Frequently Asked Questions
Got a burning question about IGGPPC, how to get a penpal or struggling for ideas to what to send your new pal? Our FAQs have got the answers you need!
Don’t see the answer you need? Drop us an email at info@geekgirlpenpals.com or hit us up on facebook and twitter and we’ll do our best to answer you!
We have no foolproof way to do this; all we have is the trust that our community is full of mostly good, honest people, who want to share and connect with other geeky peeps on a global scale and be nice to one another. Once we have paired you up with your pal, it will be up to the two of you on how you want to proceed! You may want to chat a little over email first, to do your own sort of screen on the person. Maybe you can exchange Facebook links if you are unsure.
JimBob is the mascot of IGGPPC! He’s a little green and blue snail wearing glasses. He’s a snail because we are all about snail mail!
JimBob exists in many forms, and shows up in craft projects, hiding sometimes on webpages, and was even briefly existed as a plush.
JimBob is also the name of our Discord bot. The bot is a responsive program added to our server to help us manage things. He’s programmed to help you get sorted into your House or into meetup regions. He also has a lot of fun replies to things you might encounter in the chats. 
If you love JimBob as much as we do, head to our Zazzle shop where we have a whole collection of merch dedicated to him!
The Houses are how we sort for pen pal pairing, so that if you sign up for a pen pal match through our pairing rounds, you will be paired with someone from your same House.
You can also a join a private chat area for your House on our Discord! Look for the “About IGGPPC Houses” channel for instructions.
Of course, here it is:
Once we have put you in contact with a new pen pal we cannot be held responsible for the outcome of any contact of any kind made between you. By confirming you have read this disclaimer you are acknowledging that you have permission to join this service.
We do hope you use common sense and if you decide you feel uncomfortable giving your address out, don’t. We wouldn’t want you to do anything you don’t feel 100% about. Your participation is totally voluntary.
If you are sending gifts with your letter remember to check that there are no international restrictions on posting said item.
There have been no confirmed cases of catfishes using our club. If you suspect someone isn’t who they say they are, stop communication immediately and reach out to us at info@geekgirlpenpals.com. You can also check out our Safety page.
Do not respond to them, and do not give them your address. Immediately email info@geekgirlpenpals.com with a full report of all the details. We cannot help you if you do not report it. If you feel you are in immediate danger, call your local emergency hotline such as 911.
Never give out any information like this to any pen pal, no matter how much you think you can trust them. A pen pal should not ever ask you for this kind of sensitive information.
Ask them for their social media pages (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram.) Ask them to Skype with you beforehand. Ask them to snap a pic of themselves with your name handwritten on an index card. Ask them for a bit of background on themselves without being too specific (what kind of job they have, what their geek loves are, how they found out about the club, if they go to school, etc.) If they are a true friend, they will understand your safety concerns!
No, we are not.
Once we have put you in contact with a new Pen Pal, we cannot be held responsible for the outcome of any contact of any kind made between you. We do hope you use common sense, and if you decide you feel uncomfortable giving your address out, don’t. Just let us know you would like us to either find you a new Pen Pal or you would like to drop out altogether. We wouldn’t want you to do anything you don’t feel 100% about.
Yes, you can get us involved. If you’ve got any kind of bad feeling or aren’t sure, just reply back to us and ask for our help.
Um…yeah! We would love that! Please share with us and we’ll add it to our Press page!
IGGPPC Houses are named for great female/femme characters in fiction, and are ways for us to get to know people similar ages.
The IGGPPC Houses are Quinn, GlaDOS, Organa, and Ripley.
- House Quinn is named for Harley Quinn, from the Batman universe
- House GlaDOS is named for GlaDOS, the villainous AI from Portal
- House Organa is named for General (née Princess) Leia Organa, from Star Wars
- House Ripley is named for Ellen Ripley, from the Aliens universe
Our current pen pal pairing schedule allows for you to sign up for a pen pal at any time when you come to our site, except in July and December, when we close the pairing rounds for IGGPPCamp prep and planning for the next year.
This means that you don’t need to remember when to come sign up and that you can refer your friends to come anytime!
The International Geek Girl Pen Pals Club, also known as the IGGPPC, is a group of worldwide geeky friends. Founded in March 2013, the club was designed to bring together the nerd community through shared interests in all things geeky, a love of stationery, and an interest in making friends!
IGGPPCamp is an online camp run by the IGGPPC [International Geek Girl Pen Pals Club]. Each year during August, we all get together online and do lots of fun things over the course of a few days. This includes watching movies together, making s’mores, playing games on the IGGPPCamp Discord, telling ghost stories, learning new things through awesome video tutorials, making friendship bracelets, building forts, and so much more.
A lot of these activities are enjoyed online in our IGGPPCamp Discord, our blog, YouTube, and online hangouts. It’s a throwback to fun summer camps we attended as kids, but online and for the modern iggle.
