The Christmas Spirit Foundation and the National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA) will again sponsor the very successful Tree For Troops Program.  FedEx will be providing the trucking and air transportation again this year at no cost, which is a tremendous contribution. You are invited to participate by contributing good quality fresh trees, financial support through the Christmas Spirit Foundation, and by urging your customers to support the program.

Last year the program provided 16,651 Christmas trees to military families of which 2,500 were purchased by customers, or about 15% of the total. Last year Virginia donated 1239 trees to various branches of the military around the country. These were loaded at four pickup points and two trailer drop locations. News media coverage was excellent, especially for the trees going to Fort Hood in Texas. NCTA reports  Nielsen Audience statistics show 27 million  viewers see Trees for Troops stories each year, 15 million households actually recall seeing the stories and 1.2 million viewers say  the program made them more likely to buy a real tree.  I think we can all agree that the program is not only the right thing to do,  by supplying fresh Christmas trees to those that risk their lives to defend our freedom, but it also is a very positive event for our industry.

TO: VCTGA Members

  A BIG thank you to everyone for your fantastic participation in Trees for Troops! We are still putting together final numbers, but everything is indicating that we had a record year – of more than 18,000 trees! Which put us at more than 102,000 trees since the program began in 2005! So, YES … we did hit the 100,000th mark. And Camp Pendleton was the lucky recipient of the 100,000th tree. Please make sure you check our Trees For Troops Facebook page and our website (www.TreesForTroops.org). We are getting (almost hourly) tons of Thank You’s from the troops along with pictures of their beautifully decorated Christmas Trees. WAY TO GO TEAM! Thank you again for EVERYTHING!! Amy