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

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Locally Grown

If you follow our social media, you’ll see all types of posts that talk about some of our international deliveries. This ranges from mailing special packages to Europe to having volunteers carry packages with them to various countries in Africa.

Map showing our delivery locations across Australia

Map showing our delivery locations across Europe

Kids with their English cards in South Africa

Kids with their French cards in Benin

We’re living up to our #AcrossTheGlobe portion of our mission statement and utilizing that hashtag we love! But just like we always do in our blog posts, it’s time for us to be 100% open and honest.

Yes, we have made deliveries to 20+ countries. Yes, we are striving for ways to increase our partnerships with more countries so we can ship cards on a consistent basis. And no, South America we have not forgotten about you. We pinky promise when we get more cards in Spanish and a steady way to ship the cards we’ll start adding some smiles to that portion of our map. If you don’t believe us, please ask Dell EMC and University of Florida’s modern language department. They’ll tell you how we’re working on the Brazilian Portuguese cards!

South America Map as of 6/3/2018

We’re highlighting all that global delivery today, but we understand that the vast majority of the cards we receive are coming from individuals here in the USA. That ranges from corporation events to independent artists making cards in their free time. Based on those contributions, we can say that we’ll never forget about kids here in the United States of America. Even though we have steady partnerships in Mexico, Canada, Portugal, Australia, and Haiti, over 90% of our cards have been delivered to kids in the USA.

We’re expanding across the globe and consistently finding ways for people to #carryabitmore and #hadtosaysomething since some groups are helping us ship more across the globe, but we won’t forget that we were LOCALLY GROWN and we do need to continue to take care of the kids in North America! Thanks for your cards!

#locallygrown #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!

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Their Own Size

Here we go again (sorry!), we have to start another blog post off by being “100% open and honest.” We’ve had multiple Fortune 500 corporations pitch in with multiple locations to uplift the spirits of the disheartened children we reach. We’ve also had various groups pitch in, and within their first couple of quarters make over 500 cards. But we need to provide some background on some firsts ‑ and one reason why one of our key team members officially gave up.

Do you recall the blog post we wrote a few years ago where we were trying to provide some potential ideas of what people could write on their resumes? If not, here’s a link - #ontheirresume. For a quick recap, we were saying we know sprucing up resumes isn’t the reason people hosts events, but it definitely looks nice! One thing that’s different is for corporations. Hosting a Cardz for Kidz! event may look nice on an individual’s resume, but is not as relevant for a corporation. So intead, a lot of companies have an About Us or Community Involvement page. They often list out some of the WORLD RENOWNED nonprofits they’ve been supporting and the THOUSANDS of dollars they’ve donated. Anyone who glances at those pages can immediately notice that that company has made a significant difference on impactful organizations with high brand equity.

We’re thankful that’s not the reason some corporations are selecting which non-profit they want to volunteer with! If that was the case, we wouldn’t get very much attention from corporations. We did some quick research and found that corporations may consider nonprofits that bring in a lot of donations, according to Forbes, for credibility reasons.

Or maybe they do a bit more research and use combined analytics to find the top non-profits that are renowned; that’s one way to reach children. If you look at us, although we use all types of hashtags, post daily and tag groups, we have an average of less than 700 fans between our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter sites so we wouldn’t fit there either.

One thing we ARE amazed by is how there’s one company that we’ve all heard of who is making a difference on the kids, families, and staff. That’s Dell – Dell EMC to be specific.

When you think of Dell, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? We asked a couple people on the train and the responses ranged from the overall quality of computers to prior commericals. One thing that wasn’t mentioned was how this global corporation helps small nonprofits reach kids in hard to reach places. With that in mind, we realized it’s up to us to spread the word on just how impressive they have been.

If you look at the chart on our Donate page, you’ll see that the amount of cards per quarter has been consistently growing.

What that chart does not show is that a lot of that growth has been sparked by the participation of the Dell EMC department. We touched on it earlier in this blog post, but what’s different with Dell is that it’s not simply offices across the USA that have been joining in to reach kids across the globe, but instead this is the first group who has had multiple locations outside of the USA join in. What’s equally impressive is that one office told us they weren’t able to send us their cards based on mailing restrictions, but would still contribute and send cards to kids in their immediate communities. There were more made in other countries, but here are the cards that we’ve received so far:

We’ve sent cards to some special locations in China, but this was one of our first times receiving a package from China so we were excited! Also, thanks to the cards from the office in Brazil, we were able to send cards to a Ronald McDonald House in Brazil and potentially start a partnership like the one we have in Portugal! This time we can send all the cards in Portuguese.

