Taste of Home for GIs in Mideast : Packages: A nonprofit San Diego company has raised $2.5 million in donations to send holiday food packages to GIs in the Persian Gulf.

Help Hospitalized Veterans, a San Diego-based nonprofit company that specializes in supplying crafts kits to disabled veterans, has taken up a new cause: It has raised $2.5 million since October to send holiday food packs to the military men and women stationed in the Persian Gulf.

The gift packs contain cookies, dates, nuts, potato chips, raisins, candies, crackers and other snacks.

The company’s original goal was to collect enough $15 donations from individuals to send 250,000 gift packs overseas, general manager Mike Lynch said. But, as the number of troops deployed to the gulf has increased, so has the company’s goal.

With two shipments under its belt and a third scheduled for Dec. 7, Help Hospitalized Veterans plans to send 500,000 gift packs by Feb. 15, he said. The packages will be distributed to servicemen and women by the USO (United Service Organizations).

Founded in 1968, Help Hospitalized Veterans sees itself as a liaison, taking donations from the public and using them to buy hobby items and crafts, such as leather, woodworking and painting sets, and then distributing them free to hospitalized veterans. The company has a 350,000-name mailing list, from which it makes regular solicitations every seven weeks.

The nonprofit organization donates kits to veterans hospitalized for extended stays at military hospitals and Veterans Affairs medical centers, including one in La Jolla. Last year, the company raised slightly more than $11 million from donations and distributed more than 1 million crafts kits. Since its founding in 1968, the agency has donated 11 million kits.

The group got its start in 1968 when Roger Chapin, a former San Diego real estate developer, organized the Vietnam Gift Pac project. Over a three-year period, Chapin raised $3 million and distributed 600,000 gift packs to troops in the field. The packages contained items such as medicated foot powder, WD-40, nylon boot laces and first aid medication.

Lynch said his group was amazed that it was able to raise $2.5 million in 45 days for this year’s holiday gift pack, contrasted with the three years it took to raise the $3 million during the Vietnam War.

When Chapin came up with the idea to send gift packs to the Persian Gulf, his company was able to organize quickly. In the waning weeks of September, Lynch began working on finding food companies willing to fill the packs.

“We had to find suppliers who were willing to sell at cost or donate products,” he said. In 2 1/2 weeks, he found 10 suppliers of quality, easy-to-ship merchandise willing to help.

Each of the gift boxes was then assembled at a warehouse in New Jersey for shipping to the Middle East. The boxes contained Hadley’s dates, Pepperidge Farms cookies, Eagle roasted nuts, Eagle potato chips, Del Monte raisins, Duncan Hines cookies, Brach’s candies, Pepperidge Farms crackers, Cornnuts, and Sunline Sweet Tarts.

The hard part was asking the food suppliers to commit to supplying the food, and then sweating out the period during which the organization went out and raised the money, Lynch said.

Using its 350,000-name data base of regular donors as a starting point, the company’s fund-raising consultant sent out its first nationwide mailing the week of Oct. 8. Ads in newspapers followed. The direct-mail letters and media appeals asked donors to send $15 to purchase a food kit for a soldier.

“People responded overwhelmingly,” Lynch said, noting the $2.5 million raised thus far. Each of the food kits are personalized with a greeting card bearing the name of a donor. The cards reinforce the group’s message that “we are nothing more than a liaison for the public,” he said.

The nearly 4-pound boxes are en route to the gulf aboard commercial vessels under commission by the Defense Department, Lynch said. The department is moving goods to the Persian Gulf on commercial ships, and “they’re tagging us with them,” he said.

The project required a quick turnaround to get the items to the troops in the Middle East in time for the holidays. But Help Hospitalized Veterans has an advantage with its 20-year track record of fund-raising, purchasing and distributing large volumes of products, Lynch said.

After the Vietnam War was over, the company diverted its efforts away from helping troops in the field and toward helping hospitalized veterans. Despite the small number of employees--only 21--the organization has succeeded in raising more than $11 million through direct mail appeals to about 8 million people.

Last year alone, the company delivered more than 1 million arts and crafts kits to 207 Veteran Affairs medical centers and military hospitals in 48 states, according to the company’s annual report. Every six weeks, the company solicits a $7 donation from those on its mailing list.

The company has about 270 types of crafts that it purchases from 26 vendors, but the most popular are the leather kit, Lynch said. The work helps veterans improve their hand and eye coordination, and to get their minds off their disability, Lynch said. With the kits, veterans can make such items as wallets, cases for sunglasses, moccasins and belts.

Also popular with veterans are model airplane and car kits, he said. The company is the fourth largest buyer of plastic model sets behind Toys ‘R’ Us, K mart and Wal-Mart.

Because the company buys in volume, Lynch is able to negotiate deals in which he buys model crafts with a retail value of $14 for $3. One of the more popular models is a replica of the Vietnam Memorial Statue, Lynch said

The craft companies ship the merchandise to the agency’s 10,000-square-foot warehouse on Kurtz Street near Pacific Highway in San Diego.

When the merchandise arrives at the warehouse, each boxed craft is labeled with a Help Hospitalized Veterans sticker. One of the 12 full-time warehouse workers tucks a card inside with the name of the person who paid for the kit and a thank you card for the patient to send. The kits are moved by truck to the hospitals at no charge to the hospital or to the veteran.

This year, Lynch has visited 40 hospitals to find out which crafts veterans most enjoy, which ones they don’t, and which ones they would like in the future. His may be a nonprofit company, but Lynch uses many of the same business principles he applied when he was a production manager before joining the organization in 1988.

“I make the best deals I can with suppliers and vendors. We’ve got to spend money wisely and also work real hard on satisfying the veteran,” he said. The last thing the company wants is for merchandise to sit unused.

He has “never been in a position where I’ve received this much gratitude,” Lynch said. The kits’ recipients, who include victims of strokes, spinal chord injuries, emotional disabilities and alcohol and drug abuse, have a lot of time on their hands, and they really appreciate the kits, he said.

Lynch said one therapist told him: “The kits are not to kill time, but to make time live.”