When the unthinkable happened on Sept 04, 2006 the volunteers from this organization flocked to our sides and flooded us with letters of Sorrow, and Support it was really awesome. BFS does not only help out the Soldiers in the box but also those who are severely wounded in action and in one of the Army hospitals between here and Germany.
Through blogging I was able to get know a couple of my volunteers, and when I posted Blood Brothers one of my volunteers actually knew and sent packages to some of the soldiers from 1/26IN. These are just a few of the many great things this organization and its volunteers does for our Soldiers. I got an e-mail today from one of the volunteers that helped me out, I'm posting it below please take the time to read it. If you can help or you know of some corporations that might be able to or if you can just pass this on to ass many people as you can. This is definitely an organization that deserves the money. Thank you for your time and your support!
Books For Soldiers
2008 Fundraising Update Newsletter April 2008
___________________________
It Is A Bad Economy
Starting at the first of this year, BFS started a robust fundraising campaign here in North Carolina. We contacted small companies and some large companies you probably have heard of. To date, we have received a stack of letters that begin with "we deeply regret not being able to donate this year" and no cash. From our corporate donation campaign we have received a tad under thirty dollars from a philanthropy grants group in Winston Salem, NC. That was it, nothing else.
Times are tough for all non-profit groups, food banks from all around North Carolina and across the nation are suffering from a lack of donations and a sharp increase of those in need. The article below arrived in my email today about a women's shelter closing because of a lack of donations.
http://www.the-signal.com/news/article/1356/
___________________________
The Next Step
The BFS Board of Directors have discussed this problem for some time and have decided to have another go at fundraising. We are working on a different campaign aimed at companies in larger states - California for example. Every time we want to do fundraising in a state (cold call, direct mail, advertising) we need to file with that state's Secretary of State - filing in all states if prohibitively expensive so we have to pick and choose.
In our last newsletter, we reported on the hacker attacks that coincided with our 5th Anniversary. Those DNS attacks didn't help our balance sheet. Our final IT bill from the datacenter for that week was a tad over $11,000. If you recall, the hackers brought down the whole datacenter just to try to kill us.
The Board set a goal of $70,000 to raise by November 1st of this year. If that amount is not raised, the site will close on December 31st, 2008.
If we cannot make the fundraising target, the Board will seek to sell the site to another 501(c)(3) and any new owner will need to be qualified - have the IT talent to run the site, the funding to keep it going and the funding for the required upgrades, both software and hardware. We would also stop accepting new OVs on November 1st and stop accepting new books requests from soldiers on December 1st, 2008.
___________________________
What Does It Take?*
It takes a lot to run BFS on a monthly basis. The monthly funds required to run an operation like BFS are large. Here is a partial summary of where the donations go.
All figures are a monthly average for 2007.
There are other things like broken computers, the occasional software purchase, insurance, pencils, toilet paper for the bathroom, etc. that we purchase.
No one at BFS receives a salary.
The BFS presence on MySpace, Flickr, YouTube are all free. Our presence in Second Life has also been donated.
We will be disabling the uploading of photos in the next few weeks to save bandwidth. Please post your photos to the Flickr BFS Group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/booksforsoldiers) and include the Flickr link to the photo in your forum post. If you want keep your photos on BFS, place them on Flickr and post the code in your post. Instructions can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/help/photos/#68
My hopes is that eventually we can raise more than the $70k survival goal. Last year our goal for 2008 was to move to a website design where the cumbersome OV process was performed online and searching and finding soldiers would be a breeze - subscribing to soldier requests is my favorite new BFS feature. Now we are just struggling to stay open.
___________________________
How You Can Help
The ONLY reason we are open today is because of the OVs that have donated so far this year, but now I need to ask more of everyone.
1) Office party fundraiser - Coordinate a "Save BFS Day" at work and urge, beg, cajole your co-workers into coughing up something for BFS.
