St. Jude’s: Keep those cards coming

Heather Rawlyk

Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2003 | 11:24 a.m.

Donations welcomed

Anyone wishing to donate greeting cards or soup labels can mail them to St. Jude's Ranch, P.O. Box 60100, Boulder City, NV 89006.

The cards must be a size that can be trimmed to fit a 5-inch by 7-inch back. St. Jude's Ranch cannot use cards that have writing on the front.

For information, call 296-7100.

Since Christmas Day, St. Jude's Ranch in Boulder City has been swamped with hundreds of phone calls and e-mails from people all over the nation who wanted to know why the ranch wasn't accepting donations of used holiday cards this year.

For more than 30 years, St. Jude's has sought donations of used greeting cards of all types. The decorative fronts of the cards are used to make new cards that are then sold to benefit St. Jude's and the children who live there -- children who come from backgrounds of abuse, abandonment and neglect.

During an episode of NBC's "Today" that was broadcast on Christmas Day, however, one of the hosts said she believed St. Jude's was no longer accepting the cards.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

"I called them and I was pretty upset," Becki Powell, St. Jude's director of community relations, said. "We need to let people know that we still want those cards and we're still kickin'."

The recycled greeting card program has long been -- and will continue to be -- an integral part of the ranch's operations, Powell said.

"We get donated cards from all over the world," she said. "Most people know who we are because of the program. It's very important to us."

The recycled cards are part of St. Jude's "Learn to Earn" program, which aims to break the cycle of welfare dependency by helping children develop a positive work ethic, Powell said.

"It supports the kids at the ranch because they get a stipend for each card they make," she said. "It's less of a fund-raiser than a job. It's been very popular, especially since the 1980s and we want it to stay."

In the late 1980s information about the program was incorporated into Dear Abby columns and that spread the word about the program worldwide, Bill Finley of St. Jude's Ranch said.

Powell said more than 1 million cards already have been donated this year.

"We still have quite an inventory of already made cards," she said. "But we still love to get them and the kids still love to make them."

"It's traditional that the kids make these cards and for some people it's tradition to buy them."

The greeting cards can be purchased in the St. Jude's Ranch gift shop in packs or individually, Powell said. Packs of the cards also can be purchased over the Internet on the St. Jude's Ranch website, www.stjudesranch.org.

The greeting cards cover all occasions, including Christmas, Hanukkah, Easter, birthday, get well, sympathy and thank you notes, Powell said.

"We're happy to get all kinds of cards," she said. "Any old cards people have, we'd love to get them and recycle them."

Old greeting cards aren't the only thing St. Jude's Ranch is collecting.

Since May, St. Jude's has been collecting Campbell's soup labels as part of the Campbell's Labels for Education program.

The program seems to work. St. Jude's recently turned in more than 1 million Campbell's labels and in exchange, on Monday, received a new 2004 Dodge Grand Caravan.