They’re already helping us reach our New Year’s Resolutons. One of the goals we had was that we wanted to start partnerships with at least two more international locations. As mentioned before, we’re getting cards in other languages which is helpful. Then the Dell EMC team in Romania directly handled EVERYTHING (e.g. made it so we could ship the cards to their office, took the cards to the hospitals, returned the pictures from the event) so we could start a partnership with another global destination.

It’s amazing that this company is not strictly dedicated to making cards, but they’re focused on giving back in all types of ways as well.

If that’s not enough, it’s been a combination of quality and quantity! In Q1 2018, we had a record setting amount of 7,645 cards. Just in case that doesn’t mean much to you, let’s put things in perspective. We typically receive significantly more cards in Q4 since more groups make cards around the holidays. That’s why we’ve written blog posts and include a sheet in our PowerPoint to leaders who are hosting an event asking their artists not to strictly make holiday cards.

Even still with the expected increase in Q4 2017, the 7,645 cards in Q1 2018 was 28% more than ANY OTHER QUARTER! Including the prior record setting quarter – Q4 2017. Even with that increased competition, Dell EMC still had TWO cards in the OVERALL Top 10 and those came from artists in two separate countries, United States of America and Japan. The artist from the USA was voted as one of the Top 3 artists and is being invited to come hand deliver her card during our upcoming Cardz WITH Kidz event! #quantityANDquality

We’ve never shared this before, but let’s talk about why our founder gave up. Usually when groups reach out they highlight how they learned about our small organization that’s hard to find via search engines. For example, our Google partnership was started via a direct connection. Our “Secret Admirer”, Microsoft, AAA, and many others learned about us through Benevity. Several independent artists found us through our social media posts. All of those were through something WE did. When our contact, Heather M, from Dell EMC reached out, we checked in on how she heard about us. She told us about how she did her own independent research and found an article we had never heard of that mentioned us. We’re sure there are several other people who read this article as well, but so far no one has made a global difference. Just too good to be true!

In summary, we’re amazed. #jawdropped

Here’s a global corporation that really could work with any non-profit they wanted. They could work with nonprofits that have huge staff and MUCH better websites/social sites. Dell EMC could have chosen to partner with an organization that would have improved their SEO and something that would have improved their brand image. Instead they didn’t pick on someone THEIR OWN SIZE, they partnered with a small non-profit that’s working to impact small children across the globe. As you can see by some of the smiles, it’s been working!

Artists in Ireland

Artists in Japan

Artists in Romania

Artists in USA

Cardz for Kidz!’s Mission Statement: 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.

Dell EMC’s Impact: Dell EMC is a company that has helped uplift the spirits of hospitalized and/or traumatized children by getting different offices worldwide to make uplifting homemade cards in multiple languages so Cardz for Kidz! can send handmade cards to children across the globe.

#theirownsize #upliftingspirits

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Stepping Outside

We’re not so sure. We’ve heard some people say they love supporting Cardz for Kidz! because it’s a way everyone can get involved without leaving their rooms, offices or classrooms. Then other people say they like it because they know there are some local hospitals/shelters receiving these handmade cards.

Here is one direct quote: “It was a great way to be able to ‘volunteer [my] time’ while not leaving the office.”

We’re not so sure if we agree with the last part—not leaving the office. Yes, we understand that most groups do not leave their rooms, offices or classrooms to make their cards at a hospital, park or some other location. Also, we know some groups simply integrate their card-making activities throughout the work day. That means people can take a break from their work and slip out to make a card. With that in mind, some people may think that it’s “not leaving the office,” but we must look at the bigger picture.

While you may not physically leave your office, know that your impact spans the globe! We have another blog post coming up that will touch on how most of our cards have, and will be, delivered here in the United States since this is where we’re based and receive most of the cards. Still over 5,000 cards have been sent to uplift the spirts of children outside the United States—and that number will drastically increase.

Therefore, although you may not be leaving your rooms, offices or classrooms—you’ve been STEPPING OUTSIDE your normal day-to-day activities and brightening the days of children (and their families) around the world.

#steppingoutside #upliftingspirits

Thursday, May 10, 2018

In The Room

We’ve all heard the phrase, “There’s an elephant in the room,” but do you know exactly what it means? We personally thought that it relates to something people want to touch on, but to be 100% sure we needed to do some in-depth research (ahem, look it up on Wikipedia). It turns out it means:

“An English-language metaphorical idiom for an obvious problem or risk that no one wants to discuss, or a condition of groupthink that no one wants to challenge.”

Now that’s not exactly what we were looking for, but we do think it is a very close fit for what we’re trying to discuss: Something so big that it needs to be touched on, but is often overlooked.

We can probably all agree that if after spending so much time working so hard to make cards/artwork/masterpieces as beautiful as possible, it would be IDEAL to be able to see the final result – a smile on a child AND family’s face. Unfortunately, there’s a big barrier that prevents us from doing things exactly the way we’d love to. Here’s a clue:

Can you tell what that is? Ask most people who work in the health industry and they should be able to tell you about our elephant in the room, or should we say hippo - the hippo named HIPAA.

We linked the HIPAA to the Wikipedia page that provides all types of details. If you look it up online, you can find some government sites that provide additional details as well. Although there’s all that information, we’ll summarize what it means for us and you. In summary, patient privacy is very important, and thanks to HIPAA, privacy is a law.

Recently, we saw another non-profit post something reminding their recipients that if they wanted to receive cards they needed to post pictures of themselves with the cards! We’ll never be like that and here are two key reasons why:

We figure if it took our founder nearly a decade to move from talking about his epilepsy/surgery in the past tense to being proud about it, it’s definitely okay for families to not want us to share their pictures.
We know about the hippo and will stick to it whether the recipients are in the hospital or not. Therefore, any time we repost a picture of a child holding the cards, we wait for their parents to confirm that it’s OK. If they don’t reply to the usual response, “Can we share this pic too?”, that’s not a problem. If there’s a smile, we’re all set.

We’re even over the top. If you follow us on any of our social sites you’ve probably seen that our partnership with Lifetime Wellness has been growing. Since some of those seniors are in assisted living facilities and can be considered patients, we follow up with the staff before we post any of the pictures they send us. Originally, they asked if we had a patient privacy form, so we shared the form below and now we refuse to share any of the pictures unless they confirm that their residents have signed the form and agreed that it is OK for us to share their pictures.

Yes, there could be legal jargon on the form, but we want to make it as simple as possible for everyone involved! Thankfully, several of them have been agreeing recently. If you check out their Facebook album, it’s a combination of artwork and artists!

In summary, our decades of being connected to hospitals has us updated on all the details and background for patients. While that’s good for the kids and their families, it does leave our artists a bit short. We promise we’ll stick to our promised procedure. We won’t post the “Quick Update” posts that show a bunch of packages and lists where they’re going until after we’ve posted pictures of the cards we’ve received. Also, we’ll continue to encourage staff at hospitals to at least have their employees pose with the cards so you can see where they ended up.

With all that being said, we’ll continue to find ways to give you an update, but one thing we will continue to remember is that there’s a hippo named HIPAA IN THE ROOM and we’ll always respect the children’s and family’s privacy.

#intheroom #upliftingspirits

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

More Powerful Smiles

“Use both hands,” nurses and staff urge a young patient with a bandaged hand. They encourage him to do so during all of his daily activities, ranging from drinking juice to eating some snacks. The one time they DON’T need to encourage him though is when he’s playing video games!

Two key themes that we strive to uphold are that every card counts AND to make sure that there’s no such thing as a pediatric department that’s too small. In regards to the first point, we’ve discussed it many times before, but one of the reasons we use #everycardcounts is that we believe each card is important because every place we partner with promises they’ll deliver all the cards room to room. As for the too-small aspect, we’ve professed our love for some large hospitals, but we strive to partner with hospitals that often get overlooked. With us, we can send a package any size to anywhere!

Thanks to you, we’ve been growing and have been able to do a bit more than simply provide cards for the kids we cherish. On February 1^st and 2^nd, we delivered our first GO Karts to hospitals in Phoenix, AZ and Providence, RI. Delivery to our hospital in Augusta, GA is coming soon. Here are a couple more pictures from those deliveries:

During the delivery to Maricopa Integrated Health System (MIHS) in Arizona, the staff were telling us how the kids are all so excited when they receive our cards. They mentioned how the two main hospitals in the area primarily get all of the donations for pediatric patients, and since they’re smaller and often work with patients and families without insurance, they get less donations. We’re working to change that! We believe there’s no such thing as a hospital that’s too small, #nosuchthing.

