Our Story

The Idea – Unique Hospital Gifts

In the summer of 2009, our Uncle Burk was hospitalized in Houston, TX. We live in Birmingham, Alabama and wanted to send hospital gifts to cheer him up. While we debated all the usual hospital gifts options (a fruit basket, balloons, flowers, a cookie bouquet), it occurred to us that what he would enjoy most would be a stack of fishing magazines. We checked with the hospital gift shop, but they didn’t provide the service. In fact, we couldn’t find anyone who provided the service! We resorted to sending a handful of balloons since it was our best option at the time, but an idea for a really cool company was born.

Cheeriodicals – The Perfect Hospital Cheer-up Gifts

The original idea was to create a magazine-oriented hospital gift that would be an alternative to the traditional flowers and cookie gifts for hospital patients, but the concept logically evolved to include gifts for a wide array of occasions: new baby gift, engagement gift, housewarming gift, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts, Valentine’s gifts, birthday gifts, even co-branded, personalized corporate gifts. We combined an upscale gift box containing the gift recipient’s very favorite magazines (we had nearly 50 gift categories to choose from!) with addicting edibles, to create a “Cheeriodical” (a cheerful periodical). We allowed the option of including additional consumer items from Williams Sonoma, Bath and Body Works, Starbucks gift cards, to create a Cheeriodical your loved one will remember forever.

Corporate Team Building That Benefits Hospitalized Children

As the demand for our Children’s Cheeriodicals grew, we realized that many of those Cheeriodicals were being sent to hospitalized children. While we were happy to see so many children receive their gifts, we also realized that too many children wouldn’t receive a Cheeriodical due to the financial constraints of their family. We decided to change that by building a business model where EVERY child in a children’s hospital can get their own Cheeriodical.

We created a corporate team building activity where corporate sponsors could bring their teams together and construct hundreds of Cheeriodicals under our supervision. Teams with as few as a dozen to as many as 1,000+ can come together to do work that changes lives, making a measurable difference for hospitalized children. The team building activity continues when a group of 8-10 follow with a personal delivery of the truckload of Cheeriodicals to the eagerly awaiting children at a local children’s hospital. Imagine every single child in a hospital or charity getting their own big green box of cheer!

Delivering Cheer to Veterans

Following on the success of utilizing corporate team building to benefit hospitalized children, we decided to extend that model of giving to reach the military heroes of our country, our amazing Veterans. These events follow a similar format to our children’s hospital events; however, the key difference is that your team will assemble and pack Cheeriodicals that have items specifically suited to spread cheer to a Veteran. A highlight of these events is that personal delivery by your team to the Veterans Hospitals to distribute the Cheeriodicals to hundreds of Veterans, many of which do not receive a lot of visitors. Your personal delivery can be life-changing for these Veterans.

Delivering Smiles to Ronald McDonald House Charity Families

In our work with children’s hospitals nationwide, we soon realized that most children’s hospitals have Ronald McDonald House Charities in close proximity.  These “homes away from home” provide families who have financial constraints free lodging when they have a child at a nearby children’s hospital. These events follow a similar format to our children’s hospital events; however, the key difference is that your team will assemble and pack Cheeriodicals specifically curated with items to lift the spirits of the entire family unit along with their sick child. Your team will love the personal delivery to the Ronald McDonald House to distribute the Cheeriodicals to the families, keeping in mind the families will deliver the children’s toys inside the Cheeriodical to their child at the hospital themselves.  And sometimes, you may even get a tour of the House!

Thanking Hospital Heroes

When the COVID-19 pandemic began to affect the lives of all of us in the United States, we realized we had a way to use our platform to make a difference with the frontline healthcare workers. These frontline healthcare workers were true “Hospital Heroes” and we wanted to celebrate and thank them for their tireless work and dedication during the COVID-19 pandemic. We designed a new Cheeriodicals tote-bag that we would pack on the behalf of our corporate partners, safely in our corporate office warehouse, full of items chosen to provide comfort and relaxation to the Hospital Heroes.

We would then deliver those Cheeriodicals directly to hospitals in cities where COVID-19 had been most challenging for distribution to nurses, doctors, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, and others in need of a lift in spirits. Delivering these Cheeriodicals allowed us to make a positive impact for our corporate partners, in a safe way for teams and hospital systems, to the real heroes of the pandemic.

Identify Needs – Create More New Markets to Impact

Over the years, we focused on listening to our clients and partners to understand new areas we could make impact with our team building experiences.  We’ve added new Cheeriodicals team building options to benefit:  Dialysis and Cancer Patients, Assisted Living Residents, Backpacks for Kids in Under-Resourced Schools, and most recently, Pet Adoption Kits for new pet owners at humane shelters.  Who knows what will be next, but rest assured it will always be “Team Building That Matters”.

Virtual and Hybrid Team Building

We launched our Virtual and Hybrid Team Building options as a way to deliver cheer through our team building activities in a way that fits the goals and objectives of virtual meetings. As our corporate partners began to manage their meetings with COVID-19 as a constraint, many of their meeting needs were shifted to be held with Zoom, Microsoft Meetings, or other virtual formats.   

We developed these new options to allow our corporate teams to take an active role in the giving project with team participants, either fully virtual doing the Cheeriodicals assembly at home, or with part of the team working virtually from their homes and part of the team working in-person with the Cheeriodicals team on-site at their meeting. The flexibility of working Virtual or Hybrid allows our corporate partners to come together, give-back, make a difference even when everyone can’t meet in person together.

Giving Back

We launched Cheeriodicals thinking that gifting should be personal, memorable, and unique. Along the way, we’ve realized that gifting reaches far beyond the actual qualities of the gift, but that gifting can spark positive change. For an individual, that change may be a simple smile knowing someone cares, or more importantly, it can be what gets a person through their difficult day. Gifting takes on an even grander role when you see the impact of hundreds of hospitalized kids, Veterans, Ronald McDonald House families, frontline Hospital Heroes, even assisted living residents, all receiving a reason to smile.

The ripple effect of the joy created from Big Green Boxes and Bags of Cheer reaching thousands of people, both children, and adults, has strengthened our desire to continue to make a measurable difference!