Our mission is to help those in need by providing them with donated gift cards for use at various retailers across the country. We have a special place in our hearts for those who wish to use our donated gift cards to help others in need. That’s why we were thrilled when we received a request for gift cards from Linda Gianni. As the founder and chief operator of Linda’s Kids in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she helps children in need who may otherwise get overlooked.

After talking with Linda about her organization’s needs, we sent her approximately $200 in assorted gift cards for use at retailers in the Milwaukee area. We thought you’d like to know a little more about Linda’s Kids:

Gift Card Giver: How did “Linda’s Kids” get its start?

Linda: I’ve been doing security work in the Milwaukee public schools for many years. Early on, I noticed that some kids would begin the school year without the items necessary to get off to a good start. Their families simply did not have the resources to pay for basic items like school supplies or adequate clothing. I felt I had to do something. I began collecting donations for them to try to meet their needs, and I’ve been doing it now for nearly twenty years. About five years ago, I officially formed “Linda’s Kids” as a not-for-profit organization.

GCG: How do you meet the kids’ needs?

Linda: Our organization collects and distributes necessities like personal hygiene products, school supplies, coats and other clothing, and even Christmas presents at holiday time.

GCG: What is the biggest need right now?

Linda: Right now, the kids I see need new socks and underwear. But the kids’ needs change over time. That’s why gift cards are great! They allow me to shop for appropriate items to meet a specific need at any given time.

GCG: What else would you like people to know about Linda’s Kids?

Linda: It is a small operation. I work a full-time job in addition to running Linda’s Kids. Also, I try to be as thrifty as possible with gift cards and other monetary donations. When I received over $200 in gift cards from Gift Card Giver, I decided to wait until the weekend to drive to an outlet mall where prices are cheaper. On behalf of the kids, I want to get the most out of those gift cards.

GCG: Anything else you would like to share?

Linda: I want to offer my sincere thanks to Gift Card Giver for providing me with gift cards, and to everyone else who has donated to Linda’s Kids. Please keep on giving!

If you would like to help Linda’s Kids directly, please contact Linda Gianni at lindaskidsinc@att.net.

If you would like to contribute gift cards or make a monetary donation to Gift Card Giver so that we may help other organizations like Linda’s Kids, please contact us at info@giftcardgiver.com. You may send gift cards to us at: Gift Card Giver, P.O.Box 17920, Atlanta, Georgia 30316. We welcome all (used or unused) gift cards issued by any retail store with any remaining balance (even a penny!). Thank you.

Her message was cryptic, landing directly in the founder of Gift Card Giver’s email inbox in all capital letters.  When it was forwarded to me, I wondered whether this might be some weird kind of spam.  There was a phone number though, and a simple plea for help.

Upon calling and leaving a voicemail message,  I wondered whether we’d ever hear back.  When my phone buzzed at 1:00 am, I was surprised that it woke me.  I don’t bother turning my notifications of work emails off at night because they rarely come outside of business hours let alone at a time where it might wake me, but also the 1 second vibration of my phone is hardly enough to rouse this overtired mother of two.  Regardless, on this night the short buzz of my phone did catch my attention and I squinted to see who was emailing me.  There they were again, but this time pages and pages of them.  Another tired mother, many states away, pouring her heart out to me in all capital letters, (unintentionally) shouting for help.

I learned from her message and from follow-up phone conversations that this mother was desperate for help for her struggling family.  Simply put, money was tight.  But there was more, she was sick with Chron’s Disease and could not work. Add to that their fourth and youngest child had just entered high school and was troubled, but it was clear he was deeply loved. She called him a gift, adopted at 3 days old from her brother who could not raise him.   The burden of raising enough money was all on her husband who was doing the best he could, but it wasn’t enough.  She had heard on the TV about a church that was giving away gift cards and when she searched the internet for help from gift cards she found out about us.  The email she sent to our founder was the first she’d ever written.

I sent her a list of our inventory and asked her to look through the list and let me know which cards would most help her family.  I had overestimated her ability to use the computer.  She called back and left me a message, saying she couldn’t open the attachments I had sent and could I please just pick out some cards for them.  I got goosebumps when she casually listed a couple businesses that I knew we had cards for and had not been able to use because they were small companies with locations isolated in a few states.  It was as if those cards were waiting for their family.

