In case you haven't seen, we've been running a campaign to raise funds for iCouldBe.org. This is a website that runs a mentoring program for teenagers. Adults apply to become mentors, build profiles, and then students select them to become mentors while they go through a program geared towards motivating them to be better students and to have successful futures. As of the writing of this post, I mentor two students and I enjoy the program and sharing what I know with the two teens I mentor. The program costs money as they have to maintain a staff, run the website, and conduct background checks on potential mentors. To help fund that program, Bricks for Bricks is giving 15% of profits to iCouldBe.org. The campaign started on 1 January 2017 and will end on 30 April 2017.

So where are we at? We've had 26 sales and a profit of just over $147. 15% of that is just over $22. Not that exciting and kind of disappointing on my part. There's a reason for it though and it's something I need to look into changing as I continue to give back while selling LEGO products. On BrickLink, many of the items that I have sold have been parted out. Most often, minifigures are broken apart from sets and sold individually. When either the parts or the minifigures are sold, but the whole set isn't sold, I typically don't show a profit until they are all sold. So my revenue is higher, but doesn't show a profit that I can take 15% from to give to great organizations like iCouldBe.org.

Any thoughts on how to change this up? Please email me: store@bricksforbricks.com if you have suggestions.

On a separate note, the store will be closing again... If you've followed me, you'll know that I had to pack everything up and move from New Mexico to Florida last summer. This is due to what I refer to as my "real" job relocating me to Florida. Well guess what? My job is moving me again after less than a year! The store will be shut down on 30 April 2017 and then re-opened in Alabama. I'd like to be open again in June 2017, but I don't know how long the paperwork process is going to take to open up yet another business in a different state. So I apologize for the inconvenience and will work to get up and running again as fast as possible. Thanks again for all the support!