Please take a few minutes to read & reply to this letter & to help improve the services we can offer our families.

When we opened the Walton Feed order, we were concerned we wouldn’t have enough orders to fill the truck.  The old Food Storage Group had over 1,500 members, & we were hovering at about 200.  You can imagine our surprise when the truck filled in one week!  On one hand, it was exciting to see.  On the other hand, many families were not able to place orders.  This left many feeling disappointed & some downright mad.

To those of you who missed the opportunity to order, there may be another opportunity to order this spring.  There is a group in Colorado who is willing to let us fill up any remaining space in their truck.  They will be ordering in April, & I will keep you posted.  The difficulty is that they are three hours north of the Colorado Springs area.

Many members have requested that we provide a fall order.  There are two major factors to consider in providing a fall order:

1. Is there enough demand to fill a truck and thereby cover all the shipment expenses?
2. Remembering that those who manage the shipments are all volunteers, are other PPN members willing to come forward and help share the responsibility of organizing another order?  We love our shipment day volunteers, but there is so much work to do in advance, that we cannot ask the same few people to organize another shipment the same year. 

Let us know what you think:

1. Would your family order in the fall, & approximately how much weight would you order? This helps us to determine shipping costs and the possibility of filling a truck.  You may fill in the current order form & send it in as an estimate of what you might order.  This will only be an estimate, the forms will not be kept.
2. What could you do to help manage the shipment?  Those in bold must be met in order to organize a fall shipment.

v     Be willing to take orders using a program in Excel/Access that a member created for PPN.  This is a demanding job & requires flexibility.

v     Serve as shipment day supervisor. (Training available May 13)

v     Be willing to field all product questions.

v     Be willing to find a warehouse location, arrange for forklift and forklift operator, & contract with the trucking company.

v     Come as one of the 40 volunteers on shipment day.

v     Prepare food for the volunteers on shipment day. (Expenses to be covered.)

Please keep in mind two important points:

1. PPN is a volunteer organization and not a business. We do not want to over burden a small group of great volunteers. As we grow, more members will need to act on their enrollment agreement to volunteer by stepping forward to help. Please consider how important the opportunity to order food is to your family and think of a way you can help.
2. PPN is a new group. This is the first Walton order we have placed. Everything takes a little longer to accomplish because it is a first.

Hats off to the old Food Storage Group members who saw Anita Hess's vision and wanted to keep it going. Thank you for the hours that have been spent organizing the group. Legal issues have been addressed, secure online payment option implemented, informative classes offered, and membership is slowly growing.

The possibility of a second 2006 order will be based on estimated shipping weight and volunteer support.  We look forward to hearing from you!

Warm regards,

Kathryn Vander Meulen
PPN Director

Rosalia McKean
Walton Feed Shipment Supervisor