Postcrossing Blog

Stories about the Postcrossing community and the postal world

Viewing posts tagged "charity" View all

  icon

Advent time is here already and the holidays are inching closer by the day… so it’s time to get our yearly campaign with Deutsche Post back online, to make sure your postcards count for a good cause! This will be the fourth year we run this campaign and by now I guess most of you know how it goes, but just in case:

For every postcard sent from Germany through Postcrossing during the month of December, Deutsche Post will make a donation of €0.10 to the non-profit organization Stiftung Lesen (Reading Foundation).

So if you’re in Germany, all you have to do is send postcards, as many as you can! If your December postcards are registered before the end of February 2017, you’ll be contributing to this cause.

Although only postcards sent from Germany count, there’s always a receiver in every postcard exchange — so each time a card from Germany is registered, the recipient will be indirectly contributing to this donation as well!

To make things even more interesting, there will also be some nice prizes for the participants:

Nice, right? The winners will be picked by Paulo's random number generator in early March 2017, at which point we will also announce the value raised by the German postcrossers to Stiftung Lesen here on the blog. Every year, we’ve been raising a little bit more than the previous year, and last year the total was a very impressive €8,857… but can we do even better this year? 😊

Stiftung Lesen

Stiftung Lesen is a German non-profit organization, working to increase literacy in the population, especially among children and adolescents. Their activities include reading clubs and projects to promote the learning of German language by refugee families in the country.

So… what are you waiting for? If you’re in Germany, get your postcards and stamps ready for December! The more cards you send, the more you’ll contribute — and the more chances you’ll have of winning a voucher, stamps or one of those nifty messenger bags! 😍

132dccd41673066e1c95e38e29004d0b

P.S. – As always, we respect your personal information and will not share it with any company without your explicit permission. The full details of this campaign can be read here (German only).

  icon

Receiving lots of mail definitely has its perks, and one of them is all the pretty stamps you get from all over the world. I carefully cut them off envelopes and end up stashing them somewhere, waiting for that one person who collects stamps, or for the inspiration for a crafty project to strike. Sadly, most of the time they just end up forgotten, waiting for Marie Kondo to come around and ask whether they spark joy…

Bethel stamp initiative

But they can bring joy! Patrick (aka patric) from Germany brought Bethel’s stamp initiative to our attention and we wanted to share it with you, in case you’d like to make your stamps work for a good cause. Here’s Patrick, explaining the concept:

Some time ago, I became aware of the Bethel charity here in Germany. They have a simple concept: the charity employs 125 adults with different handicaps. Members of the public make donations by sending in stamps. New stamps, old stamps, German stamps, foreign stamps… The workers there open the incoming mail and sort the different types of stamps into categories. These are then weighed and put into packages and are sold to dealers and collectors. Because of the stamps being sold by weight, they have the name “kiloware”. Believe it or not, the charity gets 400 shipments a day! That is 29 tons a year!"

Simple, right? You too can help Bethel thrive! Make a pile of stamps, or set up a collection box in your office or somewhere people might contribute. When it’s full, send it to:

Briefmarkenstelle Bethel
Quellenhofweg 25
33617 Bielefeld
GERMANY

And that’s it! Bringing joy and cleaning up in one fell swoop… Marie Kondo would be proud!

tags: ,

  icon

February is finally behind us, and it’s time we announce how many cards were sent from Germany last December… and of course how much money they raised on the Postcards for a good cause campaign!

Ready? Go on, think of a number and then scroll down to find out!

Building a postcard
Brilliant handmade postcard by Speicher3 and Reisegern.

Postcrossers in Germany sent 88570 postcards during December, raising a total of €8857 for Stiftung Lesen! That’s a record! 😀

Congratulations to all the postcrossers and a huge thank you to Deutsche Post, for committing to this cause. What a brilliant number… you really outdid yourselves this year!

As usual, it will take us a couple of days to sort out the prizes. We’ll get in touch with all the winners via email soon.

  icon

December is just around the corner, which means it’s time to dress Postcrossing up for the holidays, and to launch our yearly campaign with Deutsche Post to make your postcards count for a good cause! By now you know the drill, so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, we’re proud to announce that…

For every postcard sent from Germany through Postcrossing during the month of December, Deutsche Post will make a donation of €0.10 to the non-profit organization Stiftung Lesen (Reading Foundation).

So if you’re in Germany, all you have to do is keep sending postcards! If your December postcards are registered before the end of February 2016, you’ll be contributing to this cause.

And though only postcards sent from Germany count, there’s always a receiver in every postcard exchange — so each time a card from Germany is registered, the recipient will be indirectly contributing to this donation as well!

To make things even more interesting, there will also be some nice prizes for the participants:

The winners will be picked up by Paulo's random number generator in early March 2016, at which point we will also announce the value raised by the German postcrossers to Stiftung Lesen here on the blog. Last year, we broke our 2014 record and raised a very impressive total of €8,382.40… can we do even better this year? 😀 Stiftung Lesen

Stiftung Lesen is a German non-profit organization, working to increase literacy – especially among children and adolescents. They promote reading through several different activities, such as the “My first letter” contest.

So… what are you waiting for? If you’re in Germany, grab a pen and your stack of postcards and stamps, and start writing some postcards! The more cards you send, the more you’ll contribute to this cause – and the more chances you’ll have of winning a nice prize! :)

Waiting for Santa...

P.S. – As always, we respect your private information and will not share it with any company without your express permission. The full details of this campaign can be read here (German only).

  icon

February is over and the results from 2014's Postcrossing & Deutsche Post’s campaign are in!

Curious to find out how many postcards were sent from Germany last December? Think of a number and scroll down!

Postcrossers in Germany sent 83,824 postcards during December, raising a total of €8,382.40 for Stiftung Lesen! Hurray! :D

Congratulations to all the postcrossers and a big thank you to Deutsche Post, for making this possible! What a fantastic achievement — we are so, so proud of all of you!

We are still sorting out the prizes and will be in touch with the winners via email soon.