Please join us for the third annual Crawfish Boil and Cornhole Tournament!

We will be hosting a southern tradition of great competition and good food. Registration includes at least 3 games of cornhole and a meal for both teammates.

This day is guaranteed to be fun for the whole family.

The tournament will begin promptly at 2:00 PM and dinner will be served starting at 5pm.

The tournament sponsors the work of Suffered Enough so besides having a great time, you’ll be supporting our work here at Gift Card Giver as well.

The National Retail Federation reports that gift cards have topped people’s wish lists for the past five years. So, you know you want them, and you know you get them each year.  How many? 2, 3, maybe even 10?

Yet, Consumer Reports also has found from surveying people that 27 percent still had cards they hadn’t used from the previous year! And, half of those people had 2 or 3 left over. Those unused cards totaled 8 billion dollars last year!

There are great needs in our communities and you have the opportunity to help us meet them. I am asking you to give your first gift card to us, so we can give them to people that really need them. Commit to the Gift Card Pledge now.

Take the pledge by following these steps:

• Tell your friends and family you’ve taken the pledge by posting this: “I pledge to give the first gift card I receive this Christmas to @GiftCardGiver” on Facebook and Twitter [#giftcardpledge]
• Share this pledge to your entire community and help us start a giving spirit this Christmas season. Ask them to join us and take the pledge too!
• When opening gifts, set aside your first gift card of the season and drop it in the mail to us at:

Gift Card Giver

PO Box 17920

Atlanta, GA 30316

We hope that this simple pledge will help us all remember that it’s not about what we get, but about being thankful for all that we’ve been given already! Gift Cards collected will do so much to help people in need. Be sure to check back here to our giving stories to see how they’re being used.

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.

The Austin Christian Social Hub held it’s first card party back in the early part of summer.  They collected cards and designated that the money they raised be used to help the Austin chapter of Mobile Loaves & Fishes.  It was a huge success and we had the privilege of assembling a stack of cards worth $490 to be used in support of the mission of Mobile Loaves & Fish in serving the homeless and impoverished people in Austin.

We been able to give to over 50 individuals and organizations in the past year alone, but it still amazes us when we can see money that would typically be unused, floating in people’s junk drawers and purses, brought together to achieve something good and worthwhile.

Please consider helping us, by having a card party or becoming a card shark, or simply sharing our message with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.  We couldn’t do all this without you.

No, this isn’t what you might be thinking.  Gift Card Giver’s new mission isn’t to fund raise by beating the house in Vegas.  Our mission is to do more with the excess that there is in this country on unused gift cards. We want to make it easier for people to get those cards in our hands so that we can put them in the hands of people in need.

We need friends (like you) to volunteer to be a “Card Shark.” We’ve designed these nifty giving jars and have already been dreaming of all the places our card sharks can use them:  at your office on your desk or in a break room, at your local coffee shop, even at your next family gathering.  The possibilities are endless and for people who might have cards to give, this makes the process as easy as dropping the card in the jar.

You take it from there.  Card Sharks can monitor their jars and send in stacks of cards as the jars fill.  Same address as always: Gift Card Giver P.O. Box 17920, Atlanta GA 30316.

If you’re in, suggested donations to “play” are $10 to cover our shipping costs.  Just email info@giftcardgiver.com with your address and we’ll mail you a giving jar with all the details.

Sometimes despite good intentions our efforts don’t pan out the way we’d hope.  Our bloggers at Plywood People have often explored this topic of how we set and modify our expectations.

Here is a reminder for you: Whatever you set out to achieve, where you end will most certainly be a better place than you were.   Even when we suffer the worst possible failure: The ones that actually make us feel as though we’ve stepped backward. We’ve learned lessons and can turn our mistakes into opportunities the next time. It’s like switchbacks on a hiking trail.  Sometimes they can make you feel as though you aren’t making any forward progress at all, but each step does move us further when we think of the big picture.

