It’s time for the 13th annual House Rabbit Society Log Cabin Easter candy sale!!!!

With 2 feet of snow on the ground and more on the way, I know it’s hard to think of the Easter Bunny hopping down the bunny trail already. However, Easter this year is April 4th. We will need candy orders back by March 16th to get your orders processed and to you the week before Easter. That is about 5 weeks away.

As you may already know, Easter is one of the hardest time of year for the bunnies. Many well meaning people buy rabbits as Easter gifts without knowing how to properly care for them. Consequently, many of them suffer lonely, deprived lives and/or end up at your local animal shelter. Many of you have adopted these “Easter Bunnies” and made them your beloved family members.

We are selling high quality Log Cabin chocolates again this year to raise money for the rabbits. Our chapter of HRS will receive 42% of the total amount of money collected for the candy sold.

In the last couple of years, our chapter has raised quite a bit of money from this candy sale through the efforts of a relatively small number of volunteers (1997 – $1,000, 1998 – $1,500, 1999–$1.500, 2000–$1,800, 2002–$2,000, 2003–$1,550, 2004–$830, 2005–$1,200 2006–$1020, 2007 $900, 2008–$500, 2009–$1210) . As you can see, when we have good participation, we can earn substantial money for the bunnies. When we’ve had fewer candy sellers we raise less money for the rabbits.

Last year a lot of members answered the call and as a result, we made more than double our profit in 2009. So, please, sell again, it really makes a difference. If you have participated in previous years and haven’t participated lately, be sure WE MISSED YOU! Please consider selling candy for us again in 2010. Even if you only sell a couple of items, it can really add up when lots of people participate. This chocolate is of good quality and locally made by a family run business. They use fun and unusual molds (rabbit on the motorcycle) as well as the traditional ones. People who have bought from me in the past years are eager to buy again.

Amber Elburn who has run the Candy Sale for us in the past is on leave from volunteering this year. (Congrats Amber!) Nicole Roberts with help from Jennifer Pironne are stepping in and are running the Candy Sale. If you are interested in selling this candy to benefit our House Rabbit Society chapter’s bunnies, please contact Nicole Roberts by email at:
nroberts@ TNC.ORG (remove space)
and provide your name, **mailing address**, phone number, and email address. (Please don’t forget to include your mailing address!)

Nicole will mail you a full color brochure and order form. Then you are ready to start selling!

Easter falls on April 4th this year. Although this seems like a long time away, it will be here before we know it. Log Cabin has given us *March 24th* as the cut-off date when all orders must be in to them, they make no exceptions. Because of the time needed for Nicole and Jen to tally, calculate, and mail the orders they will need everybody’s order form and money by March 16th. Please give yourself enough time to send them regular mail because Nicole is not home during the day to sign for overnight packages. This should give you a little more than 4 weeks to sell the candy.

Full payment is required at the time the order is placed. You can accept both checks and cash as payment. However, please do not send the cash through the mail. Simply add up the cash and write a personal check to HRS for the amount in exchange. If you wish, you can have people make the checks out to you and then you can write one larger check to HRS. If your customers prefer you can also have checks made payable to “House Rabbit Society” or HRS but the firstway simplifies things for us when depositing the money in the bank.

The House Rabbit Society is a non-profit organization, however we are still required to pay tax on this type of fund raising. 6% sales tax must be added to each sale. Please refer to the Maryland Sales and Use Tax Chart on the back of the order sheet to use as a guide.

Drop off/pick up points are needed in the DC/NoVA, Montgomery County, Howard County, Baltimore, and Harford County, areas. If you can
provide a place where candy may be dropped off by Log Cabin Candies and picked up by candy sellers in your area, please indicate this during
your contact with Nicole. We also need volunteers in the Arlington VA area to help tally the order sheets and volunteers near each pick-up location to help sort the candy orders.

I am including a link to many educational resources provided on the main HRS web site for Easter. Help us prevent unwanted Easter Bunnies.
Put up the posters, hand out the articles to people buying candy or anyone you hear talking about getting their child a live rabbit.
http://www.rabbit.org/easter/flyer/index.html

Learn about the Columbus, Ohio chapter’s “Make Mine Chocolate” Campaign and Chocolate Easter Bunny pins.
http://www.makeminechocolate.org/

Thank You in advance for any help you can provide!!!!!