Here is the definitive DEAL PACKAGE for all Children’s Craft Village Greeting Cards:
IMPORTANT NOTICE: I incorrectly posted that I would pay postage on card orders. Oops. My error; I didn’t mention it there in that blog, but this is only true of retail orders. All wholesale prices are “to the bone”, so you must calculate in that you will be paying the shipping & insurance charges. We will not pay for any wholesale shipment of anything to anyone at any time. Only in this way can we maintain fair wholesale prices.
Please do not forget that this is a nonprofit charity fundraising campaign, and that in some states and counties you need an ID from us to conduct charitable activities. Under some muni laws (municipal, or city laws) you can set up a small stand, or walk around with cards on a chest-mounted neck-strap selling box filled with card choices.
You do not need to fabricate a “story” or create a “beg rap”. You are selling greeting cards, and part of the resultant exchange — at least 50% — comes to IDHHB, Inc., a duly registered 501(c)3 charitable California nonprofit organization.
You can earn enough from this project to help the Institute and at the same time make some side dough so you can afford to hop on a plane and book a room at a local bed & breakfast, rent a car, pay for food, give tips where needed and in general spend a thousand dollars or more to come to a $375 “long-weekend-workshop”. You have to have a plan, or you won’t be able to afford it, unless you’re a Dream-Team defense lawyer or a high-priced Beverly Hills doctor specializing in Diseases of the Very Rich — and then you won’t have either the time or the inclination to come to some dumb spiritual retreat.
You’ll be too busy making money, so you can buy your way out of death, right?
This is not only a great way to fundraise, it’s a great way to meet people and to get the Word out there, plus you’re spreading “seeds”, blessed items that carry more than just verbal or visual impact.
You can talk to other organizations about this service. I’m willing to work for other worthy nonprofit organizations, or to help them set up their own fundraising card production system.
This program will benefit the Institute and all its Ashram and related activities, outreach program and Ashram building project, as well as help fund scholarships and work programs and more!
If you find that you simply cannot sell cards, but still want to earn Merit and receive the spiritual benefits of helping in this program, you can organize other folks, who are good sellers, to sell the cards, while you manage and do the organizing part.
Enough chit-chat, here are the raw data figures:
SMALL CARD — Retail $3.95 — 4″x5″ archival card, matching envelope & sleeve.
1 card = $3.95
5-pack = $17.50 ($3.50 per card)
10-pack = $30.00 ($3.00 per card)
100 pack = $250.00 ($2.50 per card)
500 pack = $1000 ($2.00 per card)
*********************************************************************************
LARGE CARD — Retail $6.95 — 5″x7″ archival card, matching envelope & sleeve.
1 card = $6.95
5-pack = $32.50 ($6.50 per card)
10-pack = $50.00 ($5.00 per card)
100 pack = $400.00 ($4.00 per card)
500 pack = $1500 ($3.00 per card)
1000 pack = $2500 ($2.50 per card)
Due to the cost of the cards and printing, the lowest price we can offer is $2.00 per card — we cannot produce them for less than $1.50 without sacrificing the incredible quality we are able to offer here. The cards are fully archival and can be mounted directly into a 5″x7″ frame.
The reason the cards are priced the way they are, is that they cost differently; the color printing is relatively expensive, and we demand the best quality, so it goes double; and in the case of printing and cutting, it’s always “outside” labor that we’re paying for. My labor comes free as usual.
You must have the personnel to carry out a sales impact of 10,000 units in any single city, province, town, metropolis, or hamlet — so if you’re working alone, keep the numbers small, and work your way up slowly to the bigger profits by increasing your sales force, then buy in bigger amounts so you get larger profits for your fundraisers, to increase their payoff.
Let’s say your goal is to raise $30,000 per month, about average for a small nonprofit public service organization… So you’d need about 30 full-time volunteers on the street selling cards five or six days a week, plus part-time volunteers who might help out once a year for a day or two until boredom sets in.
The fact is that those full-time volunteers can’t stay out there every day without some sort of payoff, and for most of them, that means rent, food and medical bills. By selling them the cards below retail, you give them the opportunity to sustain their efforts day after day after day, perhaps for years to come.
If you don’t provide the fundraisers on the street with a means of sustaining themselves, they can’t and won’t stay on the fundraising project. It replaces a job, so it has to replace the income from the job that isn’t there, see???
If you want to have a continuous self-propelling fundraising project, you MUST find a way to make it pay off for the volunteers, too! This is a great way to inspire someone to higher levels of performance, and competitions are exciting and make the whole thing fun!
Necessity is the Great Driver of the Force. By the way, I don’t know of any other spiritual path that pays off in cold hard cash.
Sure, it’s a joke, but actually, you could make a living as a permanent fundraiser for the Institute & its public projects. This earns spiritual Merit, and gives you the wherewithal to carry out higher levels on your spiritual path.
I quote Archangel Zadkiel:
“The Work, if properly conducted, should pay for itself.”
And from the desk of Archangel Lefkowitz, I have this penned note:
“The Work is the Path.”
Another published quote from Murray the Janitor at the Yeshiva:
“I hafta pay the rent with something, don’t I???”
You can increase your Merit by taking a smaller personal profit, but you MUST take enough for yourself to keep your work alive, both on a daily basis, as a main source of income, and you must find a way to keep it sustainable through the various life-emergencies that arise now & again.
I know, it sounds ridiculous to put all your eggs into one basket, and I’m not suggesting that YOU devote the rest of your natural-born life to selling Children’s Craft Village Greeting Cards, but you might consider devoting, let’s say, an hour or two every Saturday or Sunday or both to the project, eh?
I hope you appreciate this ordering system. It took me the better part of this evening working with two calculators in two different offices to figure out the costs and to calculate a fair and workable price on every level of participation.
If you’ve already placed an order and want to change it based upon this information, feel free to do so. Call Yanesh and tell her what you’d like us to ship; we’ll calculate the amount, add the shipping and the work-packet is off to you in a flash! Well, actually, in a small brown truck.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby