Some stay put.
A duck on the bar, beside the register, on the ledge where people wait. It isn't hidden and it doesn't move. It's the one that tells the room a chapter lives here, and it does its work by getting asked about.
drop playbook
The Drop Playbook
What a chapter does with eighteen ducks.
Eighteen ducks arrive in a box. That's chai, and it's also more ducks than most people have ever had at once.
You don't have to spend them all in the first week. Start here.
Three places a duck can go
The loop is the same as it has always been — hide it, find it, pass it on. What a chapter adds is that you are doing it on purpose, from one place, week after week.
Every duck in that box can do one of three jobs, and a chapter that is working does all three.
Some go out.
Hidden where a stranger will find it — a park bench, a bookshop windowsill, the top of a newspaper box. That's a drop.
Some go into a hand.
You give one to a particular person: the regular who has been coming for nine years, the kid at the table by the window, whoever comes to fix your machines.
Split the box roughly in thirds and you'll be close. Nothing about thirds is sacred — a shul hands over more than it hides, a storefront on a walkable block hides more than it hands over. Spend them the way your place actually works.
The first week
Put one out where people wait.
Before any hiding, before anything else. Then leave it alone and let it get noticed.
Tell your staff what to say.
They will get asked before you do, and "I don't know, it's the owner's thing" wastes the question. One sentence covers it: it's a kosher duck, the tag has a QR code, and it puts a pin on a map. Anyone who wants the rest will scan it.
Then one drop.
One duck, somewhere within a short walk, somewhere a person would grin to find it. Not the box. One.
Note where it went.
A line in a notebook is plenty. Weeks later a photo turns up from a place you half remember, and it's good to be sure.
Then a rhythm
One duck out a week is a chapter running. That is the whole commitment. Six weeks of it spends the third you set aside for hiding, and by then you will know which spots work and which ones swallow a duck without a trace.
Some weeks you will do more. A party books the back room, a bus of eighth-graders comes through, somebody's grandmother turns ninety. Those are duck days.
Your ducks are signed
This is what makes a chapter's duck different from any other duck.
Your tag carries your name and a QR code, and the code goes to a page that credits you. Somebody finds your duck in a parking lot in March, scans the tag, puts up a photo — and the pin lands on your chapter page. The tag prints your short address too, for the person who reads rather than scans.
Every duck you put out carries your name, and it can sit in a coat pocket for a year before it does its work.
House rules
Four, and all of them practical.
One grown-up posts for the room.
If you run a hunt for kids, you take the photos and you post the sighting afterwards. Nobody under 13 uploads. That is our rule and it is a good one.
Ask before you photograph somebody's child.
Every time, including the ones you know.
Don't hide a duck where someone has to work to get it back.
Not in food, not behind the bar, not in the planter that gets watered at six.
Someone else's property is someone else's call.
The bookshop two doors down will almost certainly say yes. Ask anyway — and then you have a partner instead of a duck in a window.
Through the year
Dates are 5787.
Rosh Hashana — Friday evening 11 September into Saturday 12 September 2026.
A handing-over holiday rather than a hiding one. Give ducks to the people who carried your year: the staff, the vendors, the neighbour who took your deliveries in.
Yom Kippur — Monday 21 September.
Not a duck day. Neither is a shiva house. The ducks are for joy, and they are allowed to sit a day out.
Sukkot — Saturday 26 September to Sunday 4 October.
The best holiday we have. Eight days of eating outdoors and inviting people in, which is the same shape as a drop. A duck in the sukkah, a duck for every guest who comes through, a duck for the family down the street who built theirs in a parking space.
Chanukah — first candle Friday evening 4 December, eighth candle Friday 11 December.
Eight nights, eight ducks: hide one a night, somewhere a little more public each night, the way the lights move toward the window. This is the loudest week of the year for a chapter that wants to be seen. Two notes. Both the first and the last night fall on erev Shabbat, so a chapter that closes for Shabbat should run nights two through seven and let the bookends be candles. And a duck left out in December weather is a duck somebody finds wet — put them where there is a roof.
Purim — Tuesday 23 March 2027.
Mishloach manot: two foods and a duck. The baskets are already going out, already going to named people, and it is the one day of the year when handing a stranger something is ordinary. Costumes too — a duck goes in a pocket.
Pesach — first seder Wednesday evening 21 April 2027.
The afikoman is a hiding game with a ransom at the end. Send a duck home with whoever finds it. The calendar wrote this one for us.
When you run low
Chapter price is $6 a duck, by the flock of ten. That's $60 a flock plus $7.50 shipping, and however many flocks you order ride in the same box for the same $7.50. Order any number of tens, whenever you want them.
Your reorder link came with this playbook, and it is yours alone — it carries your chapter price and it tells us who is restocking. Keep it somewhere you'll find it in February. Lost it, or want it in someone else's hands on your staff? Write to partnerships@atlantaisrael.org and we'll send it over.