards underlined. We’ll use this as a chance to remind people, Cardz for Kidz!, 323 E Wacker #11, Chicago, IL 60601. A couple times we’ve had some groups reach out to us and let us know they were in the area and ask if they could simply drop off the cards. Well, here’s the honesty, that’s actually not an office. It’s just a UPS Mailbox. As we’ve listed in a bunch of prior posts, everyone who “works” at Cardz for Kidz! does this in what was formerly known as free time. We got that UPS mailbox as it’s close to our founder’s 9-5 job, open till 7pm, and he can stop by there on his way home.

Since the UPS is more convenient, we use that for collecting the packages, but it’s more expensive for shipping, so for that we’ve always stuck with the United States Post Service. If you look at the timeline, on our About Us page, you’ll notice that we started sending cards to hospitals before we were approved as a 501c3 certified non-profit. That means that we had started shipping cards to kids across the Midwest out of our own pocket, since we weren’t getting any dollar donations from any corporations. We didn’t have our partnership with our bank like we do now, or a gofundme, cardzforkidz.org/donate or anything like that. We simply would receive cards from different groups, primarily in Chicago. Then, during lunch, our founder would walk over to the post office in the basement of the Sears/Willis Tower and ship them out to our partnering locations. Based on his consistency, the ladies at the post office became real friendly and helpful. And actually, it’ll never be forgotten. After one of the shipments in Q4 2012 our founder paid with his card and Ms. B, an employee at the USPS asked him to wait a second, she later walked around and brought him a card with $20 in it. She confirmed that she supported what he was doing. According to our records, she gave another $20 on November 13, 2013. Both of those were before we had the formal tax-deductible receipts on nice letter head!

It’s not just Ms. B either. We’ve had multiple positive experiences during our many trips to the post office. So we’ve mentioned it a few times, some of us have a background in data analysis. With that in mind, we definitely can’t say we’ve done quantitative analysis and analyzed how helpful EVERY post office worker is, but we can say we’ve shipped approximately 35,000 cards from the USPS – just check out the packages in our deliveries albums to get an example of some of the trips.

Based on that, and the fact that we’ve shipped cards in post offices in Southfield, Atlanta, and multiple locations in Chicago, we can say we’ve done extensive amount of qualitative research. With that in mind, we fully believe there’s something special about the vast majority of people we’ve been able to connect with- from being helpful in recommending how we could save money – using different types of packages, to making monetary donations, or to making cards.

With all that in mind, we think there needs to be a modification to the overall term or idea of Postal. We think they’re so far above and beyond that we’ll try be using that term in only a positive light! We’re encouraging people to GO POSTAL, aka impact Cardz for Kidz! all around!

#gopostal #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, September 28, 2017

Love Note

Dear Lurie Children’s Hospital,

We were trying to think of how to express our appreciation for everything you’ve done. After much deliberation, we decided to write you a LOVE note—since these used to work back in elementary school. Only this time we’re going to expand past the simple “Roses are red, Violets are blue/We wouldn’t be global/If it wasn’t for YOU!” Instead we wrote you this full nursery rhyme...or at least we tried to!

Most of our blog posts state a bunch of stories or facts,

But this one is different—and hopefully has a greater impact.

That’s because we decided to write you a love note,

In order to express our thoughts and potentially some quotes.

Yes, it’s true we work with all kinds of locations under the sun,

But no matter how many we add you’ll always be number one.

We know there’s a lot here so you may not all know how it’s going,

So, here’s some background on how we first started flowing.

After simply volunteering, our founder connected with his boss, Boe,

And the encouragement from the Child Life and Activity Room continued to grow.

More and more people like Ellen and Nicole joined in and said, “Yes, it’s OK!”

It was actually their idea that the cards not mention health, and, instead, brighten a child’s day.

It’s funny…we believe our relationship first started when you were Children’s Memorial,

And we simply had one group who we gave a ‘How to Be Creative’ tutorial.

But now our relationship has grown since those days in Lincoln Park;

Thankfully our flame has been long lasting and wasn’t simply a small spark.

Now that you’re located at 225 E. Chicago, we’re able to do so much more.

For example, we started Cardz WITH Kidz—something everyone adores!

During those events, you let us bring artists to ensure children/families feel the impact,

And we all work together to ensure that everyone’s smiles stay intact!

You’re more special than the 2,800+ cards we’ve delivered that produced some smiles.

Even more special than your custom made hot dog created from Legos—Chicago style.

