December Mailing and 2012 Year Total

Our Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year cards totaled out to 7,102 cards! I shipped 19 boxes out to the troops and I am sure the postal worker was not too crazy about the pick up on my front porch this month but I sure was pleased! Thank you to all who contributed with your card donations as well as with your postage donations.

I did receive a lot of cards this month that were on black or very dark cardstock. I unfortunately did not have time to add white cardstock to the insides of these so those had to go into my ‘to be fixed’ pile for later. Please remember to line your dark cards with white paper because the soldiers don’t have access to white pens like we do!

Our 2012 yearly total of cards came to 23,400 cards. The number was a bit lower than last year but still very impressive don’t you think? If you are curious what the numbers have been through the years you can scroll through the ‘Past Posts’ down in the bottom left hand column. There are all sorts of fun things to read there, especially if you are new to CFS!

So thank you all for another successful year, thank you to those of you who have continually donated cards throughout the years as well as to those of you that are just starting to donate! I hope you all have wonderful holidays!

Pam

2013 Mailing Schedule is Posted!

I've changed things up a bit, there will be no mailing in June/July since the summer months tend to be very slow with holidays and card making. Normally we only have one general card mailing in June but I am going to see how this works.

I'll update the Christmas card totals in a few days!

Veteran’s Day Mailing

I apologize for this late posting. I wrote this post last month but it must have gotten lost because when I came back post the 2013 mailing schedule it was not here! We were able to send over 2000 Veteran’s Day cards this mailing. That is our biggest mailing yet for the personalized cards to the soldiers! Thank you all so much for taking the time to thank our soldiers! I want to share a photo of one of the groups we have been sending cards to. I personally know one of the men in this photo, I worked with him on the base where I work before he was deployed. He and his group are in Afghanistan doing great things and your cards are a wonderful show of support to them.

Thank you all for the donations for postage and for including envelopes with your cards. Your continued support to my organization is very much appreciated. Without you I can’t continue to do this!

Pam

September Update and a Card Making Session!

Happy First Day of Fall!

We had a big mailing this month, 3781 cards! Thank you to all those who sent in cards. A lot of Halloween and Thanksgiving cards but also a bunch of those much needed Birthday cards came in so thanks so much for hearing my request! Keep them coming as we always need those! Thank you to all for your postage donations again, you all are so generous! I know I say it over and over but without you all I can’t do this so thank you all for your continued support of cards and donations!

Now don’t forget, Veteran’s Day is the next mailing, please take time to make some cards to thank the soldiers. These are NOT blank inside. You write a thank you note to the soldier in it. They do not need an envelope. I need a LOT of them, one to hand personally to each soldier and I send to 10 different troops right now. Most of them with over 100 men/women in them, one of them has 1000 in the group. Please help with this, they deserve a note of thanks!  Those cards are due to me on October 8th please.

On September 15th I joined the ladies of the First Congregational Church in Manchester, NH for a Card Making Day. They made 10 cards for $10. The cards were all designed by friends of mine, Denise and Pam who are members of the church. They asked me to come and tell the ladies about CFS and then they requested at the end of the card making session that they donate at least two of their cards to CFS. Well with 15 ladies there I expected to go home with 30 cards to add to my boxes. Imagine my surprise when I got a box of cards from a lady that wasn’t even there full of wonderful cards that she sent to Denise to give to me, and an even bigger surprise when a few more of the ladies then handed over all 10 of their cards to me when they were done! It was very heartwarming. Here are some photos of these wonderful ladies making their cards (I am in the last photo in the white shirt, which is my CFS shirt by the way!)…

Card Making Day VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Thanks so much to Denise and Pam for inviting me to talk about CFS and to all the new friends I met at First Congregational Church for your generosity!

I know most of you have been sending cards for a long time and know that there has always been a no envelope requirement unless your card size is larger than A2 size. Unfortunately I need to change this requirement due to the fact that envelope donations are not coming in anymore and I just can’t afford to be spending more money on envelope costs as well as postage to ship the cards. Boxes of cards cost me at least $125 a month, sometimes double that. I just had to purchase 1000 envelopes as well which was also a large chunk of change because I ran out during a mailing and had to run to staples vs. ordering on line, another $120. Not pretty. I now have to ask that envelopes be included with your cards. I understand that it will increase your costs and that you may have to send less cards but I am hoping that I can start getting some corporate donations and that this will only be a temporary thing. So please bear with me! A lot of you already send envelopes, and I thank you so much for this!

See you all in the next post! Thank you again for your support!
Pam

August Mailing–Grandparent’s Day/Patriot Day

There are 1248 cards to mail out tomorrow. Just finished sorting them all and I want to thank everyone who made a contribution to this month’s mailing. Thank you as well to all those who made postage donations too! You all are fantastic!

I am now sending cards to three co-workers in three different places, one of whom had to leave his family for 15 months, that’s a long time when you have three young kids and wife at home! To think that after the Chaplain we started CFS for back in 2006 came home I didn’t know anyone in the Middle East and now be sending to three people who actually work on the same base I work on is very strange, it’s a very small world!

There are so many nice notes in the packages and I just want to mention that if you would like a return note from me please include an email address if you have one. I would love to drop you a note in response!

I have a couple of things I wanted to mention…

First, the soldiers get free postage for letters and cards, they don’t have to use stamps so if you send me stamps I cannot use them. I appreciate the thought but I also use electronic postage since my packages that I send are $10.85 or $12.95 per package when I ship them that would be too many stamps to stick! I don’t save the boxes that the cards come out of, just the notes so if your note doesn’t have your contact info in it I can’t send them back to you, I’m sorry.

Second, there is still a shortage on birthday cards, I have an over abundance of thinking of you cards, miss you, hello but never that many birthday cards! If anyone likes to make birthday cards I’d really appreciate it!

Thanks again to all of you for everything you do!
Pam

Have a Safe and Happy Holiday!

June Mailing

It’s July 1st and I’m just getting around to the June mailing update. It’s been a busy month! We had 1713 cards and one of the biggest postage donation months in some time! June is usually one of the smaller mailings so I really appreciate everyone hanging in there with me as I know it’s hard as the summer months come.

The next mailing is for Patriots Day and Grandparents Day cards and is due on July 30th.  I hope everyone has a safe and Happy 4th of July!

Thank you all for your continued support!

Pam