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The Family Giving TreeFrequently Asked Questions |
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The Family Giving TreeFrequently Asked Questions |
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How can my company help collect gifts?
Do you provide a tree on which to hang the cards?
What do I do if I received too many/not enough cards for children/elderly/homeless?
How can my agency receive gifts?
How can I get some gifts for my family?
What if I can’t find the requested gift?
What if there is no size listed on the card?
What if the wish is over the $30 limit?
What does it mean when the card says “for a child on our waiting list”?
Why do the wish cards say “please do not wrap this gift”?
Can I contact the agency to receive more information about a child’s wish?
Can I include extra gifts for the child?
Once I fulfill the wish, where do I bring the package?
Can I drop off my gift at another location?
What if I can’t fulfill the wish before the due date?
What is the earliest I can drop off gifts to the warehouse?
What is the latest I can drop off gifts to the warehouse?
What happens to the cards left on the tree after the due date?
Where do I send the leftover/unfulfilled cards?
Do the gifts really go to the children on the cards?
Are these agencies trustworthy?
Are the agencies charged for the gifts they receive?
Where can I get a tax receipt?
Does the Family Giving Tree help agencies out side of California?
What's the age ratio in each pack of 25 cards?
Do you assemble gifts at the warehouse that require assembly before distribution?
We are always looking for new “Host” groups. Please read the Host Page for information. You can submit the Host Enrollment Form online at any time.
Do you provide a tree on which to hang the cards?
No. We do send colorful cards, so they can be used as decorations on a tree that your group already has. Some groups hang the cards on garlands, and these might be used to decorate cubicle aisles or hallway walls.
How can my agency receive gifts?
Our registration process begins in August. After viewing the process, simply contact the office and we will discuss our criteria with you.
What do I do if I received too many/not enough cards for children/elderly/homeless?
We create packs of wish cards using a ratio based on the mix of wishes we receive from our agencies. This year's numbers can be found here.
How can I get some gifts for my family?
Unfortunately we do not work directly with families during our Holiday program. Please register with a participating local agency and they will work with us. You can also try getting in touch with one of the following agencies for additional help, based on your location.
• Coastside
Coastside Opportunity Center, 650-726-9071• Daly City/Broadmoor/Colma:
991-8007• East Palo Alto:
Bayshore Resource Center, 650-322-1821
Ecumenical Hunger Program, 650-323-7781
St. Anthony's Padua Dining Room, 650-366-4692• Redwood City/N Fair Oaks:
Fair Oaks Community Center, 650-780-7260
St. Francis Center, 650-365-7829• San Mateo/Burlingame/Foster City/Hillsborough/Belmont/Millbrae/San Carlos
Samaritan House, 650-347-3648
Primrose Center, 650-342-2255• South SF/Brisbane/San Bruno:
North Peninsula Neighborhood Services, 650-583-3373
Grace Covenant Church 740 Del Monte Ave. SSF
It depends on the time of year. Check our volunteer page for more information on what we need and when.
Try your best to get an exact match, but we understand if that’s just not possible. Stay within the genre of gifts (ie. toys, athletic wear, and electronics) and come as close as you can, we appreciate the time you take to fulfill a child’s wish!Try to determine size by considering the age of the child. It’s always safer to guess too big, they can always grow into it. If you like, enclose a gift receipt with the wish and it can be exchanged for the correct size if needed.
What if the wish is over the $30 limit?
It's difficult to tell how much a gift will cost just by knowing the name, so some wishes may have slipped through over the $30 limit. Please subsitute these requests with a similar wish (if possible) appropriate to the child's gender/age.
Unfortunately, with the volume of wishes we handle, we cannot make sure every wish is fully explained in the lists we get from the agencies. What comes in on the list is what goes into the database and is printed on the wish card. While we cannot give you any more detail than what is on the card, here are a couple rules-of-thumb that may help you:
• All wishes should be available for $30 or less.• It's better to guess too large than too small on clothing sizes.• If you make your purchase at a department store and include a gift receipt, the gift could be exchanged if needed.