You’re more precious than the beautiful view of boats on Lake Michigan the children enjoy,

More spectacular than the special 3-D woodblocks or the fun penguin-themed toys!

We’ve sent cards to over 100 different locations and to kids in all types of situations;

But you’ll always be the first and we wanted to express our utmost appreciation.

#foreverthankful

Thanks again for everything, Ann & Robert H. LurieChildren’s Hospital of Chicago. A few people have seen the pictures and seen the impact, but we don’t think YOU realize how helpful you have been, overall. We just wanted to write you this LOVE NOTE so you knew exactly how we felt.

Here are some LOVELY pictures from prior events and when we dropped off cards!

#lovenote #upliftingspirits

Thursday, September 14, 2017

A Bit Fuzzy

100% Open and Honest. We were looking back at some of our posts, and didn’t see our motto included, so we wanted to remind you all of our goal to always be “100% Open and Honest.” So, just so you know, we’ve only received positive feedback about all of the cards we’ve sent out. Also, we’ve received great pictures from some of the hospitals/shelters and have heard and seen some lovely stories. Even with all that positive news, we know there’s some potential negative issues with some of the tools that are being used to make the cards. We wanted to share with you some new guidelines. Please be aware that the person hosting an event may not have seen these guidelines yet, so be kind to each other – and simply direct them here for future event planning. WE RECOMMEND THAT PEOPLE COMPLETELY AVOID SPRINKLE GLITTER, FUZZ BALLS, FELT STICKERS, OR OTHER FUZZY MATERIALS.

Our first concern with these types of crafts is that they donn’t last. Often by the time the cards reach us here at Cardz for Kidz! a lot of those types of materials have already fallen off. Then when you think that we have to check them, then ship them to our locations there’s even more room for damage during transport. That’s why we previously told people to refrain from using beads, buttons, or bulky items. If you look closely at the bag below, you can see one of the cards lost a lot of its sparkle before the young boy even opened it up.

Similar to a lot of children, and as confirmed by his mother, he was still excited to receive the cards, but it still wasn’t exactly what the artist intended it to be.

Cardzforkidz: “…Looks like a little glitter is coming off, sorry about that!”
Mother: “No biggie! Our daughter loved the glitter 😊”

While this child and parent didn’t have a problem, there’s still 30K+ other families who haven’t told us what they think! Based on that, and that we want all our cards to get to kids in one piece, we’re definitely leaning towards using glitter glue rather than sprinkle glitter.

But, now, where it comes a bit more serious, we have to ask, “what if?” We understand that with standard card stock, we don’t have to worry about transmitting germs as much. In addition, with stickers or decorations that attach firmly to that type of paper, we don’t have to worry about the cards falling apart or kiddos choking.

In addition, we heard from one hospital when they requested that we not send cards with glitter since that could impact patients’ breathing tubes. We haven’t heard anything from the other places we partner with, but we still think it’s something we should look out for.

Since we’re always a bit over protective of our kids, we’re asking that if you’re making cards to send to kids who are currently in-patients, that you don’t use fuzz balls, feathers or other little things that are NOT effectively attached to the cards. With buttons, if you can secure them tightly, then that works well! And, remember, the cards have to survive a couple of trips through the post office and our sorting process!

Since we haven’t heard back from the hospitals and/or shelters declining these types of materials, we understand we may be being a bit over protective, but we just wanted to get the word out, before it was a 100% must. So right now, will the kids still love those cards, YES. Will the hospitals or shelters still accept those cards, probably. Do we still want those types of cards? The answer to that is A BIT FUZZY right now. We’ll accept them, but we’d LOVE it if you could avoid those materials. Either way, to be on the safe side, we updated the Supplies list on our How-To page to only include supplies that will work best for the children.

#abitfuzzy #upliftingspirits

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Break the Record

Creative Consultants
Huron’s Creative Group
Huron’s Helping
Improved Logo, Improved Quality
Huron’s the Consistent Group (HCG)
Creative Advice
Consistent Creativity
Creative Consultation
Creative Advisers
A Creative Group
Where It All Began

Shoot. We can’t think of any more!

We’ve been using different photo caption headlines each time, and we’re not sure if we’ll be able to think of new ones…but that’s a good thing!

Here’s the story. If you check out our Top 10 album on Facebook, you’ll notice that with each of the pictures there’s a catchy/witty headline before we list the amount of cards, the quarter, and location(s) from which the cards were sent. Right now, our “issue” is that Huron Consulting Group (Huron) is consistently making top-notch cards that we’re starting to run out of ideas for headlines!

