Perhaps you have witnessed the amazing exposure that we have been receiving over the last few weeks. What started out with a local newspaper interview led to a different radio station featuring us as their “feel-good story of the week”. This in turn is where the proverbial dominoes began to topple and before we knew it, BuzzFeed did a compilation video on us, UpWorthy did a piece, The Mighty proved incredibly lucrative and before we could scoot a box of crayons out of the way, NBC Nightly News contacted us as well as Canada and Europe. We had gone viral! Our social media channels blew up our numbers/response times remain impressive.

One of the unforeseen snags in this whole experience has been generating support from each level of need. Literally overnight, we had groups forming all over the country, and beyond, to collect crayons and send them to us, which is amazing. We have even had people offering to help sort and melt, but the one thing that has been steady is that we continue to feed our dream out of our personal home, melting in our personal kitchen and storing crayons in our personal garage.

The support and supply line is starting to outgrow our capacity. To take the next logical step in our growth, maximize our reach to the kids in hospitals and move in tandem with the outpouring of physical support, we need corporate sponsorship. This set us to wondering how and why would corporations donate to non-profits that clearly have the attention of millions of people.

Why They Donate

Many companies contribute out of a combination of altruism and self-interest, and it is nearly impossible to determine where one leaves off and the other begins. The attitudes of top management more than any other factor seem to impact the giving philosophies of corporations. Often the personal lives of the people in charge play a major role and the philanthropic arm reaches out through their teams to find a message that rings in them viscerally. Other reasons they give have a more bottom-line effect and involve the image factor of the company that is going to be represented, such as:

• Influence legislators and other opinion makers.
• Build better public and community relations.
• Improve the quality of life in the geographic locales in which they operate. (Cleaner, safer, better-educated communities are good for business.)

This was all extremely interesting to us, and as we continue to grow (some days at an alarming rate) we look to learn as we seek other to help us expand. The bottom line is that we are very interested in sharing our growth and are certainly ready to do so. With the amount of volunteers out there actively collecting and the amount of children in need of our crayons in hospitals around the world, the time is now! Are you interested in taking us to the next level? Contact us simply by filling out this form or connect with us on Facebook or Twitter.