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A Sad Farewell
In April 2011, Coups For Troops sent their first box of coupons overseas, under the director of the founder, Stephanie Almasy. After a few years, due to family commitment, Stephanie Lener stepped up from a volunteer to the Director, taking CFT to new heights and expanding the coupon shipments to over 14 counties. In early 2015, Stephanie asked me to follow in her footsteps to step up from a volunteer to the newest Director. One of the first goals I had was to get Coups For Troops recognized as a 501c3 non-profit charity. In October 2015, we received that distinction.
Since that time, the organization has served thousands of military families on every continent, with the support of tens of thousands of donors. Based on the feedback from our families, we save a military family on average over $1,500 per year with the coupons that are sent. We have seen military families transfer overseas and then back to stateside, donors come and then go as their situation changes.
Store loyalty cards were introduced here Stateside. We have seen online printable and digital coupons come along, and then online coupons being loaded directly onto the store loyalty card. Over the last 2.5 years, we have watched a steady decline in the number of coupons that come in the newspaper. We have been in dire need of additional donors for over a year, getting more requests from military families wanting to receive coupons than we can possibly fill. We made the incredibly difficult decision in October 2019 to not accept any additional military families, and to focus on just providing for the families to whom we had already committed. We hoped when making this decision that we would continue to add donors and be able to accept new military families again. Unfortunately, we continued to lose donors. Our existing donors email us saying they are receiving less coupons via newspapers and the mail. During this time, we also see cases of counterfeit printable coupons, to the point that some overseas commissaries will not accept home printed coupons. Thus, reducing the number of coupons available to be sent overseas. We receive information from our military families that because of the reduced number of coupons they are receiving, the usefulness of those has been cut to a quarter. In several cases, the family reports that what used to save them over a $100 per month, is now saving them $10-20. With the Covid-19 virus, we are also having donors tell us that due to family situations, they can no longer afford to send coupons. The number of donors asking to be removed and their families reassigned greatly outnumbers new donors joining our ranks.
It’s with heavy heart that I must announce that the CFT, Inc charity and Coups For Troops will be discontinuing service. We encourage existing donors to continue to send coupons to your families if possible. We encourage military families to communicate with their donors as to rather they want to continue receiving coupons. Please military families tell your donors if you are returning Stateside or if your situation changes. Over the next month, we will be seeking out another 501c3 charity that has a similar mission of supporting active duty military families. Any outstanding funds will be gifted to that charity. This is a sad day for us, but we are happy to be able to support another charity to continue our mission.
Thank you for the support, for the service to our country and the friendship. We had a wonderful 9 years of serving our military families.
Signed,
Lisa Bowers
Steven Long
Michael Miley
COVID-19 & Current Status
Hello Donors and Military Families!
Thank you for your patience during our silence. Our organization has been working to support our military families stationed overseas. It hurts us to not be able to accept new families, but weekly we receive word of another donor who is not able to continue due to financial and family changes or just lack of coupons to send.
Like the entire world, we are seeing some affects from the COVID-19 pandemic. We have seen donors tell us that they had been purchasing the Sunday paper for coupons, but can no longer do so. Donors telling us that they no longer have the disposable income to send the coupons. Military Families are telling us that the coupons they receive are less useful, as less food coupons are appearing in the newspapers / inserts. We are also hearing that packages larger than a standard (size 10) envelopes are being held up in shipment, causing some boxes of coupons to take 6-8 weeks to arrive to the military families.
The one blessing in this pandemic, thus far, is we have not received any word of family or donors lost due to this virus. Thank God for that!
As we stand today, we will continue to support our current matches. Pam Drigger has decided to step back, to focus on her family needs during this time. She has been the driving force behind CFT, so she is going to be greatly missed. I will try to pick up her tasks, so be patience with me! I will not be able to fill her incredible shoes, but I will do my best.
If I can help, please send an email or use the contact form. I will answer all questions as quickly as possible.
