Clearwater, FL, 7 November 2007 – When a PostcardMania employee first heard about US 103.5’s Postcards From Home Tampa Bay program, she got an idea for the company to participate – PostcardMania, after all, is a direct mail postcard marketing firm. That employee (Lisa Switzer, a former Army medic) got her Christmas wish. PostcardMania’s CEO, Joy Gendusa, offered to design and print 50,000 direct mail holiday postcards for US Troops stationed overseas during the holiday season. She put her company’s pro-bono division in charge of the project.
That was in 2006. This year, the tradition continues with PostcardMania designing and printing 75,000 holiday postcards for the military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Postcards From Home program, sponsored by US 103.5 and radio personality Skip Mahaffey, has been instrumental in sending out over 150,000 holiday postcards from listeners to troops overseas over the past seven years. With PostcardMania’s help, they have been able to send many more.
According to About.com there are over 170,000 American Troops in Iraq alone. Since the majority soldiers overseas will not be home this holiday season, the Postcards From Home Tampa Bay program encourages its citizens to relay their encouragement and gratitude by sending a personal note to these soldiers via a holiday postcard. The 75,000 postcards PostcardMania printed are a series of holiday designs that are blank on the back side for citizens to write their messages on.
These postcards get our military personnel through a very lonely holiday season, said Joy Gendusa. We’re proud to be the direct mail firm that has stepped up and offered to help.
Since this program began Gendusa says that PostcardMania continues to be contacted to print postcards for other military support organizations such as the Multi-National Force- Iraq and USO Georgia – one of which they won an award for.