2013 was a record-breaking year for Birthday Blessings. Here are some of the highlights of what we did over the course of last year!
January, we acquired the Kansas City School District. This was such a huge thing for us because this is an area that we have been trying to get into since 2011. Also, in January, we found out that we would be featured in the KC Star to help boost the area’s non profits. This was a challenge made by Sister Berta of Operation Breakthrough in wake of the Sandy Hook Shooting. During this challenge, we saw many of our volunteers come from this featured article.
February was our first record breaker. We served 36 children in the area. This beat our previous record of 24 children in October 2012.
March was also a busy month with 33 children being given birthday blessings. Also this month, we officially received our 501(c)3 non-profit status. We also during this month, opened up our delivery driver services, where we offered volunteers to help with deliveries to the birthday child.
In May, we started our postcard campaign where with each delivery, we gave a postcard to the families to be able to send something back if they chose to, or to send these to others who may need our services. Unfortunately, this was a campaign that didn’t so well, so we will probably be discontinuing this service.
June was our 2nd birthday, and looking over the past two years, we have come a long, long way. Also during this month, we had already hit 2012 year’s end numbers at 143 by the end of JUNE! In just 6 months, we not only doubled 2011’s numbers, but hit last year’s total children served. We knew we would probably double those numbers at the end of 2013. Such an amazing accomplishment and one that we are very proud of.
In July, we once again tied our numbers in February with 36 children being helped. Also during this month, we started our volunteer spotlight. Each month, we spotlight a volunteer so that each of our volunteers get to know a little bit about each person who helps us and how they have been impacted by our organization.
August, we sent out 12,800 flyers!!!
September. Still thinking about this month, all we can still say is WOW!! This month broke the record of children served by helping 55 kids! It was a month, that was very, very busy, and our volunteers deserve so many thanks and much appreciation for helping us get the job done.
October, we once again formed a partnership with St Mary’s University and their service learning project. We are proud to be able to help a handful of students do their part in the community by helping others.
December 2013 was just as busy and brought us 41 children.
2013 was an outstanding year. We served 374 children and more than doubled the previous year. When you break it down, that’s about a child a day, with a few days with multiple deliveries. That is 374 children who we were able to help make memories for, and 374 smiles that we were able to bring to their sweet little faces.
Thank you to all who have helped us, who continue to help us, and to those who support us in any way that they can. We couldn’t do this without you. As always, if you are someone who has a passion for helping others, especially children, or if you know of someone, we would love to have you aboard our volunteer team.
We hope that 2014 is even bigger and we hope to be able to grow and expand to serve more children in need.
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