What if you have a coat you no longer need. It’s in good condition, it’s warm, and someone else could really use it. You’d gladly give it away, but how?
That’s the problem a woman in San Francisco faced back in 1992. She had a coat to donate and couldn’t easily find somewhere to take it. So she organized a coat drive.
For seven years, it was an annual, local event. Then another woman - Sherry Wood - saw an opportunity. What if this wasn’t just an annual coat drive in San Francisco? What if anyone, anywhere, could organize one?
Today, One Warm Coat has helped distribute more than nine million coats. It supports more than 5,000 coat drives annually and works with roughly 2,000 nonprofit partners across the United States.
I recently spoke with its President and CEO, Beth Amodio, on You Are What You Give about their secret sauce to scaling an operation that provides warmth to so many.
An organization that doesn’t need to go door to door
When we think about growing a nonprofit, we might think about hiring more employees, opening more locations, acquiring more equipment, and raising more and more to cover costs. But One Warm Coat takes a different approach to growth.
Instead of thousands of collection centers or thousands of people to receive and distribute donations., it makes it easy for good people to do what they do best.
Want to organize a coat drive at your office, school, synagogue, church, yoga studio, or neighborhood business? You can register online in a couple of minutes. One Warm Coat provides promotional materials, social media resources, guidance, and access to a map of participating nonprofits that can receive the donations.
You collect the coats. A local nonprofit distributes them. Focused, easy, efficient and effective.
Beth described her own role as something like an air traffic controller, coordinating people, resources, and opportunities to get things where they’re needed.
For the nonprofit leader, instead of asking how much more your organization can do, think about how you can partner with others to maximize impact.
Make giving easier, and more people will give
I also love how this organization began, not with someone asking for help, but with someone looking to give.
We spend considerable time in the nonprofit world identifying needs, documenting them, and communicating their urgency, but how much attention do we give to the other side of the equation?
There are people who want to be generous, and they’re ready to help. They moight not have the time, information, confidence, or connections to turn that willingness into action. So One Warm Coat reduces those obstacles.
You don’t have to establish a charity, understand the entire distribution network, or even be the one to organize a drive. Just go to a nearby dropoff location and bring a coat. And if you want to do more, the next opportunity is waiting.
A reason for nonprofits to collaborate instead of compete
In a world where nonprofits sometimes find it difficult to collborate with one another, One Warm Coat has found a way to make it work.
Its network includes nonprofits serving veterans, families with limited incomes, young people, and many other populations. These organizations have different missions, but their beneficiaries all share the common need staying warm.
Instead of each nonprofit developing its own coat collection program, One Warm Coat helps connect them with donated outerwear. That allows participating organizations to devote more of their own resources to their core missions.
Beth shared an example involving approximately 2,000 irregular 3new winter coats donated by a manufacturer, but no single local nonprofit could receive and distribute the entire shipment. One Warm Coat arranged for the shipment to reach one location, where a dozen organizations could collect what they needed.
Not only did a large donation reach the people who needed it, but a group of nonprofits that might otherwise have had little reason to meet were suddenly working together. One might provide food, another dental services, and a third might support families by providing emotional support. The coat distribution then became an opportunity for relationships that could extend well beyond winter.
The bigger lesson behind one warm coat
There are many ways to measure One Warm Coat’s impact. Nine million coats distributed, thousands of annual drives, and millions of pounds of textiles kept out of landfills over time.
But I keep thinking about the people. The millions of people who chose to give a coat. The countless individuals, communites and companies who discovered that they can make a difference because someone made it easy for them to take the first step.
Thank you, One Warm Coat, for challenging us to envision what we can accomplish if we spent less time trying to do everything ourselves and more time making it possible for others to participate.
Listen to my conversation with Beth Amodio on You Are What You Give.
We explore how One Warm Coat grew, the practical decisions behind its operating model, its corporate partnerships, and Beth’s personal journey into nonprofit leadership.
Learn more or find a coat drive near you:
https://www.onewarmcoat.org
And special thanks to Victoria Hearst for her generous support of You Are What You Give.