This past week marked the first families to receive flight confirmations for this year’s event. Not to worry, an email is going out to the families who have registered informing them in more detail about what to expect.  This marks the start of the final months leading up to our big event that begins on Dec 16th and runs through Dec 20th.

To answer the question in the subject line, it takes a lot of folks to make it happen. We have 15 Family Coordinators (mostly American Airline flight attendants) who have been contacting “their” families over the past 2 months and updating the databases for the families. Phone numbers change, families move and keeping that data up to speed is necessary so the next round of volunteers can do their job.

We next called upon a young man, Neil Raaz, a First Officer for American Airlines who mapped out on Google maps the exact location of every family in the US.  He used this information to determine the best routes for the American Airlines charters (up to six aircraft!) to fly to pick up the maximum number of families around the country.  Some cities from last year will be revisited but some will not.   Once we had those organized we then were able to assign the remaining families to the other carriers. 

We turn the next phase of flight reservations over to the experts at Southwest Airlines (Julrene), American Airlines (Jim), JetBlue Airways (Albert) and AirTran Airways (Stephanie).  We have reservations agents at each of these airlines volunteering their time to call the families and book their travel.  We’re very grateful to all of our airline carriers in their support but we’d be remiss to not say a special thanks to American Airlines for their doubling of their efforts in honoring these children. 

On a side not regarding American Airlines, they have 26 different veteran initiatives they sponsor. What makes their veteran initiatives so distinctive is they have brought their corporate partners to the table thereby allowing more groups to share in the experience of helping these men, women and families.  In less than one year Snowball Express has gone from not being on their radar scope to being their #1 veteran initiative program.  We’re blessed to have their support and all of the other corporations that have generously donated to our cause.

We also have another team that is helping us for the 2^nd year in booking reservations.  Jim and Jackie Sleter helped Snowball Express set up our own travel site for donors, families and others to visit that allow Snowball Express to earn money for flights booked on our travel website.  You can visit the site by going to this link, www.ytbtravel.com/sbe  Jim and Jackie also booked many flights for the families with other carriers and helped us out in many ways. They live in South Florida and while they have never met any of our families or been to our event, they are as much of our “Snowball family” as the families who attend or our volunteers who have had the pleasure to be at the event.  Our thanks to both of them and their team of YTB volunteers. 

As you can see in just this one piece of the puzzle there are over 100 persons who are involved in this part of the project. This doesn’t include the hundreds of volunteers who will be at the airports from the Ladies Auxiliary VFW and other service groups, the airline employees who will be helping out and so many others. 

Lastly, two new changes have occurred on our website that are worth mentioning.  We have chosen “Network for Good” as the new method for making on-line donations for Snowball Express.  We chose them for many reasons but the biggest was the ability to take credit card transactions as well as PayPal transactions.  Secondly by going with NFG we have chosen a “non-profit” company, which NFG is, to help us raise funds. This helps us keep our costs low while giving our donors more choices in the manner in which they wish to donate.  Here is the link to our new donation page,  Network for Good

The other change is many persons have asked us, “why don’t you have shirts or other items I can purchase with the Snowball Express logo on it so I can advertise for your organization?”  Well, now you can by visiting the Calvert Company’s website that has shirts, pins, jackets and challenge coins for sale.  A portion of the proceeds goes to Snowball Express and we’re thankful to Bob and Manita Bartels for their help in setting this up.  Here is that link Snowball Express Online Store

We wish you all a great week and hope our families continue to have the Lord’s blessings as they start a new school year and begin to look forward to coming to this year’s event. 

Until next time,

Roy White, Chairman

Snowball Express Board of Directors