A special welcome to newbies to OWH! This page contains the basics...please browse our main webpage, our three blogs (Homefront, Hero, Stars and Stamps); if you have questions, it's easy to join us on our Facebook page or chat on our Forum....lots of our community are available to help!
Shipping addresses are ---here!-----
Operation Write Home's Mission: To support our nation’s armed forces by sending blank greeting cards to write home on, as well as cards of gratitude to encourage them.
How the project works
The simple version: you send your handmade cards to a shipper, they process them and ship them out! You don't need to "sign up" or become a "member" or anything—just get started!
The basic guidelines:
- No glitter. Seriously. It's a hazard for our heroes, so we won't send cards with any glitter that will flake off the card. Read more.
- A2 sized cards. Most efficient for our shipping dollars, so we strongly recommend A2 (4.25" x 5.5" - half a sheet of cardstock). Read more.
- No storebought. Yep, pretty straightforward. Our heroes don't like them, so we send them our cards filled with love and creativity! Read more.
- Watch the deadlines. We have to mail cards 5-6 weeks ahead of a holiday, so check out the deadlines posted on our homepage, on the left side. Those are the very last last last dates, so aim for a couple weeks earlier if at all possible, since we start shipping 8 weeks ahead.
- Any quantity. One card to 100 to 500 — every card matters! We recommend emphasizing quality over quantity...relax, do your best, and pour lots of love into each card!
- Packing Slip. Download this handy packing slip and write in your contact info and quantity—the shipper will be able to email you to let you know your cards arrived. If you haven't heard back you can also check the Thankful Thursday post each week to see if they've arrived. Our shippers get lots of packages every day, so please give them some grace in getting back to you.
- Stamp the backs of your cards. We put "Operation Write Home" on the back of every card so families at home know how their hero received such a work of art to write home on. You can order your own stamp; you can handwrite "Operation Write Home"; you can make a label; or have your own stamp made at your local office supply store. Listing your own information (name, email, blog, hometown) on the back of the card is fine, we just add OWH to it. .
- Sort your cards by theme. It's especially helpful if you flag which cards are for a holiday; if we get a vast number of cards at once, we may need to just pull out the holiday ones right away to ship them, and we don't want to miss yours.
- Learn "the tuck." If you are including envelopes (some people prefer to include a donation for envelopes instead, and leave the labor to our shippers), the tuck is very helpful if your cards are already stamped. If they are not yet stamped, leave them entirely outside the envelopes. Check out the mailroom video below for more info on the tuck.
- Include a donation. Small or large, cash or check, every bit helps! Please paperclip it to your Packing Slip to be sure your check doesn't sneak off to Afghanistan by accident.
- Limit multiples. Some folks like to make a lot of one design. While that's fine, it becomes a biggg problem in one particular instance: holiday cards. If you want to make a lot of those (over 30), please send them 8 weeks ahead (or more). That allows us to mix them into the most boxes; we often end up with 100 of one design arriving the last week, and if most of those holiday boxes had already been sent in weeks prior, those multiples will have to wait til next year.
- Envelopes: To send or not to send? You may send them, but you can also send cards without. The pros and cons are for you to weigh: sending envelopes costs you a little more, but saves our shippers loads of work if the cards are already tucked properly.....not sending envelopes may mean you'll get more cards into your box, which is great, and just means extra labor for our shippers (read this to learn about our OWH "envelope math"); most people include a donation toward envelopes and shipping. We purchase envelopes by the thousands: click to see the scale!
- Package them up. Boxes, envelopes? Quantities? It matters not, however you wish to pack them up is fine, but you may want to check for the cheapest way to ship them to us. [read more]
Watch our Mailroom video to see a little of what it takes for our shippers to process your cards:
Staying out of the card hospital
Our shippers each have a "Card Hospital" where cards in need of help rest til the shipper has time for triage. That may be a while, so if you 'd like to be sure your cards end up on shipping shelves quickly and not in quarantine, here's a checklist:
- No glitter. Stickles sometimes don't stick - if sparkle comes off, we can't send it.
- Dark card bases without liners.
- Cards not stamped on the back.
- Orphan embellishments. Buttons, ribbons, alphabet stickers, papers, and other pieces that aren't glued down well can fall off and need to be reattached...we regularly find bits of cards lying around and have no idea where they came from! Remember, OWH cards won't be treated with kid gloves, so be sure they're stable. Many times they come off because of gluesticks or cheap tape runners that let go; other times, it's because of using too little adhesive.
- "Sneeze." Imagine, if you will, unrelated stickers, foamies, or stamps scattered randomly on a piece of cardstock. Often these kinds of cards are done by children and are just fine (please have the kids write their names on the back and write a note inside! Our heroes LOVE mail from kids). But many times we get hundreds of cards at a time that clearly put quantity above quality - these cards end up in the hospital to have some ribbon, patterned paper, or embellishments added. We know that the cards that show attention to detail are selected quickly, and we fix them up so our heroes don't leave these for last in the bottom of a box! (Note! Simple cards are fine — in fact they often help us get more in a box because they're not half an inch thick! We're talking about randomly scattered elements on these.)
- Inappropriate themes. Remember that our heroes are grown adults sending cards home; so anything with a sentiment for "daddy" from a child is not appropriate. Nor is "our new home," "wish you were here," or "we're pregnant." We occasionally get skull and crossbones on cards, especially toward Halloween - and we ask that you avoid death imagery.
- Special note: A thick embellishment that's held on by a glue dot seems to have a tendency to grab onto another card (a corner slips between the embellishment and cardstock), and starts yanking at whatever paper it comes in contact with. These kinds of embellishments have been known to destroy a card next to itself. Please be sparing with thick embellishments, since they have a really hard time surviving the postal system anyway; and make certain that adhesive is completely beneath your button or ribbon and none sticks out. Cards that just have ONE thick embellishment (particular offender: a single button) seem to cause this problem more often than cards that have a more even distribution of thickness.
Do you need more shippers?
At this time, no; when we've had more shippers in the past, we've not been able to assemble boxes fast enough to meet our heroes' needs. Themes got divided so one didn't have any birthday, or another was out of a holiday, etc. Three seems to work fairly well right now.
Got a quick question? Email us!
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