I’d like to talk a bit about my RAK program, the history, and what the future holds for those that continue to be a part of it.

A year ago, in August, the first Erin Condren Fan Club group started on Facebook.  This group is now secret, and many people don’t even know it exists.  While I was building that group, a desire of doing RAKs was born, and a loose network of ladies provided their addresses in a file, and randomly would send to one another.  Because MANY wanted to participate, but didn’t want to just post their address out in the open, I jumped in and said I’d organize a RAK list and give addresses when people requested them.  Thus was born “Make Your Mailbox Smile”, the first RAK group associated with the Erin Condren groups on Facebook.  This was so popular and kept me so busy that by December, I told everyone I needed a break, and we didn’t do RAKs in December 2013.  It was interesting to see that people were actually distraught and almost had withdrawals from not being able to send RAKs!

While I took my “break”, I designed my current RAK program and Facebook group, RAK 2014 “Wake Up Your Mailbox”.  It launched on January 1, 2014 (actually a couple of days before that), and grew to over 1300 people in the past 7 months.  It has been wildly active and many, many have sent and received RAKs with this program.  I’ve actually had several ask to have their name removed from my address list simply because they had too many RAKs and while they wanted to still send, they simply had enough fun little stickers, etc., and they didn’t need to receive any more.

During this time, other RAK groups have emerged, and there is now an endless supply of groups and RAK programs that people can join and be a part of.  Also during this time, I noticed that the same handful of people were the ones that continued to request names, and kept the list active.  This was fine when there were only a couple hundred people on the list.  But as the list grew, we began to go through it much more slowly, and those same people were doing most of the sending.  I began to be dissatisfied with my system and wanted to find a way that would reward those that were actually making the effort to send RAKs.

And so I began to make groups with those that requested names.  By doing it this way, those that were sending, were also the ones receiving, and this eliminated anyone that was simply on the receiving end and never sent anything out.  I received criticism as this wasn’t really following the basic concept of a Random Act of Kindness, but I had seen too many taking advantage of the kindness of others and joining simply to receive and never to give.  I didn’t feel that was right.

As we are moving through 2014, and I have revamped the way I handle my address list, I felt it was time to make a fresh start, and open a group that was not stamped with a date in the title.  So I have opened RAK Swap “Wake Up Your Mailbox”, a group that will replace RAK 2014 “Wake Up Your Mailbox”, and will launch on September 1, 2014.  I will be taking another break this August, partly because I”ll be gone on vacation and it’s always too difficult to maintain the RAK requests when I’m away from my computer, and so I can have time to update the guidelines and have a fresh start in September.

For now, we are still using the RAK 2014 group for posting RAK thank you photos.  For now, people are still joining RAK 2014 “Wake Up Your Mailbox”.  But the new guidelines, and the group that will become my official group will be RAK Swap “Wake Up Your Mailbox” starting in September.

If you are not in the new group, and you’d like to continue to be in my RAK program, please be sure to click on the link above to join it.  There are a few changes in how the addresses are handled, so be sure to read the pinned post to get all the details.

If you have any questions, please send them to myerincondren@gmail.com.  I”ll do my best to answer in a timely manner.

Thank you to everyone that has participated in my RAK mailbox program.  It has surpassed my wildest expectations, and I am honored to know it has brought joy into so many lives!