I taped up the package this morning and am happy to know that it will arrive in a few days and bring some hope to this family.  You might feel like the cards you have can’t be useful because they are to smaller local grocery store chains, restaurants and gas stations.  I know how thankful this family will be that we had cards that will help them put food on the table and gas in the car, and maybe even enjoy a dinner out together.

Keep sending us your cards, we never tire of seeing them matched to needs like this.

Recently, a family in Atlanta endured an unthinkable situation. After struggling with their landlord for months about small repairs that were needed around the house they were renting, the problems in the house got decidedly worse and a fire at the power box left the mother and her 11 children without electricity.

Taking matters into her own hands, the mother bought a generator and advised the landlord that she would not be paying rent until the necessary repairs were made.  The landlord began to pursue legal action to evict the family for not paying rent.  When it was clear that the mother was also interested in taking legal action in return to hold the landlord responsible the truth finally emerged that the so-called landlord actually did not even own the property and had seemingly vanished taking along the rent the family had paid.

The family was devastated and recovery from the situation looked impossible.  The mother no longer had a home or hope of getting her money back and to make matters worse there was talk of having to put the kids into foster homes until things were settled.

Thankfully some caring folks stepped in and were able to get the mother a new place to live just in time for school to start.  Gift Card Giver had the privilege of providing gift cards to help the kids get some back-to-school clothes and get some supplies for the new home.  Cards for Belk, Macy’s,
Home Depot, Lowe’s, New York & Company, Guess, Bed Bath & Beyond, and J C Penney will provide the family with some basics as they get re-established and begin to recover from the events of the past few months.

It is situations just like this that inspired the idea of Gift Card Giver.  Being able to respond to people who are in need with gift cards that otherwise would have gone unused is just incredible, and we couldn’t do it without the donations of gift cards.  Thanks to all of you who are sending in cards and are sharing our story to help get the word out about the work we are doing.

One of the categories of gift cards that tends to pile up is the clothing store cards.   Sure the large department store cards are easy to use, but what about $10 to Bath and Body Works or H&M?

The folks at We Will Serve contacted us and explained how they help parents provide clothing and essentials to their children when even the basic necessities of life are difficult to obtain.  The ministry was born when the founders were in a time of incredible financial strain themselves.  Despite having liquidated most of their savings, mom and co-founder, Jo Sexton was on Craigslist posting in the freebie section about some clothes their children had outgrown. She was hoping not to sell them but to bless someone else with whatever they had to give; even when money was tight.  She stumbled upon the wanted section of Craigslist and was inspired by a post there from a mother hoping to find things to put under the Christmas tree.  Jo decided to become a matchmaker of sorts and scoured the freebie section in order to help this stranger, nabbing anything listed there that would fill the need. She then went home to home to obtain the items and had the privilege of contacting the mother from the wanted section telling her what she had for her.   From there, the project has grown to be an warehouse of items that families can shop in when buying the things they need just isn’t possible. It was great to be able to send cards that we know will be used to buy essentials to stock the “boutique” that they make available to the people they serve.

We recently received a request for cards from Resound Church (http://resoundchurch.com/) in Beaverton, Oregon. Michael had requested cards to local businesses in denominations of $5-10. We are always interested in learning how the cards we donate will be used, and often a deeper understanding will help us to figure out which cards in the inventory will be most useful.  Michael explained that the church was preparing to plant a new location and community center in the Portland area and part of that means reaching out to people that live in that neighborhood.  Hoping to not only reach out to them and offer them a church home where they might feel welcome and be encouraged, Michael said they hoped to be able to ask people if they had any immediate needs with which the church could provide assistance.  The cards would be given if they could help with that need.

As we’ve mentioned our inventory is quite low, but Michael and I were able to brainstorm uses for cards to the following places:

A&W

Chipotle

Kroger

Dairy Queen

Subway

Honey Baked Ham

Great Harvest Bread Co.

AutoZone

We can’t wait to hear more about how the cards are used to help people in need.