Some of our behind-the-scenes people are pretty competitive. That’s one of the reasons #everycardcounts has a double meaning. We want the children (and seniors) to be happy––so we make sure every card is delivered room by room; still, the competitive spirit within us wants to be able to make sure we count the cards to ensure that we keep growing and know where all of these quality cards come from.

Currently, Huron is tied with ArrowStream for the record of seven consecutive quarters making quality cards. One thing to note is how they’ve been making cards, which is very different. As mentioned in the Team Effort blog post, Huron has gathered multiple offices across the country to host card-making events to produce their artwork. With that in mind, while another group may have made seven (total) cards in one quarter, Huron has made at least 40 cards per quarter. The last time Huron didn’t make cards was Q3 2015––but they made cards the quarter before: 222 in Q2 2015.

In addition, not only have they volunteered and made cards in their different offices, but some Huron employees personally came to uplift the spirits of these young patients and their families at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago during our #cardzWITHkidz event. As you can see, below, each of the artists took time to interact with some of the children directly.

All we did to reward these volunteers was allow them to keep the beaded jewelry that the children made for them as well as one of the beautifully colored puppy pictures.

There are some companies and/or groups who only want to participate if there’s a hospital or shelter in the immediate vicinity of their office. Then there are other groups, near the 500+ quality cards made threshold, but their favorite part of participating in Cardz for Kidz! is not having to leave the office; so, they decline our invitation(s) to interact with these young patients and their families. With Huron, Cardz for Kidz! has the best of both worlds: offices across the country consistently make quality cards––plus employees willing to go the extra mile and directly interact with the some of the children who receive our cards.

Since they have multiple offices joining in, we think they’re going to officially BREAK THE RECORD and keep their consecutive quarters streak alive. It’s always a dream come true when groups are willing to keep streaming!

#breaktherecord #upliftingspirits

Thursday, July 13, 2017

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

Thursday, July 6, 2017

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

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Team Effort

One time when we were connecting with a group and telling them about our Participants page, www.cardzforkidz.org/participants, they got excited when we told them by simply making cards we’d recognize them on our site. We briefly explained the different tiers; how Diamond meant that that group made over 1,000 cards, but, as we always say, #EveryCardCounts, so even if a group has made less than 100 they’re still a Valuable Participant and belong in the Silver section. They were intrigued.

We had another group who we told about our levels and immediately decided they should be at the top, or at least in the Platinum Section. They held a couple events...then realized how hard it was to do within their one office. Afterwards, they grumbled about how it was too difficult and claimed other groups may be cheating. 😊

We decided to look into it a bit deeper and did notice something. This may change, but currently it takes team work to get to the top! Doesn’t that sound like something a high school basketball coach would say? Not something you would read while hearing about making homemade cards? Well, maybe it just works for both scenarios! Here’s an explanation. Check out a screenshot of our Participants tab:

In the Diamond section you’ll see we currently only have 5 logos up there. This ranges from companies that strictly work with other corporations to community groups primarily comprised of students. There are so many differences between those groups ranging from being based in Tampa, FL to Chicago, IL. With all those distinctions, one thing that’s common between all the valuable groups is what the coach would say, “it took a team.”

Often with a lot groups we simply get one person to start it in their office and they strictly make cards. With each of our Diamond participants, that one person told someone that’s a part of their group in another location. For example, with our top group, Capital One, one day we received a set of cards from one office. After they confirmed we could use their logo, they started sharing it to other offices and made it an event for multiple offices to do “together”. We were posting and tagging Capital One across all our social sites so much we tried to group some of the Top 10’s together on some of our social sites!

Now, here’s a breakdown of each of our top groups that are recognized on our site to show how they’ve worked together to reach our kids:

As of May 2017 – many more locations have joined in since then!

*Please note with PLS all the corporate stores sent the cards to one person who shipped us the total package that’s why they only have one color on the graph!

All the different colors are a different office or school within that group. It’s hard to keep track, but like the coach may say, it’s definitely a TEAM EFFORT in order to reach the top and making a lasting difference. If you’re already hosting an event consider inviting more friends and/or other offices.

#teameffort #upliftingspirits

Psstt….keep it a secret, but currently one of our Top participants is our “Secret Admirer”. They’ve made over 1,000 cards as well and it’s been through multiple stores. We’ll tell you all about them soon!