Geeks Doing Good 2018 was awesome!

Geeks Doing Good 2018 was run on our very own store website, Worldbuilders Market, for the first time this year. There were a lot of reasons for making this switch, the main one being that we wanted to streamline the experience with a shopping cart. Over the years, the biggest request we’ve received was to find a way to select multiple items and check out all at once, instead of making a series of smaller purchases. We figured, “Hey, we already have an online store with all sorts of bells and whistles. Maybe we can use that!” A few other benefits arose from moving to our own store: you can see everything we offer, new and old, we can process payments as they come in, and best of all, we can start shipping if we have everything in stock!

A few of you just bought items we already carried. Those purchases counted toward the total raised, and since we have them in stock, we sent them out right away, and a few of you were surprised to get your stuff quickly. For the pre-orders, we still have to wait while they’re manufactured and shipped to us, but we will be packing and shipping things as they arrive. Jenny even made a massive task list for us:

It takes up most of the wall.

When new items arrive, we spring into action like Charlie’s Angels (Mike has to wear a wig) and immediately start taking inventory, doing quality assessment, and getting everything ready to ship. Jenny and Rachel have made our order system modular, so once a certain product arrives, if we have orders that were just waiting for that one thing to arrive, we can assemble the order and ship it immediately. If we’re still waiting for an item to arrive, the computer just won’t tell us to ship yet. You all get your stuff as quickly as possible, and we’re not overwhelmed by weeks and weeks of shipping! We’re super excited by how clever we’re being this year.

For those of you wondering about the JoCo Cruise Cabin Contest – the wonderful Paul & Storm drew a random number earlier this week, the winner has been contacted, and we’re pleased to announce that Kelly has accepted the cabin and will be joining JoCo Cruise 2019!

We usually have a Big List of items we’re waiting for in order to fulfill orders, but with so many items currently on order from manufacturers we’ll hold off until we have more Big News to report.

Oh, and speaking of Big News, we’ll be a little short-staffed for the next couple weeks, since Maria and Brett are leaving to join Heifer on site in Malawi! Over the next couple weeks, they will be meeting with several families who have been involved in Heifer’s Sustainable Agriculture Lead Farmer program, Central Dairy Scale-Up project, and the Malawi Dairy Development project (phase II). The visit is sure to be exciting and informative, and they promised to take lots of photos and come back with a better understanding of the challenges associated with these programs. We can’t wait!