You may remember that we did a story on BlueSky Kenya a little while back.  Here are some photos they shared with us so that we could let everyone know what the cards we gave them went toward:

The items pictured above will be used by 3 different ministry areas:
- BlueSky Adventures will use balls for team-building activities
- BlueSky Youth will use basketballs to coach Hindu girls
- Camp BlueSky will use tents & duffles for camping trips

These came from the amazon gift card & will be used by Youth team for Youth events.

Camp will use these items.

Actually, the camera will be used by everyone – the whole Bluesky team is “pumped” about
this purchase!

They’ll use these for team-building activities – as boundary markers.

And finally, they’ll use these for camp and youth programs.

Hooray! Thanks for contributing and helping us support the work of BlueSky.

You may remember Gilda Radner, the very funny, emmy winning comedienne who was part of the original cast of Saturday Night Live. You may also remember that her struggle and eventual death from ovarian cancer was a sad ending to her very successful career in show business.  She’d joke that having cancer gave her a “membership to an elite club [she'd] rather not be a part of.”  In honor of that and her fight against cancer, Gilda’s Club was formed.

Gilda’s Club is a cancer support program that aims to help anyone living with cancer; men, women and children and their families and friends.  This broad scope of care helps Gilda’s Club to be available as a space for people who are impacted by cancer to gather and share experiences, ideas, and support one another.

We recently received a stack of cards from someone designating that the funds be used to help Gilda’s Club of Western Pennsylvania. The cards came to a total over $400, we were then able to use cards in our inventory to send a donation of cards that would benefit the work that Gilda’s Club does, specifically helping them to provide activities for people to do as they gather at the Clubhouse.

You can give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, or you can teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.

This basic bit of wisdom completely defines the mission of Nuru International.  This group works to eradicate extreme poverty by helping rural communities become self-sufficient.

Nuru accomplishes this by helping these communities to develop in five different areas: Agriculture, Community Economic Development, Water and Sanitation, Healthcare, and Education.  They combine mentorship of local leaders with interventions they have researched and identified to be the most effective at combating poverty through the development of the areas mentioned above.

We were recently connected with Billy Williams at Nuru.  Billy works passionately to spread the word about that group’s mission.  His focus is on building the grassroots type of support that is essential to their work.  We were able to send him gift cards that will assist him as he travels and speaks at conferences, events, and even with people he meets casually at coffee shops and restaurants.

Sometimes it amazes us the way the puzzle pieces fit together.  This request was a perfect use of a lot of the restaurant and coffee shop gift cards we have.  Who knew that  the $0.28 left on your Biggby Coffee card might help eradicate poverty worldwide?

Think slavery is a problem of the past? Think again.  Slaveryfootprint is a website that can show you just how many slaves are working for you to supply the things you buy.  We found that those of us at Gift Card Giver have at least 65 slaves working for us.  Shocked? We were.

Heather at The Canvas Story contacted us with a need for gift cards. 350 participants are currently involved in their 90-day challenge to switch to using slavery-free products and she wanted to reward their efforts. We are so glad to see attention being given to this issue and were happy to be able to send cards for iTunes, spas, James Avery Jewelry, Brookstone, EA Gamestop, AMC theaters, Ticketmaster, Gameworks, Lululemon, and Sports Authority as well as others that might be of use to the women that The Canvas Story works with in southern California who have been rescued from human trafficking.

Good job to all the participants, we hope this challenge helps you to not only change your practices but also will give you the opportunities to share with others the importance of what you are doing.

We hope that one day we can all buy products with the confidence that no person was enslaved to produce it for us.  Until then, let’s never stop asking where our products come from and insisting that practices of slavery around the world be ended.

With a 70 year history of helping women and children, Family Life Services in Colorado Springs, truly defines commitment to helping others.  The organization began as an orphanage, but joined forces with Women of Courage and refined it’s mission to helping single mothers and their children.

Gift Card Giver recently had the opportunity to send cards to Family Life Services to support the work they do.  We know that the debit cards, grocery cards, Exxon cards,  Target, Walmart, Carter’s, Payless, CVS, as well as others will all be useful in meeting the needs of the families they serve.