Nice News has partnered with One Warm Coat for our Cause of the Season — a quarterly fundraising initiative spotlighting nonprofits doing essential work to make the world a better place. Click here to donate to the organization, and read on for our interview with President & CEO Beth Amodio.
You might see coat drives popping up in your community as soon as the first autumn chill rolls around, and rightly so, as around 37 million Americans are living below the poverty line and struggle to afford necessities like coats.
But even though winter has fully set in by January and February, coat drives remain essential during this time of year for many people, particularly homeless populations. Warm coats are a resource that needs to be “continually renewed” for those who are wearing their outer layers nearly constantly, explained One Warm Coat President & CEO Beth Amodio.
“Their coat is really their home, and it can get torn, dirty, wet. If there’s a warm day and they have all of their belongings with them, things can get left behind, stolen, lost,” she told Nice News, adding, “They’re going to need two to three coats during the season to carry them through. And this time of year is crucial, because so many of the drives happen in October, November, December, but we still really need coats.”
One Warm Coat has been helping people in need for more than three decades. Each year, the nonprofit facilitates between 4,000 and 5,000 coat drives across all 50 states and some parts of Canada, Amodio said last month.
It was an apt time for our conversation, as Amodio’s South Carolina neighborhood had just received a rare dusting of snow. Weather events like that, which are becoming increasingly common, underscore the need for organizations that keep people equipped to not just survive the elements, but enjoy them.
“One of the things that I have more recently started to think about, especially when it snows outside like today, is I know everyone who’s a parent struggles with this idea of our kids just sitting in front of the screen all day, and we want them to go outside and play,” she said. “But, if you’re a parent, you can’t send your children outside to play and enjoy the snow and enjoy the outdoors during the wintertime if they don’t have the proper gear. So we’ve started to think about it from this sort of different angle, too. It enables people to get outside exercise, have fun, spend time in nature.”
“When we’re talking about adults,” Amodio continued, “the coats are so important because it can provide a way for them to get safely to and from work, whether they’re taking public transportation or walking, or even hold a job that requires them to be outside.”
One Warm Coat has a unique model for reaching vulnerable populations, partnering with more than 1,500 nonprofit organizations across the country rather than providing services directly. One Warm Coat helps thousands of individuals, businesses, and other organizations hold coat drives every year, and the coats collected are then distributed in the local community by a nonprofit in One Warm Coat’s network.
This model fosters a wide range of involvement — One Warm Coat’s network features many of the usual suspects, like food pantries and shelters for unhoused people, but there have also been some untraditional partners, like a dentist office in Appalachia that provides free dental care and free coats to community members on Fridays.
And it’s not just cold weather areas that need coat drives, as demonstrated by the recent snow in the South. Amodio said one of the biggest coat drives is in Tampa, Florida, where rain jackets, windbreakers, and hoodies make up the bulk of donations. “If you are experiencing homelessness, if you’re outside and it’s raining and it’s 50 degrees, you can still become hypothermic,” she said.
Sustainability is another cornerstone of One Warm Coat’s mission — by reusing and upcycling garments, it’s keeping more than 1 million pounds of textiles out of landfills every year. And through the Zero Waste Initiative, launched eight years ago, the organization works with manufacturers and retailers to take any items they can’t sell or don’t have room for and then redistributes them to people who could benefit.
Recently, One Warm Coat coordinated with Dick’s Sporting Goods to send 8,000 brand-new coats to the victims of Hurricane Helene in the Asheville, North Carolina, area, as well as hoodies with SPF protection to those affected by the natural disaster in Florida.
Now onto how you can help: The first way is by making a financial gift (which you can do here). The second is cleaning out your closets and donating coats using One Warm Coat’s interactive map, searchable by zip code or city.
“And then the third way is the part that really means so much to us, which is the opportunity to really make an impact in your local community by taking that extra step to organize a coat drive,” Amodio said. Learn more about how to start a drive in your community through One Warm Coat.
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