Quaker Start with Substance Campaign

Today I am participating in the Quaker Start with Substance campaign, and I am shooting for a great ‘prize’. But the prize isn’t for me, and it might not even be for you – it is going to be for the community who’s food bank needs the most help this winter.

Most of the bloggers are choosing which food bank to award the $5000 campaign prize to should they win the competition. I’ve decided to let you choose it – I live near Chicago, and while we certainly have our share of hunger and homelessness, our city is also comparatively well-equipped to help our residents. There are many communities that aren’t so fortunate, and if I win the Start with Substance campaign, I’d like these dollars to go to a community that you think needs it the most.

How can we win this thing together?

I need all the support I can get to win this with you, so here’s what we need to make this happen. Please note that all steps must be taken for it to count towards our goal:

Step 1 – Go to the Quaker Start with Substance Facebook page, easily found on their site.

Step 2 – Scroll down to find the printable Quaker man like you see me holding above and print him out.

Step 3 - Take a picture or video of yourself or your family with the cute little Quaker man. (Keep it clean peeps!)

Step 4 – Upload that photo to the Start with Substance Facebook page under the Photos section (about half way down the page).

Step 5 – Leave a comment here with a link to your photo

Step 6 - (Optional) Let me know what food bank you are nominating to win the big prize if we win the campaign. This campaign is happening on 25 different blogs over 25 days – the blogger with the most submissions by the end of the campaign gets to award $5000 to the food bank of his or her choice.

Lastly, I also have some Quaker coupons for people who participate in this campaign with me today (just a few, will select winners randomly). In fact, I will also throw my own money down on the line – I will pick 5 random people who submit their photos today and send them each $10 gift certificates from Amazon. (And this is one contest in which Sparkplugging writers can actually participate, too!).

The cool part about this is that just for putting up this post, I get to give my local food bank a case of oatmeal.

All official rules and legal garbldygook can be found on the Quaker Start with Substance site.

Remember we only have 24 hours to make this happen – photos must be uploaded and linked in the comments here before 9:00am CST on Thursday February 5th!

Since I have lived on food stamps in the past, and even eaten at the Salvation Army, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to be on this side of the fence and able to give back to the organizations who once helped me when I was down.