Lisa
Director / Volunteer
Closed to new Military Families
Coups For Troops have always prided ourselves on being able to serve our Military Families as effectively as possible. For our military families, we have always striven to assign multiple donors to each military families, in order for them to receive a variety of coupons. We understand that each Donor is sending the unwanted and expired coupons after their family uses what they need, so by assigning multiples Donors, our military families are more likely to receive a boarder range of coupons for their family.
Unfortunately, we feel the affects of more digital coupons and less people receiving the weekly newspaper. Throughout our history, Coups For Troops has always managed to have enough available donors to at least assign 1-2 donors as a new Military Family signs up. Then we would work to add additional Donors as we meet the needs of those we serve.
Over the last few weeks, the volume of new Military Families to sign up have greatly surpassed the volume of new Donors joining our program. Our current donors are at their capacity and can’t spread their coupons to cover more Families. For this reason, we are closed to accepting new Military Families. We are still accepting and assigning new Donors to serve the existing and new Military Families. We currently have 17 families on the waiting list. Once we have cleared the waiting list, we will determine if we can meet the need of our Military Families. At this time, we would rather service the families we have properly. We never want a military family to be disappointed with the volume of coupons they receive from our supporters.
Thank you for your continued support. If you would like to donate coupons for our Military Families stationed overseas, please go to the Direct Mail page and sign up.
~Lisa
WE ARE BACK
Hello Everyone!! Our database is back up and running. Please bear with me while I play catch up. I will have everyone matched and emails answered ASAP. Thank you & Have a great day.
Patience Please
The CFT Database is down for unscheduled maintenance. Due to this, if you are waiting for a match either as a Direct Mail or Satellite, we are unable to do so right now. Please fill free to go to our satellite location page until our database is back up and running. We are hoping for it to be back up within a week. We are sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any questions please send us an email and we will get back to to you ASAP. Thank you for everyones support of our program we couldn’t do it without yall.
Friendly Reminder!!
Hello Everyone. Just a reminder: Some of our families are receiving coupons past the 6 month expiration date. Please remember that coupons need to be no more then 60 days expired when they are sent so our Military Families have a chance to receive and use the coupons before they hit the 6 month mark. Thank you for everyones support of our program we couldn’t do it without yall.
Director’s Note – Quality vs Quantity
Hi CFT Supporters & Military Families!
I know you all don’t hear from me nearly often enough! I am working on doing more of these blog posts to tell you about what’s going on with Coups For Troops! First, a HUGE shout out to Pam & Stephanie! I couldn’t do this without these 2 great ladies. They handle much much more of the operations of Coups For Troops than I do. So please next time you interact with them via Facebook or email, give them a huge virtual hug!
I thought we would talk a bit today about Quantity vs Quality when it comes to Coupon shipments. As our Donors know, we ask that when you sign up to commit to sending at least a standard (size 10) envelope every 4-6 weeks to your adopted military family. We purposefully assign multiple donors to each military families, in hopes that they receive a new batch of coupons every couple weeks. We, of course, encourage our donors to send beyond the expected to give the military families as many coupons as possible to use and share. If you are mailing to a Swap Group Coordinator, then we ask that you send a box of coupons monthly, if possible, as they often support and share coupons between several families. Some of our Swap Group Coordinators have as many as 100 families within their swap groups.
While we appreciate donors who want to send to several families, we also want to make sure they are using their funds as effective as possible. A size 10 envelope, with up to a full ounce of coupons will cost about 50 cents to mail to your adopted military family. If you sent 16 1-oz envelopes, it would cost $8.00 in postage. While a single 1 lb, 0 oz small package could be mailed for $7.35. If you move up to using an APO/FPO medium flat rate box, you can mail up to 30 lbs of coupons for $14.35. This is the size of boxes that I use, and I can normally get roughly 14 lbs of cut coupons before the box is full.
We want to encourage you to maximize your postage. So if you have any questions about your current assignments or how you can better use your postage, please reach out. Pam, Stephanie or I would be happy to answer your questions regarding this or any subject.
It is my intention to post an informative Director’s Note at least monthly. If you have a question or topic you would like me to cover, please let me know. I’m here to serve you.
Lisa