In This Together
- inwankwo
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Following the trend and writing this blog post while I’m traveling, since between getting dating advice (aka shipping thousands of cards at the post office) and experiencing a dream come true (aka working alongside a neighborhood high school to package cards), I don’t have much free time outside of transportation. For the people who are frustrated about my response (or lack thereof) to emails or social media messages, please note that often during these travels I don’t have internet, so that’s why I’m putting in time now to update people on some of the behind-the-scenes events here at Cardz For Kidz.
For this current trip, I’m going back to my hometown to celebrate my birthday with some of my best friends from elementary school. Yes, I know there are some people who are upset that I’m not picking up some much-needed cards in Spanish from my high school Spanish
teacher, but she’s taking a break. But don’t worry, we’ve been in touch! She texted me happy birthday and thanked me for the customized cards our artists sent her recently.
Between seeing my best friends and my cousin - the one who designed our first logo (below), - I planned
on making a quick stop and dropping off some customized cards that Christine made for a couple people overcoming a tough time. #overcomers
I try to keep one thing consistent with my trips: wear something Cardz For Kidz. Whether it’s a trip back to my hometown where most people are wearing Michigan shirts or during trips to Dallas, Texas to connect with donors, I usually wear some type of branding. The overall goal is to increase the awareness of our organization to people across the country.
Sparked by last month’s trip to Long Island, New York, this trip will be a bit different. Instead of only wearing Cardz For Kidz clothing, I’m comfortably promoting a
partner, Little Saint Nick Foundation. I know I’ve mentioned in the past how we had a sister nonprofit who’s been very encouraging, but I
still want to bring up this partnership.
With Little St Nick Foundation, as of March 2026, they are currently a top partner who has received and distributed the most cards. Between their locations in New York and Florida, it’s been over 70k cards!
For more background, we originally agreed to send them cards to their location in New York, but we later expanded to send cards to Florida as well. Since they have always been very responsive and even posted on their social media about how they appreciated our cards, we agreed to donate the portable entertainment system that was sponsored by SignUpGenius to their selected location.
During that rewarding experience we were able to meet the hospital and connect with Ray from Little St Nick. I told him our main goal of finding hospitals and nonprofits that often get overlooked by other donors, and he provided a perfect example. What was extra special about this delivery was that it was not a standard pediatric hospital. During some of the prior deliveries I’ve had some conversations with the staff about how it’s important to make sure the controllers don’t “accidentally walk away,” among other crucial details. With this location, I learned that since it’s a psychiatric hospital, they did not want anything that has any type of string or cord. Now some of you may be disappointed with that trip since you expected to see some pictures of children and families enjoying the system, but as my experience as a patient/volunteer/employee/donor, I will never force partners to do the extra work for a picture that will help our social media if that’s against their policy and/or makes people feel uncomfortable.
Before the trip, I thought Little St Nick made deliveries around the bases I knew about, e.g. New York and Tampa. One thing I learned is that, like us, those locations often serve as distribution points. For example, though they don’t have a distribution point here in Chicago, he confirmed they’re sending their bags (which may be filled with our cards) to where things all began for us, Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, IL. It’s great that with this partnership we can officially say we’re Equal Opportunity Encouragers. With their help we now understand that we’re IN THIS TOGETHER and are officially reaching hospitals of all sizes. Now we just need to make sure that some of those cards are reaching Canada! Yes, we’ve sent over 28K cards to Canada, primarily through partners. I still recall back in the day when I was only running these events at work and through people I knew, and one of the office managers in Canada refused to participate since we didn’t have official partnership there. But I would still love to expand!
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