Hi everyone.  I was just on the Where to Send page and Marty posted AS needs donations to keep going.  Looks like monetary contributions are down again and the number of contacts and addresses requested is surging.  So be making your donations and spreading the word.
The holidays are coming up.  Might wanna think about making a love offering.  I dont have much in terms of extra cash but Im gonna do my best.  Will you?

We don't have much extra these days either, but count me in!  Just put in my donation.

  I can't imagine this site not existing.

 Anne

I'm in the same boat with both of you.  Have also just put in a donation.

K, My twenty bucks is in and I bought a calendar. I thought that maybe part of raffle entries went to the site, but now i don't know if i was mistaken on that part? I think I'll make a promise to myself to make a small donation every time I request a new address too. And i just sent a shameless email to my entire address book with a link to the donation page. And for my xmas list, I'm asking for support for the site. Maybe someone will adopt a soldier too! Shelly

I bought Lotto tickets yesterday.  Does anyone know if some of that goes to the site?

Do you mean raffle tickets?  I thought the point of the raffles were to raise money for the site. ?

I too, thought that part of the raffle went to the site. Plus, I have my Food Lion donations, and when we purchase items those don't help either?

Marty and team - if you read this, could you help explain what proceeds you do get from any of this? Not specifics, but mainly a verification. I remember someone having trouble with Amazon before. .can you let us know if any of those groups (like Food Lion) are helping?

I will put in my donation as well. Times like this, I hope every penny counts. I just bought toys for the Marines Toys for Tots drive.. more like bought the beginning. . my kids like to go on a special shopping spree for that, so I just picked up a few. I like the idea too, that if anyone asks me what I want for Christmas, I will say donate here, because goodness knows I don't need anything.

you know,  last year (before I got involved here) my Mom asked the kids to pick a non profit organization to donate too and get fewer presents. To my surprise, the kids understood it and welcomed it. This year, I will ask her to put AnySoldier on the list-- I can promise you , my kids will choose it:)

 Marty, I hope we are helping even in the samllest way

Lynn 

 

 

Just added my pittance. 

Mary

vtleogal:

I too, thought that part of the raffle went to the site. Plus, I have my Food Lion donations, and when we purchase items those don't help either?

Marty and team - if you read this, could you help explain what proceeds you do get from any of this? Not specifics, but mainly a verification. I remember someone having trouble with Amazon before. .can you let us know if any of those groups (like Food Lion) are helping?

I will put in my donation as well. Times like this, I hope every penny counts. I just bought toys for the Marines Toys for Tots drive.. more like bought the beginning. . my kids like to go on a special shopping spree for that, so I just picked up a few. I like the idea too, that if anyone asks me what I want for Christmas, I will say donate here, because goodness knows I don't need anything.

you know,  last year (before I got involved here) my Mom asked the kids to pick a non profit organization to donate too and get fewer presents. To my surprise, the kids understood it and welcomed it. This year, I will ask her to put AnySoldier on the list-- I can promise you , my kids will choose it:)

 Marty, I hope we are helping even in the samllest way

Lynn 

Lynn,

Yes, we DO make something off just about everything.  Good thing.  Donations from folks that use the site is really weak.  The example I posted is very typical, it is not at all unusual.

We do make money on the raffles.  The first raffle was a lifesaver for us, the following ones not nearly as much.

We have a number of unique things about to be let loose, and as to be expected, they cost money.

Even using the new toolbar helps.  We are 646 users as I write this.  Growing like a weed, and it will help us long range.

Folks are being hit in all directions, so donations are slim.  We have a bunch of things in place to help us survive, and not bleed our supporters.

 The last thing we want is for anyone to spend money they don't have.

Remember, this is about support, not just stuff  ;)

We just stopped over to the local KROGER and found coupons prominately displayed at all the checkouts that shoppers can use to add a donation of $1.00, $3.00 or $5.00 to AnySoldier when they check out.  The coupons invite shoppers "to make a contribution to Holiday for the Troops!"

The store manager has always been helpful in ordering case lots of specific items for our care packages and interested in the AnySoldier program, but this ad new campaign has got to help the overall health of the program.    Kroger (and whoever arranged this new promotion) Rock!

A habit I'm trying to make is to order something every 4 or 6 weeks, or participate in the raffle...and add 10 bucks donation (or more if I've stuck to my budget) to my order. I figure that 10 bucks probably doesn't even cover the person's time to have inventoried the merchandise, pack the order, print the sales receipt and get the box to the post office, but it might help a little.

 

This was on the Where to Send page today, 18 Jan 08:

Need your help please.
This web site is donation-based. We believe in an honor system and hope you do also. However, we really need to remind the folks using this site that without your donations, we can not offer this service. From January 1st-18th, 5,059 people got addresses from this site. In the same time period, 53 made a donation. Not good.
We truly thank all the folks who make it possible to keep this site running. -marty

I am including a link here to a post by SemperFi73 that was a great motivator to me:

What can you buy with $10.00?

Thanks for the reminder! I just gave my $10 plus grabbed a few goodies from the store : )

Hi Folks,

As some of you know, I sell on ebay....not in the last few months because I moved, etc and have been rather busy, but will be again soon.  I plan on listing some charity auctions to benefit Anysoldier.  I believe these auctions go through an organization called Mission Fish.  I will be reading up on this in the next few days to see how to do it so Anysoldier gets all the proceeds from the auctions.    If there are other people who sell on ebay, this might be a way to boost some donations without it coming directly out of your pocket.  But I digress...what I would like to know is do other people do these charity auctions and if so, how do you mark the auction so that anysoldier junkies can do a search on ebay and find our auctions so they can bid on them?  I did do a search a while back and the only thing that came up when I used Anysoldier as a search word were auctions that had a link to Anysoldier on the auction page but said nothing about the money for the auctions going to Anysoldier.  There were others that said the money was going to go there but they were not through Mission Fish and I believe actually these auctions are not allowed on ebay to prevent people from scamming people.

 Anyhow, any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

 Rosemary

Hi Rosemary

Several months ago I did my first (and so far, only) eBay auction using Mission Fish, with AnySoldier as the beneficiary.  It was fairly easy to do, as I recall.  However, I do recall thinking that it takes a little longer for them to actually send the money to AS than if I just received the money and turned it over myself.  But I liked the idea of people being able to see right away that their purchase would benefit AS.

A friend of mine donates half of the proceeds from everything she sells on eBay to her local library and just notes it herself with the item's description & info.  So that could be another way to go...

 Nancy