Sweet Goodness Swaps: July 2009

Friday, July 10, 2009

Swap Questionnaire reminder

Good Friday morning, Swappers! :)

We hope you had a fun July 4th holiday weekend and were able to enjoy some of the treasures you received from your swap partners. Now that things have calmed down a bit, we hope you'll consider filling out and emailing us your answers to the Post Swap Questionnaire. (You'll find the questions in the post just below this one.) We've already received some responses and they've been very helpful to us as swap organizers so that we know what we can do to help our swappers send & receive the best packages possible. We definitely want to know what we can do to educate our swappers and improve our swaps, and we'd love to have more responses--so keep them coming!

Also, (and we hate to have to include this part) if there is anyone out there who hasn't yet received a swap package, please email us ASAP! If for some reason you haven't sent your swap package--contact your partner IMMEDIATELY and let them know what's going on! We truly hate for any of our swappers to have a bad experience in one of our swaps.

For everyone else, thanks so much for participating in our swap! Be sure to pop over to the Flickr group and see all the fun and creative ways our participants interpreted the theme--we know you'll be inspired! And send us those post-swap surveys!

PARTICIPATION GUIDELINES

Participation Selection:

We like to have as many participants in our swaps as possible. However, we usually limit each swap to the first 50 sign ups as it becomes very difficult to deal with the amount of email and follow up if the number is larger. Plus a smaller group gives us an opportunity to give more personalized assistance when needed.

For most swaps we allow in any one who would like to join. Some swaps in the past have been limited to those who have successfully swapped with us before or those who are recommended by our previous swappers or known friends.

Those people who have signed up for swaps and HAVE NOT completed them are not invited back. There are some exceptions to this rule, such as the person contacting both us and their partner with their extenuating circumstances or someone dropping out early and our ability to fill their spot in time. We understand that things come up and don't hold this against people but we do tend to not reinvite those who in the past haven't even bothered to contact their partners or send any packages.

Screening Process:

We have started using a questionnaire that needs to be filled out in order to sign up for the swap. This helps us to not only get to know our swappers but to match up partners with similar interests.

We keep a list of those who have swapped with us in the past and use this to try to insure no one gets the same partner they have had in the past to add variety to the swaps.

Other than this we take everyone into consideration and ASSUME they will send a complete and quality swap. We want to give everyone a chance to join in and have fun.

Swapping always involves a bit of risk though all of our swaps have a very high success rate and we have a wonderful core of returning swappers. We do our best to solve all swap issues and assist where needed. We also would like to remind everyone that we do for fun as we enjoy swapping with our creative folks out there and coming up with fun and new swap themes.

We encourage your feedback and thoughts. As we change our swap mailbox with each swap your general comments and feedback can be sent to goodnessshop@gmail.com.

PLEASE READ

Please be sure that when joining a swap that you read the directions thoroughly. Not only do we post them on the site but we also send emails containing swap specifics. While we are all for creative license there are some rules that should be followed including the number of items to be included (more is welcome but try to stay within the budget posted) and the types of items to be included. We will always have at least one hand made item in our swaps. That is the essence of Sweet Goodness!

Thank you and we hope you understand that we do this to insure that everyone has a positive swap experience.

~ Rebecca, Lucy, Heidi, Leigh Ann & Shara