My Monthly Charity July 2008 will be the Fight Crime: Invest in Kids organization. This is a national non-profit organization focused on crime prevention by educating kids. Fight Crime: Invest in Kids is run by top law enforcement officials including police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, other law enforcement leaders and violence survivors.

“America must cut the pipeline that funnels young people into lives of crime and violence. We take a hard-nosed look at research on what keeps kids from becoming criminals and put that information in the hands of policy-makers and the public.”

The organization focuses on 4 areas in achieving it’s goals including:

• Early education programs – educating prekindergarten kids to put them on the right path helps prevent them from becoming a criminal.
• Child abuse and neglect prevention – promoting better parenting through early education for new parents along home visiting programs to prevent abuse and neglect.
• After-school programs – research has shown that the after school time from 2pm – 6pm is known as the “prime time for juvenile crimes” where an estimated 14 million kids are unsupervised during that time frame. Offering supervised programs during that critical time helps prevent kids from committing crimes.
• Intervention with troubled kids – through close supervision and interventions this helps keep kids from committing criminal acts.

Fight Crime: Invest in Kids has a great mission with lots of research and facts to back up their strategy to fighting crime. If there are changes that need to be made to prevent crime, investing in kids is the perfect approach to the problem. Kids are the future and it’s the best investment out there for a better future.

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I know this is really late but I’m making it up because I missed it for the month of June and will do my July charity soon too as the month comes to a close.

For the June 2008 charity I have selected the Cell Phones for Soldiers program. This charity focuses on getting people to send in their used cell phones for recycling to raise money for calling cards for troops overseas.

“Cell Phones for Soldiers hopes to turn old cell phones into more than 12 million minutes of prepaid calling cards for U.S. troops stationed overseas in 2008. To do so, Cell Phones for Soldiers expects to collect 15,000 cell phones each month through a network of more than 3,000 collection sites across the country.”

This is a great charity that was started by siblings Robbie and Brittany Bergquist when they were 12 and 13 years old in Norwell, Mass in 2004. They started with the goal of helping soldiers overseas call home and now they have grown into a major 501c3 non-profit organization that has raised over 1 million dollars in donations and sent more than 400,000 prepaid calling cards to soldiers overseas. As cell phones for soldiers grows they have continued plans to raise more money and expand the program to help soldiers communicate with their families.

I have a few used cell phones lying around that I plan on donating to Cell Phones for Soldiers. Donating your used cell phone doesn’t cost you anything either. You have the option to drop it off at over 3000 drop off locations in the US or print a prepaid shipping label. It’s simple and free you just got to take a couple of simple actions and you’d be helping troops call home.

I love the idea behind this charity and it’s simplicity. There are tons of used cell phones out there and simply donating something you don’t need anymore can help our troops overseas keep in touch with family back home. It’s amazing what these kids have started and I commend them on their great idea with continued success on helping soldiers overseas.

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I posted about the Plum Card a little while back about how much Pure Adapt has been benefiting from it and it just got a better. After receiving an email about some Plum Card member benefits I had to take advantage of getting listed on the Plum Card website. I submitted the necessary information and instantly Pure Adapt Inc was on the Plum Card website, how freaking cool is that. Along with all the other Plum Card members, you get to have a card on the website that says your company name and card holder name(click screen shot below). I see those Plum Card commercials all the time and it makes giddy knowing that we use the Plum Card just like those companies do. Then I think we’d be perfect for those commercials. The Plum Card has really been the perfect card for us and we’ve definitely reaped the benefits of all it has to offer to us. I want to thank American Express for this amazing card. The Plum Card is one kick ass business card.

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It was a busy end of the month for me and I didn’t get to do my Monthly Charity for June 2008. I will get to the monthly charity soon and make up for it by doing 2 posts about charities for July.

Anyways a quick update on what’s been going. Detailed Image has been on a roll and a minor shift in strategy for Tastefully Driven the company is growing and moving in the right direction. Good things are happening as we see sales growing for both sites and Monday’s have been full of packing and shipping for all 4 owners. Check out the picture on Adam’s Blog of all the boxes we shipped this Monday.

At the end of the month I worked a lot on getting the New Detailed Image homepage up and running. The new design gets more information above the fold with a fresh new look and some SEO things in mind. Once the new design was up, at least from my experience there’s always some problem that needs attention, so throughout the day of the launch I was fixing little things here and there.

Adam, thanks for the compliments on your post about the Detailed Image Home Page Redesign. We’ve all made long strides from where we were a couple years ago. Everything everyone’s done, we’ve made a lot of progress individually and as a company.

The other thing I’ve been working on has been newsletters for both websites. The recent Summer Newsletter we sent out for DI seem to be very effective in a short 10 day period and I’ve been having a blast designing them and seeing them work. It does take time to prep and send out a newsletter, but I think I’m getting the process down and getting more efficient with every newsletter sent out.

I will get my Monthly Charity out soon and go enjoy the nice weather summer has to offer, I’m out.

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