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We have been sponsoring three units, two in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. I talked my company into paying the freight (All three units have former employees in them). We started in April and have sent over 86 boxes so far. My basement has enough stuff to send at least 30 more. Most of this stuff was donated to the cause by good people. There are a lot of people who want to help but you have to get the word out to accomplish that.

Here is what we did.

1. We internet searched for hotels and motels in the area. Copied the address information into Word and set up a mail merge to send them letters asking for donations. Results: 3,000 bottles of hand lotion, thousands of bars of soap, and hundreds of razors.

2. Ditto same approach but to dentists in the area. Results: over a thousand tubes of toothpaste, hundreds of toothbrushes, and hundreds of floss containers. Items were mainly small trial sizes (except toothbrushes) which fit nicely into their packs.

3. New posters in plant every few weeks. Reminding people and even assigning what people should bring based on which department they are in.

3. The big one!!!!

My company wanted to attract attention to their new showroom in Milwaukee. We piggy-backed a "Support Our Troops" event into their grand opening. They used the "Support Our Troops" theme in their advertising all week. On the day of the event (God blessed us with perfect weather) the company hired a popular local radio talk show host to do four call-ins to the station for 1 minute talks. I had previously contacted the three units' commanders and arranged for some of their people to call the radio station on their unit sat phones. I had them call two minutes before our radio personality went on the air (This was all prearranged with the radio station.) The radio station engineer put the guys overseas on the air with our talk show personality. The talk show personality would talk to the guys, ask them how things were, and then ask them what they needed. The one minute spots stretched into 3-5 minutes and the radio producer loved it. Did not even try to charge more or cut it back to 1 minute. Whatever the GI asked for would start showing up about 15 minutes later. Somebody said they needed underwear and packages straight from the store would show up. Packages with $18 price tags.

Results: Over 1,000 pounds of stuff and $550 in cash donations.

I can't do the URL thing but you can get more info at www.theliechtys.com

Great information and suggestions. I'd have to get a charitable donations status from the IRS first though, which I will look into soon. That may be too big for me to handle in the near future, but I can start planning. I'll check into local Rotary which I used to belong to, to see if they can help.

Copying your suggestions now.

Reading your post just gave me the shivers!!! Good job!!

WOW .. what a great post

Thanks for sharing with us all