2) Have your company cough up some cash. We will send your company a formal donation request, just send us the company name, contact name and address and we will get it out right away. Send these requests to me personally (storm@booksforsoldiers.com)
3) Have your place of worship pass the plate (hat, kippah, whatever) for BFS. Consult with your church's leader about holding a "Save BFS Offering" one day this month. Checks should be made out to "Books For Soldiers." If they have any questions or concerns, please contact me directly to set up a call.
4) Visit our donation page and give what you can.
http://booksforsoldiers.com/donate.php
or by check
Books For Soldiers
2008 Fund Drive
353 Jonestown Rd #123
Winston Salem, NC 27104
___________________________
In Closing
I started BFS five years ago and fully expected it to be online for only six weeks, that is the length of time I thought it would take for our troops to finish up in Baghdad and come back home. I am also terrible at predicting who is going to win the next NASCAR race.
If worse come to worse, it has been a good run - a great run in fact. In the first 6 months of operation, we collectively shipped over 400 tons of packages to the Middle East, that is when I stopped counting. We also built the largest English library in the Middle East - together with US soldiers at the Baghdad International Airport in the months following the fall of Baghdad.
We have done a lot of tremendous work, made a lot of great friends and even a wedding or two! We have also lost a lot of friends and we have received way too many memorial flags. Either way, you can all be proud of what we have achieved.
I promise that we will do everything in our power to meet our fundraising goals and will appreciate any help from you.
Thank-you for your support, patience and hard work over the last 5 years.
And most of all thank-you for your support of our troops.
Storm Williams
Founder
Books For Soldiers
*Legalese: BFS is exempt from filing IRS Form 990. Any financial information found here should not be considered as a replacement for IRS Form 990 or a supplement to an IRS Form 990.
(posted for Stormbear by nyndnpa)
2008 Fundraising Update Newsletter April 2008
___________________________
It Is A Bad Economy
Starting at the first of this year, BFS started a robust fundraising campaign here in North Carolina. We contacted small companies and some large companies you probably have heard of. To date, we have received a stack of letters that begin with "we deeply regret not being able to donate this year" and no cash. From our corporate donation campaign we have received a tad under thirty dollars from a philanthropy grants group in Winston Salem, NC. That was it, nothing else.
Times are tough for all non-profit groups, food banks from all around North Carolina and across the nation are suffering from a lack of donations and a sharp increase of those in need. The article below arrived in my email today about a women's shelter closing because of a lack of donations.
http://www.the-signal.com/news/article/1356/
___________________________
The Next Step
The BFS Board of Directors have discussed this problem for some time and have decided to have another go at fundraising. We are working on a different campaign aimed at companies in larger states - California for example. Every time we want to do fundraising in a state (cold call, direct mail, advertising) we need to file with that state's Secretary of State - filing in all states if prohibitively expensive so we have to pick and choose.
In our last newsletter, we reported on the hacker attacks that coincided with our 5th Anniversary. Those DNS attacks didn't help our balance sheet. Our final IT bill from the datacenter for that week was a tad over $11,000. If you recall, the hackers brought down the whole datacenter just to try to kill us.
The Board set a goal of $70,000 to raise by November 1st of this year. If that amount is not raised, the site will close on December 31st, 2008.
If we cannot make the fundraising target, the Board will seek to sell the site to another 501(c)(3) and any new owner will need to be qualified - have the IT talent to run the site, the funding to keep it going and the funding for the required upgrades, both software and hardware. We would also stop accepting new OVs on November 1st and stop accepting new books requests from soldiers on December 1st, 2008.
___________________________
What Does It Take?*
It takes a lot to run BFS on a monthly basis. The monthly funds required to run an operation like BFS are large. Here is a partial summary of where the donations go.
All figures are a monthly average for 2007.
| Books, DVDs, other carepackage items | $1153 |
| Postage | $812 |
| Rent | $1600 |
| Utilities | $277 |
| IT Services (server farm, hosting, bandwidth) | $4258 |
| IT Maintenance Contract | $1500 |
| IT Security Software License Fees | $350 |
There are other things like broken computers, the occasional software purchase, insurance, pencils, toilet paper for the bathroom, etc. that we purchase.
No one at BFS receives a salary.
The BFS presence on MySpace, Flickr, YouTube are all free. Our presence in Second Life has also been donated.
We will be disabling the uploading of photos in the next few weeks to save bandwidth. Please post your photos to the Flickr BFS Group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/booksforsoldiers) and include the Flickr link to the photo in your forum post. If you want keep your photos on BFS, place them on Flickr and post the code in your post. Instructions can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/help/photos/#68
My hopes is that eventually we can raise more than the $70k survival goal. Last year our goal for 2008 was to move to a website design where the cumbersome OV process was performed online and searching and finding soldiers would be a breeze - subscribing to soldier requests is my favorite new BFS feature. Now we are just struggling to stay open.
___________________________
How You Can Help
The ONLY reason we are open today is because of the OVs that have donated so far this year, but now I need to ask more of everyone.
1) Office party fundraiser - Coordinate a "Save BFS Day" at work and urge, beg, cajole your co-workers into coughing up something for BFS.
2) Have your company cough up some cash. We will send your company a formal donation request, just send us the company name, contact name and address and we will get it out right away. Send these requests to me personally (storm@booksforsoldiers.com)
3) Have your place of worship pass the plate (hat, kippah, whatever) for BFS. Consult with your church's leader about holding a "Save BFS Offering" one day this month. Checks should be made out to "Books For Soldiers." If they have any questions or concerns, please contact me directly to set up a call.
4) Visit our donation page and give what you can.
http://booksforsoldiers.com/donate.php
or by check
Books For Soldiers
2008 Fund Drive
353 Jonestown Rd #123
Winston Salem, NC 27104
___________________________
In Closing
I started BFS five years ago and fully expected it to be online for only six weeks, that is the length of time I thought it would take for our troops to finish up in Baghdad and come back home. I am also terrible at predicting who is going to win the next NASCAR race.
If worse come to worse, it has been a good run - a great run in fact. In the first 6 months of operation, we collectively shipped over 400 tons of packages to the Middle East, that is when I stopped counting. We also built the largest English library in the Middle East - together with US soldiers at the Baghdad International Airport in the months following the fall of Baghdad.
We have done a lot of tremendous work, made a lot of great friends and even a wedding or two! We have also lost a lot of friends and we have received way too many memorial flags. Either way, you can all be proud of what we have achieved.
I promise that we will do everything in our power to meet our fundraising goals and will appreciate any help from you.
Thank-you for your support, patience and hard work over the last 5 years.
And most of all thank-you for your support of our troops.
Storm Williams
Founder
Books For Soldiers
*Legalese: BFS is exempt from filing IRS Form 990. Any financial information found here should not be considered as a replacement for IRS Form 990 or a supplement to an IRS Form 990.
(posted for Stormbear by nyndnpa)
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| « Last Edit: May 03, 2008, 06:12:50 PM by nyndnpa » | |
2 comments:
I'll reiterate that BFS is a very good cause. The dollars that it takes to support the maintenance of the site (where requests from troops are posted) make it possible for its many volunteers to personally fill the requests of thousands of deployed military each year (sometimes staying in touch with them through their deployments and sending them multiple packages). I don't know what the current numbers are, but in the past at least, BFS volunteers have filled in the neighborhood of 10,000 or more requests a year - which is a lot!
It would be great if Storm had to close the site at the end of the year because it was simply no longer needed, but unfortunately that won't be the case.
If you would like to send a care package to a soldier (or Marine or sailor or airman) yourself, think about signing up as a volunteer, too. Although there isn't anyone quite like Tristan out there now (haha), there are a lot of guys working just as hard doing the job that he did (as well as many other jobs) who would welcome your support.
Cheers,
Andrea from BFS
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 05/07/2008 News and Personal dispatches from the front lines.
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