While you want to get as close to the actual wish as possible, remember, the recipient of this gift will probably be so happy to get something to unwrap, they won't mind if it's not quite what they had in mind.If you've bought the gift, put as much information from the card as you can remember on a piece of paper and attach it to the gift. If you can remember the agency code (funny name) or the agency id (number in the green box), that would be very helpful. But usually, the things you can remember – gender/age of the child and of course, the wish -- is enough for us to locate the wish in the database. We will try to match it up with our list when it gets to the warehouse.If you remember getting a card, but don't remember anything, including the wish, then, when we sort through all the gifts for an agency, we will find the child that has no gift and we will make sure that wish is filled as best as possible from our reserves. In this case, if you would like to make any donation, that would be great!We require that all agencies submit their wish lists to us by October 1st . Those who do not meet this deadline are put on our waiting list. All of the wishes are fulfilled; however those that are submitted on time have a better chance of matching exactly with what the child wished for.We know that many donors enjoy wrapping the gifts they donate. Unfortunately, we’ve come across too many gifts found inappropriate for the child’s age/gender. These gifts are opened by needy children and for this reason we are asking that all gifts be delivered unwrapped. We always need volunteers in the warehouse to help with wrapping and sorting the thousands of gifts received, so feel free to visit our volunteer page! However, if your group holds an annual wrapping party, please call our office and we can discuss the options.No. For privacy reasons, we do not allow donors to contact the agencies regarding the children’s wishes.Yes, please make sure that all gifts are securely attached together with the wish card.Gifts are due to the warehouse by December 15th . If you picked the wish card off a tree at a bank, coffee shop or other public location, you may be able to return the gift there before December 15th. Ask the person in charge of the wish cards what the procedure is for that particular location.We only pick up gifts from our bank “Hosts”. All other tree locations are responsible for bringing the gifts to our warehouse by December 15th .We prefer that you bring the wish back to the location you took the card or deliver it directly to the warehouse yourself; however, if you absolutely cannot do that you may drop the wish of at the nearest bank "Host".When donors bring gifts after the 15th , we have already begun the bagging process and it becomes much more difficult to ensure the original recipient will get the intended gift. If we have already sorted the gifts for that agency, a substitute gift would have been chosen. We continue to help needy families throughout the year, so a late gift will still be accepted and used for this purpose.Each year our warehouse is donated to us. Please visit our warehouse page for further information.It changes every year, but we usually are available to receive gifts full time at the warehouse starting the second week of December.Again, this date changes every year, but we are usually no longer able to receive gifts at the warehouse by December 27th .The return rate from the giving trees is around 60%. That means 40% of the cards do NOT return with gifts attached. Therefore, we duplicate each request and try and find enough places to send them all. In the 18 years we have done Giving Trees, only twice have we sent out ALL the cards. When the gifts arrive, they are sorted by number and bagged by agency. If you pull a card, purchase a gift and it arrives at our warehouse on time, there is a VERY good chance that it will go to exactly the person that is on the wish card. When we are fortunate enough to have both cards come back with gifts, we put one in the reserve which we set up to enable us to substitute for the wishes that do not get fulfilled.Leave the tags up as long as you can - we will happily take the late gifts, although they will probably not go to the original child. We will get the late gifts to needy children! After Christmas please send the unused cards back to our office, write your group name clearly on the package.Over the years we have grappled with the issue of including names on all the wish cards. What we found to be true is that if a name is not on the card the card will stay on the tree and we will not be able to help the children we've promised gifts to. It is important here to clarify the relationship between the wish cards and the agencies we serve. Each October 1st, 200ish social service agencies submit their client list along with specific wishes for their children. For many agencies this is a very daunting task. For a small minority it is simply impossible. These are agencies who don't register the families until Thanksgiving or even into December... these are agencies who serve transient populations and do not know in October who they will be serving come December... for those agencies we print "place-holder"cards, otherwise known as "for a child on our waiting list". We create those cards based on the wishes from the previous year.I believe where the concern falls, is the gifts that end up at places like the Salvation Army, where the gifts are unwrapped, sorted by item and given to needy children who never "submitted" wishes to us. For these agencies we send gifts collected by the method above AND gifts that are "created" through the duplication of wishes. Here again I need to clarify. Every year the approximate return rate of the wish cards is only about 60%. So if we send out 10,000 wishes, we will only be able to fulfill 6,000 children's wishes. In order to assure that EVERY child we have registered receives a gift, we duplicate the wishes (exactly ONCE). We then make sure to send the 2 wishes to different Family Giving Tree "hosts". When one of the wishes is returned with a gift it goes to the intended child. If we are fortunate enough to have BOTH returned, one will be given to the original recipient and the other will be put in a pile destined for an agency like the Salvation Army. We also use these duplicated gifts in our warehouse procedures to stock the "store" (a place where the volunteers will go to find a substitute gift for those not fulfilled.Please come to the warehouse and we will be pleased to show you what we do. We try to be transparent in all that we do. The current system has evolved so that we may help as many children as we can. We have certainly not intended to mislead anyone. As a matter of fact, we go to great lengths to ensure that ALL the children receiving Family Giving Tree gifts are VERY needy. Our Board is responsible for doing site interviews with the agencies we serve. We feel a real sense of commitment to our donors to ensure their gifts are going to the neediest children in our communities. The only thing I can think of to change is to stop helping these agencies that can't provide the names of their clients. But that feels wrong too.Yes. The Family Giving Tree board of directors , staff and volunteers conduct site visits upon which the agencies are interviewed for eligibility.
Are the agencies charged for the gifts they receive?
There is a fee of $1.00 per gift recipient. This is a processing fee that helps spread the cost of collecting these gifts. The actual cost of the program is almost $10 per child. We request the agencies we serve to share this burden. It is NOT O.K. for the families who receive these gifts to pay the fee! We are NOT selling gifts, agencies and families are NOT buying them.
Follow this link to print out your tax receipt.In 2007, we fulfilled the holiday wishes of 60,000 children in the Bay Area and nearly 3,000 children in cities outside of California. This year, we are proud to work with Hosts and Agencies in the following cities: Austin, TX; Portland, OR; and Seattle, WA. The Family Giving Tree’s National Expansion Holiday Wish Program works with social service agencies in these cities. These agencies supply us with the names and wishes of the children they serve year-round.
What's the age ratio in each pack of 25 cards?
Each pack of 25 cards contain a certain ratio of ages. Please click here for more info.
Do you assemble gifts at the warehouse that require assembly before distribution?
We prefer all gifts come to us ready to distribute, however, we do have volunteers ready to assemble.
If you have a question that has not been answered here, contact us, and we will try to help you.