As we add more and more shelters, I continue to encourage volunteers to donate their blankets locally, rather than sending their blankets to me. This obviously helps keep my huge postage bill manageable, but it also brings many other benefits.
With this in mind, I’m grateful that some volunteers have really taken it a step further, to basically “adopt” their local shelter! These volunteers will donate all the blankets they make to a shelter in their town. They often add toys, donate other items from the shelter’s “wish list”, and even volunteer at the shelter. However, to adopt a shelter, you don’t need to do all that! Simply focusing your donations on helping a nearby facility is enough!
It’s a great idea that’s worth sharing, so here are the steps you can take to adopt a shelter near you:
Step One – Check out our website list to find the shelter that is closest to you. If you don’t find one that is close enough to drive to, let me know and we’ll work together to find one. If you send me your zip code I can usually find a few nearby shelters. I’ll contact them and try to sign them up for our free program.
Step Two – Make a batch of blankets, at your own pace. If you know of other people that would like to get involved that’s great too. Have them create blankets and give them to you for drop off.
Step Three - Once a shelter is officially in our program I always have a contact name. So just drop off your blankets, marked to that person’s attention, and maybe ask if you can introduce yourself. If you call ahead, that usually works best!
Step Four – Once you’ve made a few donations to the shelter and have met your contact, you can feel free to ask if they’d allow you to put a donation bin in their lobby for yarn and fleece donations. Many of the shelters would allow this, as long as you provide the bin and empty it when you drop off blankets. You can use a sign, like this one, to ask for yarn and fleece donations!
Step Five – Once you have a specific shelter that you’re helping, it’s much easier to ask for material donations via social media, your local library (with a donation bin), etc. You could even put an article in your neighborhood newsletter or local newspaper telling them what you’re doing (you can use this one to start).
Please don’t get overwhelmed with all these steps! The first three steps are certainly enough of an “adoption”. I’ve found steps four and five sometimes flow naturally once you get started and may want to make a bigger project out of it!
