Question: Are there candy shops or other local stores near you that you could tell about the Operation Gratitude Excess Halloween Candy effort underway?
We need some good ideas on how to let your local candy shops and other stores selling Halloween goods know about the Operation Gratitude Excess Halloween Candy effort that’s currently underway.
You can read all about it here.
Operation Gratitude is an organization in Van Nuys, California that’s collecting any excess Halloween candy that people may have and is packing it up to send to our troops overseas in care packages. Since Halloween is next Monday, there’s sure to be a great deal of candy leftover in stores that people didn’t purchase.
I’d like to think of a way to approach store owners and let them know that they can donate this candy to Operation Gratitude if they don’t want this candy to just sit in remainder bins come November.
I’d also love to think of a way to let parents know about Operation Gratitude so they can have the option of sending off a portion of their children’s Trick or Treating take if they don’t want their kids to keep all the candy they get over the coming weekend. Some people squirrel bags of Halloween candy away for enjoyment throughout the year, which is a great way to handle that sudden infusion of treats at the end of October. But other people don’t want to keep that much candy in the house as a temptation…so keeping a portion for the kids to eat and then sending the rest off to Operation Gratitude might be a great new way to handle this issue.
I think it might be a good idea to make up little palm cards to hand out in your neighborhood (or even drop in Trick or Treaters’ bags with the candy you hand out on Halloween night) with the Operation Gratitude information on it so that people know they can send candy to our troops when Halloween is over.
Palm cards are great to take with you if you’re going for a walk. It’s really easy to hand these out to people or slip them into people’s mailboxes as you are walking through your neighborhoods. I’m going with my friend Althea this weekend as she takes her kids to a few Halloween events and plan on passing out cards for Operation Gratitude. I’ll post a JPEG of the palm card I create so you can use them too if you’d like.
Can you think of any way to let others on a national level know about the Operation Gratitude Excess Halloween Candy effort?
Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could help trigger a coast to coast flood of candy to benefit our troops once Halloween was over?
I really love this program, and love the idea of making it a Halloween tradition every year going forward. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, but I just did not feel like dressing up as anything this year and am not inclined to go to any Halloween parties or anything…but I feel this Operation Gratitude effort is a fun way for be to do something Halloween-y in a whole new way.
What think you?
© 2011, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
Also Recommended:
- Operation Gratitude gearing up for big Thanksgiving weekend thank you to our troops
- OPERATION GRATITUDE – We’re still here. Because they are still there.
- Operation Gratitude Launches “Batallion Buddies” Program
- What is “Operation Gratitude” and how can people support the troops in their own unique way?
- The Megan Fox Radio Show — Indoctrination in Schools and How to Help Operation Gratitude
Latest Buzz:
Help HillBuzz by Shopping Amazon
"Bee" Advised!
I look forward to your comments. Please follow these simple guidelines:
- Please do not complain about your comment not yet showing up
- Stay on topic of the article ("This is OT, but..." = bad!)
- I will STING if you troll, spam, bait, swear or attack someone
Excess candy? I've never heard of such a thing! Sorry, that was my first reaction to the title.
Really, for stores the “excess” is about the packaging of the candy. Customers won’t buy the Halloween stuff in November because they think it is old and Halloween is over. The stuff can’t be stored for sale for next year, it would go bad, especially the chocolate. So that’s what the excess is.
Also, it’s excess if families bought a lot of candy to give out on Halloween…but they bought too much and are the kind of people who don’t want to have all that candy in the house. I’m like that myself…because if it’s in the house somewhere, late at night I will decide it’s a great idea to eat it. So I am careful what’s in the house. A little candy is okay. But if there are bags and bags of it, I will end up eating it and regret it later.
Looking back on when I was a trick or treater, I remember dumping out the bag at the end of the night. There was way too much candy there. If I had a kid today, I think I would let him pick out the stuff he really really liked and make a small “keep” pile out of the big pile. Then I would take the rest and ship it to Op Grat along with whatever discounted candy I could find at the stores.
I actually really love looking for great deals. It’s a hobby and a sport. So, I’m very excited to be on the lookout for discounted candy to send to Op Grat after Halloween is over. It will be a fun project for the first week of November for me.
I know. I was just kidding. It is a great project. Anything that will help the troops.
I'm not sure but I think that it isn't legal to put anyting into mailboxes. I love the idea of the palm cards though, Kevin. Thanks for your incredible support of Operation Gratitude!
See — I get things in our mailbox here all the time. I know it’s not legal for candidates to put things in mailboxes because we were trained not to do that back in 2008 on the campaign…but I don’t think a palm card the size of a business card would break any laws.
The palm card is so small — smaller than a postcard — that there’s no way for it to be mailed with a stamp. The USPS would not deliver it. It’s just a business card size.
So there’s no way for the USPS to be losing money on this, by this being hand delivered and not mailed.
What I really wanted to tell people to do was to just put the card in the door seam, so people would see it when they come home…but then I would have been criticized for telling people to put something on someone’s door. You have no idea how hard it is some times with this stuff, since there are people who actually sit and wait every day for me to write something that they can twist to complain about. It’s really exhausting always having to think and rethink whatever I write to avoid those attacks from my dedicated cyberstalkers.
The Catch 22 is that people won’t think to help a group like Op Grat if I don’t write about it and spell out exactly — to the simplest detail — how to do something, but in spelling things out I run that risk of the cyberstalkers on the Left and in the Cocktail Party finding some way to attack me for it. It is an endless and constant challenge for me.
But, honestly, the only benefit I see in keeping HB going is to have this platform to encourage volunteerism and to get people to see that they can get involved and make a difference. That is the only reason I keep writing and keep pouring everything I have into this…for that chance to get people involved. Typically, all I see is grief for doing this, but if I can get 1000 people out there to send a bag of candy in, then it’s worth it.
Man, I wish was around when I was a kid. My dad was a trick-or-treating maniac and we always ended up with bags and bags full of candy and we could never get through it all. Sending it to the troops would have been a much better use of it. Plus, trick-or-treating would take on a greater significance if we were collecting something to send to our troops. I posted this link on my Facebook page – I've got lots of friends with little kids.