The brain-unicorn of Stewie and Farquharson, IGGPPC was founded and launched March 19, 2013, as a silly Curly Wurly induced idea and has since blossomed into a wonderful, creative community!
”The IGGPPC is a mixture of a love of snail mail and letter writing, geekery and fangirling, some curlie wurlies, a dollop of mischievous curiosity, and a splash of tomfoolery.”
You are in a House based on your age. These age groups have been determined based on the relative number of people in each group we’ve had sign up over our many years!
- House Quinn are ages 17-21
- House GlaDOS are ages 22-29
- House Organa are ages 30-44
- House Ripley are ages 45+
We refer to each month’s pen pal sign-ups as a round. Rounds run the length of the month and pairs are sent at the start of the following month. We give each round a theme as a prompt not only for your geek loves but also to spark conversation through the month.
IGGPPCamp is usually about half way through August. It runs in every time zone so any iggle anywhere worldwide can participate!
The main camp page is available here. The IGGPPCamp Discord Server will be linked there if it is currently open to join. (The Camp Discord is only open during IGGPPCamp events and closed the rest of the year.)
As each round closes we begin pairing pen pals up on the 1st of the following month. Pairing emails usually go out from the 1st to the 12th of the month.
For example, if you sign up on October 1, you will receive your pairing between November 1 – 12. If you sign up on October 31, you will also receive your pairing between November 1 – 12.
It also means that waiting for your match may take a little time, as each month’s pairs are sent out in the first two weeks of the following month. For example, if you sign up on October 1, you will receive your pairing between November 1 – 12. If you sign up on October 31, you will also receive your pairing between November 1 – 12.
An iggle is the affectionate term we use for a member of our community. Part of IGGPPC? You’re an iggle!
You are what you eat. Wait, no! Don’t eat the iggles!
It’s all in the mind: if you think you are an iggle, then you are! If you want to join in on the fun with us, and do pretty much anything or everything relating to the club, no matter how big or small, no matter how often, then YES, you are an iggle.
You do not have to sign up for a pen pal, you do not have to partake in activities – you just have to want to be one. Simple as that!
We have four age groups, 17-21, 22-29, 30-44, and 45+. We will always pair you with someone in your age group. These age groups are also known as Houses. Find out more about the Houses here.
We attempt to pair people who have similar interests (at least 1 matching interest, but as many as we can find.) If you want to be specifically paired with someone in a specific country, or outside of your country, it’s a good idea to list that as 1 of your geek loves. (Wish to be paired with someone in France, etc.)
Registration means you will be placed in a Troop. Troops are a fun, extra perk of camp, to allow you to connect with smaller group of iggles and participate in camp activities together as a group. You are not required to register for camp to join in.
Registration usually takes place in early August. When registration is open, you’ll see a link to it on the main camp event page.
Absolutely! Registration only impacts Troop Activities but Camp Activities are available to everyone.
Back in 2016 we added in a ‘non-binary’ gender option to our sign up forms having previously only female and male options. We want IGGPPC to be inclusive to everyone and we never want our members to feel alienated, so adding in the non-binary option was as important for us as for the people who have requested it.
By adding non-binary in we had to make a compromise in other areas of the registration form so we were still able to pair people up effectively. We analysed the data from the previous years and the number of people who used each of the original pairing preference options was as follows:
- 40% – “Someone of the same gender” (NB everyone, bar one person, who chose this option was female)
- 53% – “Anyone! I’m not fussy”
- 7% – “Someone of the opposite gender”
As you can see the “match with opposite gender” was the least popular choice so with that in mind we scrapped that option and changed the wording of the remaining two. The current options reflect the most popular choices and are now:
- “I am female and want to be paired with another female”
- “I am OK being paired with anyone”
These options allow us to be inclusive while still enabling us to effectively pair pen pals.
Note: Though we recognize that “male” and “female” are not themselves gender identities in the English language, due to our role as an international club with many non-primary English speakers, we have elected to keep these in use. You can read more about our inclusivity policy at our “Who is a ‘geek girl’?” page. If you have any questions about this, or anything else, please reach out to us via email.
Truly, you just have to be yourself. We’re all geeky about something – even if it isn’t comic books or video games. Read this blog Farquharson wrote about a definition of geek, and see if you feel more at home.
The official Camp Handbook lists all of the Camp Activities you will be able to do. There is a Camp Discord which will be available once Camp begins with many of the Camp Activities. In addition, the activities will become available on YouTube, our blog, and in other designated places as noted in their descriptions. You will always be able to find out what’s happening on the Camp Bulletin board, in the IGGPPCamp Discord or the daily camp blog post called the Daily Campfire.
