Coat Drive for NFCC

A few cool days into October 2020 and the kids and I were discussing, “what would we do if we didn’t have the right clothing for this weather?” From this conversation, our first unofficial Landa Handoff was born: a warm coat drive.

Want to try this in your neighborhood? This could be versioned for any existing drive in your community.

Here’s how it came together…

WHO: This is two-part: the non-profit partner; the people who would be interested in supporting this mission.

We were already familiar with North Fulton Community Charities, and their annual coat drive in Fulton County. Once we connected what we saw as a need to an organization that could facilitate distribution, we moved on to the next steps.

We asked people we knew for donations: my co-workers, friends, families we knew through soccer, teachers, other Room Parents or families that we knew through school. There was no website or name. All communication was informal and through email and text messaging.

WHAT: NFCC was very specific about the types of items they were collecting. To save time (and for accuracy!) I used as much of their language from their website as possible in my own communications.

WHEN: My greatest concern was being a burden to others, so close to the holidays and during a pandemic. I reduced the ask to ‘over the next few days, could you take a look in your hall closet to find just one cold-weather item to donate?’

From my first email to delivery, this project was completed in five days. The quick turn hopefully took the pressure off of others to do a deep dive in their wardrobes, but instead a quick check to see what they had ready to go.

HOW: Since this was a very local ask, we offered two ways to send donations: a bin at my office for colleagues to bring coats in; a pick up to drive to our neighbors’ homes to pick up their coats. We asked for a confirmation replay with their home address, and offered a date for pick up. They just needed to leave their donation in a bag by their front door.

How We Finished

Nearly every family had at least one coat to give. A few purchased brand new coats so that they could have something to give. We were able to fill TWO shopping carts with the donated coats that we collected!

Miller: The hardest part was “…going to each house to pick up a large amount of coats that we had to carry and then get into the shopping cart. The good part was how I felt after we finished putting the coats in the shopping cart. It felt like we accomplished something.”

Learn more about North Fulton Community Charities and this specific initiative on their website:

https://nfcchelp.org/warm-coat-day/