Hello and Happy Wednesday to everyone!

The POSTCARDS!!!!

They are FINALLY here!

Here is the quick story on what happened:

We ordered these postcards months ago.  The company we ordered from had some issues with employee theft which left the company trying to find out what happened – not just with our order, but A LOT within the company.  There were records of our order being shipped, so we waited and never received it.  The company offered us a great discount and also pre-packed most of the postcards in packs of 100 for us in an effort to correct the situation.  90,000 postcards ended up costing us $1650 instead of the $2500 or so we were originally paying!

The pre-packing of most of the order helped TREMENDOUSLY!

We received 11 boxes of 90,000 postcards with images and a message that “Wild Horses (and Burros) need our voices!”

We are in the process of packaging up 900 packages of postcards!  In all truthfulness, I have to thank my mom – she has packed up about 90% of the postcards.  We should be done packing up by this Friday.

The next issue has been postage. 

We have 41 people who cannot afford the postage for this Call to Action.  Your generous donations have made it possible for us to cover ALL 41 of those postcards!  That is a generous total of $1,065.59!!!

We have a bulk mail permit from the post office and were planning on using that for this process.  The cost for EACH package through this method is $4.50 EACH (more depending on where we are shipping them). 

We were able to talk to someone at the post office about other ways to ship that would be more cost effective. 

After looking at every option available, it is actually just cheaper if my husband and I use our small business shipping discount to pay for the postage to mail the postcards to all of you.  That cost depends on how far we are shipping from North Dakota.  Costs will be between $3.18 – $5.50 per package. 

To keep the math simple, we are estimating the postage at $4 per package x 900 = $3600.00

Costs to us for this Call to Action break down as:

Postcard printing                             $1650.00

41 sets of 100 Postage stamps     $1066.00

Postage to mail 900 packages      $3600.00

            TOTAL                                   $6316.00

The GOOD news is that with your awesome and very generous donations for this Call to Action, we have raised just under $6,000!

We still need about $316 to be able to cover the entire cost of this campaign.  If you are able to make a donation, we ask that you use this link as it is easiest for us to keep track of donations for this specific campaign: https://secure.everyaction.com/uGa6A3BjA0-Rnxdxa5MNnw2

What happens next?

If you need help with postage, we sent you an email today to verify that you still want to participate if we pay your postage.  Please respond to the email ASAP so we can order the stamps.

We have been packing up the orders as we worked on a solution for the postage.  The ONLY way we can add postage is by manually entering 900 addresses, so please be patient with us.  We expect to have all 900 packages mailed by next week.

A few “If’s”

IF you would rather pick up your postcards, they can be picked up at the Chasing Horses store in Medora, ND located at 312 Pacific Ave between 10-5 7 days a week.  Please send us an email at info@chwha.org if you will be picking up your postcards.  Postcards are ready to be picked up now – so feel free to stop by any time.

IF you no longer wish to participate, please email us at info@chwha.org and let us know.

IF you did not already sign up, but would like to participate, we have about 50 packages of postcards left.  You can sign up here: https://secure.everyaction.com/K1X-3RVbak6DIa-2Csc-ZA2
PLEASE NOTE: Anyone who signs up at this time must commit to pay their own postage to send 100 postcards. We are sorry, but our budget will not allow for additional paid postage.

Once you receive your postcards – please hang tight!  We have specific addresses we want these sent to and we are working on the message that will  be added to the postcards.  Watch our blog here for additional information.

We also apologize, but do ask that you remember, there are 900 of you and 2 of us organizing this.  We may not be able to answer your questions via email personally, but may answer them in a blog instead so everyone has the same info.

Thank you again for your patience and support!  We look forward to seeing the impact we are able to make with this Call to Action!

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