Operation Gratitude Information

Hi Girl Scout and Brownie Troops!

Thank you for your interest in working with Operation Gratitude to send Girl Scout Cookies to our courageous troops deployed overseas. We enjoy working with the Girl Scouts during your Cookie Pre-Sales and Booth Sales to ensure that we can include one or two boxes of Girl Scout cookies in each of the 100,000+ Care Packages we send out during our Patriotic Drive in May and our Holiday Drive in November-December.

To increase your sales, and bring smiles to the service members deployed overseas, Girl Scouts can suggest that buyers purchase extra boxes to be donated to the troops.  Once you have collected all the donated boxes, please deliver or ship them to Operation Gratitude and we will take care of sending them overseas in our individually addressed care packages.  In the past, our recipients have enjoyed the personal notes that the Girl Scouts (or the donors) have attached to the boxes (2"x4" mailing labels work best), and we encourage you to do that again.  Please be sure the notes are visible for screening, are addressed generically (Dear Brave One, Dear Hero, etc), and are upbeat and positive. 

Upon a donor's request, we will provide an Operation Gratitude acknowledgment for an individual donation of 50 boxes or more.  If donors request a receipt from Operation Gratitude, we recommend that you have a triplicate receipt book--give one copy to the customer; keep one copy for your records and send the third copy to us so that we can send an acknowledgment to the buyer.  Please be sure to include the donor's name and full mailing address on the receipt.  Please mail the receipts (but NOT the cookies) to: Operation Gratitude; 16444 Refugio Road; Encino, California 91436

While we know that Thin Mints and Tagalongs are extremely popular, we respectfully request that you do not send us any chocolate varieties, as we cannot send chocolate products to the desert during the summer. 
 

Troops have two options:

·          delivering their cookies to Operation Gratitude in Van Nuys directly, or

·          having Little Brownie Bakers deliver the cookies.

 

The advantage of making your own delivery is that your Girl Scouts see first hand how Operation Gratitude works.  The advantage of having LBB make the delivery is twofold - the troop never has to handle the cookies directly and there is no need to coordinate a troop outing to Van Nuys.  Either way, military personnel serving overseas (often in places like Iraq or Afghanistan) enjoy the notes and cookies that Girl Scout Troops send, and many send cards or letters thanking our girls for caring.


Please plan to deliver or ship the cookies between April 15 and May 15 for the Patriotic Drive and October 1 and December 1 for the Holiday Drive.  Please ship cookies to:
 
Operation Gratitude/California Army National Guard
17330 Victory Boulevard
Van Nuys, CA 91406
Charlie Othold:  818.437.6201
 
Depending on the number of boxes ordered, your cookie supplier may be willing to ship directly to us.  Please contact them for details.  For large orders to be delivered by freight, please have the shipper contact Charlie Othold for delivery arrangements. 
 
Please include inside your shipment your contact information so we can mail a letter of acknowledgment and appreciation to your troop. 
 
For those Girl Scout troops located in the Southern California region, we welcome children ages 12 and up to participate in the assembling of packages at our facility.  If your troop is interested in participating, please contact our Volunteer Coordinator, Penny, at: pennyalfonso@yahoo.com and be sure to include "Operation Gratitude" in the subject line.
 
We are very appreciative of all your efforts on behalf of our brave U.S. Military Service members.  As you can see, we need A LOT of boxes of Girl Scout cookies to meet our goal of one or 2 boxes in each of the 100,000+ Operation Gratitude packages per year.  Please pass our information on to all your Girl Scout contacts and encourage them to work with us as well!

Thank you again for your thoughtfulness.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at: cblashek@aol.com
 
 
Fondly,

Carolyn Blashek