Te Necesitamos
- inwankwo
- Apr 20
- 3 min read
During a stop in Battle Creek, MI, I heard a family behind me speaking Spanish, so I decided to strike up a conversation for my official public transportation market research.
My question to them: “If I were to ask you to make a handmade card for someone going through a tough time in a certain language, what would you choose?”
Friendly woman’s response: “English.”
After I gave her context about our need for Spanish cards and how we’re getting cards globally in English, but not in other languages, she followed up with:
“Spanish was our first language, but we’re surrounded by English so now we speak broken Spanish.”
I’m desperate because things need to change. I’ve mentioned it before, but how things work with our partnerships is that usually we get in contact with a special someone at the nonprofit. They’re often passionate about what we do and handle our requested pinky promise, which is delivering the cards room to room. Then when there’s a transition or that person leaves, the relationship often ends. The package is returned and we have a hard time getting in touch with someone else within the organization who’s willing to hand out the cards.
Now the tough part with that is that we must redo our “elevator pitch” about our organization and global reach. We currently use messaging like, “We have at least two partnerships in each state and at least one in each continent worldwide.” The global perspective is one of the factors that differentiates us - we’re willing to pay the extra funds to help cover the shipping cost to uplift spirits worldwide. So as I was speaking to above, it’s good to have a minimum of at least two partnerships in each state because if a contact leaves and we lose a partnership, we’ll still be able to retain our statement about our reach.
We currently have partnerships as follows:
At least 2 in each state in the USA (so our baseline of North America is covered even without our partnerships in Canada, Mexico and beyond)
At least 2 in Africa (e.g., Nigeria, Uganda)
At least 2 in Asia (e.g., Hong Kong, Indonesia)
At least 2 in Australia (and a local contact helping us expand)
At least 2 in Europe (e.g., England, Spain)
Only ONE in South America: Brazil
Yes, there are some people who may look at it differently and say we have a strong presence in Latin America due to our deliveries in Mexico. They may also point to the fact that we’ve made special deliveries to Guatemala and the Dominican Republic in the past as well. But based on our presence in Spain, Central America, and our need to expand in South America, it’d be great if we had a consistent set of cards in Spanish.
In case anyone’s wondering, we’ve been taking a risk by sending some cards out to foster homes and Ronald McDonald Houses in South America to help start a partnership. We used
AI to help optimize the standard letter to write it in Spanish, so we could hopefully get some replies.
Please let me know if you see any errors with that AI revised letter. We just received confirmation from UPS that the nonprofit received this package.
At the end of the day, people love that our reach extends globally. But with that in mind, we’d LOVE your help to be able to consistently have a broad reach. Please let us know if you have any contacts like Lillan in Australia, who is willing to help us partner with another nonprofit in South America. If that goes through and it’s a partner outside of Brazil, we’ll also need your help in making more cards in Spanish as well! You can send us encouraging handmade cards, bookmarks and lunch bags and you know people within your region will be encouraged, as well as people worldwide. Since there are A LOT of behind-the-scenes aspects for our nonprofit that we need to manage ranging from hundreds of scholarship applicants and questions to shipping an average of 10k cards per month, there’s a lot going on for our team who primarily volunteer their time. In summary, TE NECESSITAMOS!
To see more pictures and stories, please check out our Facebook page; follow us on Twitter plus Instagram; and visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube and reviews on Great Nonprofits!
p.s. Puerto Rico, don’t worry, we didn’t forget about you. Although there was a change and we lost contact with our original nonprofit partner in Puerto Rico, we’re still working on renewing a partnership there as well. We’ve delivered over 1,300 cards to Puerto Rico and we’re still trying. This year we’ve made special deliveries to foster homes or similar nonprofits in places ranging from Puerto Rico to Argentina. We’ll make sure you’re covered.