For some more background, since everyone at Cardz for Kidz! volunteers their “free” time, we can primarily focus our donations on rewarding hospitals. How it works is that we always ask hospitals to send us pictures of children, family and/or staff with their cards to ensure we still have the right contacts and so we know that all the cards are still being delivered room to room, #everycardcounts. Thankfully MIHS has been sending pictures each quarter. In addition, UBS has donated over $4,000 and 2000+ cards (2,029 to be exact) to our organization, so in order to thank both groups we donated a GO Kart to MIHS in UBS’s name.

These GO Karts align with our passion of making sure that kids who are confined to their rooms can still feel uplifted.

In conclusion, thanks to your contributions we have been able to consistently grow and deliver MORE POWERFUL SMILES to all types of people impacted by children’s stays in the hospital. Together we’ll keep uplifting spirits!

Thursday, February 15, 2018

You Decide Who's Happy

We’ve written about it once before, but here’s another blog post to highlight our annual March Gladness competition! How it works is that we take advantage of a portion of one of our main hashtags, #everycardcounts. We ask schools across the country to join in and make uplifting, homemade cards. Then, whichever school makes the most cards that meet our guidelines gets to select the city where we reach out to for our next hospital/home/shelter!

For some background, they can’t just be any standard card. In order for them to count for this competition there are a few guidelines:

We need to receive all the cards within the month of March, #MarchGladness
All of the cards need to be signed with the artist’s name AND their school (e.g. from your pal, Brian at DePaul University – last year’s winner)
If there’s a tie, then we’ll add on quality to the voting – quality and quantity

Most people would assume that whichever school wins would simply pick a hospital or home in their immediate location, but that hasn’t been the case. During the first event, the University of Michigan won and selected Philadelphia. At the time, we didn’t have any hospitals or homes there. We reached out and heard back from the shelter, Women Against Abuse, and the hospital, St Christopher. Then when DePaul University won, they selected Flint, MI, which was struggling with a water crisis and now we’re partnering with Hurley Medical Center in light of that.

As you can see, we have a pretty extensive presence across the USA -- 37 states to be exact. We still feel that needs to expand, but we’re not exactly sure where that should go. Should we reward groups who have been participating a lot and get more hospitals/shelters in their area OR should we simply work to expand to get more locations and possibly get more groups to join in since we’ll have a hospital in their area? Either way, based on our discussions with staff at the hospitals and directly watching kids open their cards, we know wherever the child is that gets your card, they’ll be more than happy. Now it’s just up to you and your classmates (or former classmates if you get an alumni association) to take control because if you guys win our March Gladness competition, YOU DECIDE WHO’S HAPPY. Please trust us when we say the families, staff, and children will be thankful you selected their city!

#youdecidewhoshappy #marchgladness #everycardcounts

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Every Child Counts

We think we’ve mentioned this in a prior blog post and we know we’ve mentioned it on our social sites, but since this is SO important we found it necessary to provide another reminder. Since this is so vital and we’re so very passionate about it, unlike the other blog posts we’re not going to wait for the last paragraph to give away the title. We’ll state it right now. Just like every card, EVERY CHILD COUNTS.

Here’s where the background comes in: For one of our main hashtags, #everycardcounts, we’re highlighting how it has a dual meaning.

First, we say that we keep track of all the cards, but on a much more vital note we think that every card is important. They all count. They’re all worth it. One of the reasons why is that hospitals all promise to deliver the cards room to room so you know your card is making an impact.

Now, here’s where we’re switching it up a bit. We want to make sure people know that not only are the cards important, but any and every disheartened child deserves to have their spirits uplifted! No doubt about it! That could range from being an in-patient undergoing cancer treatment to simply an outpatient who’s battling seizures from their home. In addition, we’re sending cards to schools after traumatizing events and to homes for physically or sexually abused children.

So yes, we understand that some conditions may not be life-threatening. And people may think some illnesses or situations may be worse than others. But to us, we feel we need to continue to search for hashtags and/or locations to find as many children who aren’t happy as possible. Then with YOUR HELP and with YOUR CARDS, we’ll strive to uplift as many of those kids’ spirits as possible.

Throughout 2017 we were able to deliver over 45,000 cards to children in over 20 countries. We’ll continue to work to increase both of those numbers because no matter what their condition, Cardz for Kidz! believes that EVERY CHILD COUNTS and deserves to have their spirits uplifted!

#everychildcounts #upliftingspirits