We’ve had our share of lack-luster results here at Gift Card Giver and we know our supporters have sometimes felt that their best laid plans don’t net much when compared with what they had hoped for.

This week I was able to send Hope Now Transition Centers $60 in Target gift cards.   This organization was the designated recipient of cards from a card party held earlier this year.  I know that $60 might not seem like a stellar turn out but I do know that to the people and organizations we send cards to, every dollar counts.

Never let the results of your efforts limit what you do going forward, modify your expectations and try again.  The people we want to help depend on this.

We just got an awesome envelope in the mail today with gift cards in it from a friend in North Carolina.  He was wearing his Gift Card Giver T-shirt at an event and people asked him what it was about.   He was able to send us a stack of cards from that simple conversation.

We have lots of great T-shirts available and people are always saying how comfortable they are.  So what are you waiting for?

On a Sunday earlier this year, the folks at Freedom House Church in Charlotte, NC shared with their congregation the idea behind Gift Card Giver.  When the offering plate was passed, people were encouraged to donate unused or partially used gift cards.  Over $600 was collected.  The church then sent us the cards and we are working to “transfer” them into cards that can be used by the church to support the work they do.  The cards that were donated by the people in the church might not have been the right “match” for the needs of the church, but we can swap them for cards in our inventory that will be useful.

If you attend church or are part of a similar organization, would you be willing to share with your group the story of Gift Card Giver?  Then ask the people that you gather with if they have cards that are sitting around with balances left on them.  We want this idea to spread so that we can begin to do more good with the unused money on gift cards in our country.  Did we mention that amount is in the billions?  All we need is for people to know that there is a way they can put that money to use and we’ve seen that time and time again people are eager to do just that.

We are so excited about Project Live Love and their up-coming service event on July 7th, 2012.  The focus of the project is described as a place for people motivated by love for others to act and influence culture through those actions.  Their quarterly events are service opportunities, where many different service projects are organized and completed by volunteers who have joined the mission of this organization.  They’ve built kitchens, served meals, repainted buildings, and more.  All for people in need of love.

At their upcoming project, they will also be collecting gift cards for us.  Asking their volunteers to bring along a gift card gives them another way to act on their desire to care for others.

If you are in the Atlanta area and want to join the project for their event on July 7th, visit their website at the link above, but if you can’t and still want to send in a gift card, please mail them to us at:

Gift Card Giver
PO Box 17920
Atlanta, GA 30316

Statistics show that up to 10% of the money given on gift cards is never used.  Let’s put that wasted potential to good use by giving it to others in need.

Thanks so much Project LIVE LOVE! Keep up the great work.

Back in February, Mount Eaton Church in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania had gathering with their young adults to collect gift cards.  The group, called The Ave, meets regularly to support one another, but wanted to dedicate an evening to helping Gift Card Giver.

The idea behind donating gift cards is that anyone can do it.  It’s pretty safe to say that almost all of us have been given a gift card at one time or another and many of us have had random balances left on those cards that we wonder if we’ll ever use.  Also, many of us would like to give money to charities and non-profits that we care about, but can’t just break out the checkbook to donate a significant amount of money.  This is where Gift Card Giver is working to marry those two realities in order to give non-profits, charities, and individuals in need access to money that is generally wasted.

But back to what Mount Eaton Church did with this idea.  They collected gift cards at their gathering by telling people about the idea.  People responded and we were blown away by their generosity.  The stack of gift cards arrived and immediately went to filling our waiting requests from people in need.  It feels wonderful to be able to put the gift cards back in the mail to people as that is how we can best honor what we’ve been entrusted to do.

Our commitment here at Gift Card Giver always has been that we will not use the money for ourselves, but will see it put in the hands of people who are in need. This is a grass roots campaign that has created a new form of giving and you are an important piece to the idea coming to life.  On behalf of all the individuals and organizations we give to, thank you for contributing.