Nope! IGGPPC is trans and nonbinary inclusive, and we welcome people of all gender identities! You can read more about our inclusivity policy at the page Who is a “geek girl”?
Yup! Your ‘Top 5 Geek Loves’ are how we match you with a pen pal, or how you might find a friend on the site! These are things you “geek out” about the most–so you might be a tea-drinking, knitting, Sherlock-loving sort, or you might nerd out about photography, Harry Potter, and healthy eating! Really, it’s whatever you want to include to find a nerdy pen pal match!
IGGPPC is run solely by volunteers who love spreading fun and friendship. Read more about us here.
You can find all of your Troop activities in your Troop’s Discord channel! You’ll receive a link to join once you have been sorted into your troop (check dates on the Camp Bulletin Board). Each Troop also has 3 camp counselors who will be posting fun things for you there. There is also typically a hashtag for each Troop so you can find one another on social media!
If for any reason your new pal does not respond, you can go off into the wilderness and try to snag a pen pal via our Pen Pal Limbo chat on Discord. If that doesn’t work, sign up again the next month. It isn’t uncommon to it to take a couple of tries to find that perfect match.
Unfortunately, there is no way for us to control someone’s willingness to follow through when they sign up. Want more info? Read a blog Stewie wrote of “5 tips for making a good connection with your pen pal”
A few of the events are live, but not all. Live events happen in the IGGPPCamp Discord. If an event is live, it will have a time listed with a scheduled time in the Camp Handbook.
In order to participate you will need a Discord account. You can find our IGGPPCamp Discord linked from the IGGPPCamp Main Page. Live events are listed in UTC time but if you are still confused, you can DM or email us to confirm the time zones!
As a rule, we will only pair you with 1 per round but you can sign up for as many rounds as you want. If you sign up multiple times for one round we will delete all but one submission before beginning the process (checking for duplicates takes place each month before we begin pairing)
BUT…on the form we do as if you would be willing to be matched more than once, as sometimes we have an odd number of sign-ups and don’t want to leave iggles hanging! So sometimes you will end getting 2 penpals instead of one!
Right now, we currently pair English speaking penpals – BUT – if you wish to be paired with someone within your country or a country with a specific language you wish to write to your pen pal in, give us a heads up at info@geekgirlpenpals.com and we will see what we can do.
Right now, we have 2 other languages supported via Facebook – French and Spanish. If you wish to get a pen pal in either of these languages, feel free to post on these facebook pages and we will see what they can do!
We appreciate your enthusiasm and know how exciting it is to have a pen pal! However, due to international regulations, pen pal sign-ups are reserved for Iggles age 17 and up.
Some of our activities require or recommend supplies to take part. (The snack recipes, for instance, require ingredients!)
We post a full list of supplies for you prior to the start of IGGPPCamp in one convenient place so you don’t have to go hunting through every activity: check out the master Supply List!
There are a couple of ways to find out what’s happening each day of camp.
- For an overview of each day of camp, check out the Camp Handbook.
- There will also be Daily Campfire posts in our blog that will list the daily activities and events. The posts will also provide links to each activity/event.
You can, but most if not all of the people who sign for our club are expecting a pen and paper pen pal, so be warned that your match might be slightly miffed at the prospect of not getting handwritten letters. But we’re sure if you’re nice about it, they will want to write to you just the same.
If you are stuck for ideas of what to write, our community is always willing to help. Tweet #IGGPPC to ask for suggestions. Tell your pal about your job, your house, your pets, your significant other, your favourite band, or your Top 5 Geek Loves.
Better yet, why not add a little Doctor Who decoupage, throw on some Pokemon stickers, or do a little Star Wars doodle?
Or even better than that send some local candy, because candy! The list of things you could do is endless! Have fun with it and create something wondrous! Here are some more ideas.
- A local recipe
- Hello Kitty earrings
- A coaster from your favourite pub
- Pokemon cards
- Some delicious local candy
- Temporary Tattoos
- A business card from your favourite local shop
- Swag from your favourite geek love
- Photos of local historic landmarks
- Lisa Frank Stickers
- A postcard from your hometown
- Sanrio stationery
- Art or drawings of your favourite geek love
- A Harry Potter keychain
- Photos of your cat
- Local currency/coins (something small but neat-o)
Aside from anything you aren’t allowed to mail normally, (like liquids, live animals or hazardous materials) we also ask that you not send religious or political propaganda, business solicitations, and offensive or pornographic material. Really we shouldn’t have to tell you this, but you never know.
Don’t go crazy now! You are not required to send a package, but some people might want to. We think a smart cap would be approximately ₤10 GBP or $15 USD (do whatever fancy kind of money conversion you have to on that!)
SCORE! Remember to take photos of your letter or package and post it to our specially dedicated Mail Call chat on Discord or tag us on Instagram or Twitter!