Ideal Service Project for Everyone!

• School, scouts, youth groups, honor societies, service auxiliaries
• Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, Children’s Sabbath, mitzvah projects
• Civic organizations or corporate citizenship efforts
• Exciting alternative to the fundraising lemonade stand for young self-starters
• Great holiday option to replace cookie, ornament or gift exchanges
• Terrific way for sports boosters and running clubs to “pay it forward” while finding a home for outgrown shoes

What Makes Hosting Your Own Shoe Drive
the Perfect Service Option?

• It’s a simple, short-term project with a limited time commitment – Just decide on a date, publicize, collect, load up and drop off.
• It’s FUN, especially if you engage children & youth by adding several steps: sort, count & chart. A competition between classes or grades livens it up, too!
• You’re not asking for another check or purchase.
  1. Even those who can’t afford a cash donation can participate.
  2. 501(c)(3) organizations such as scouting groups & PTAs, which aren’t allowed to collect money for other organizations, are free to sponsor shoe drives.
• You’re solving the donor’s problem. Nearly everyone needs to clean out a closet from time to time, yet hates to throw out perfectly good shoes that no longer fit. Most people enthusiastically join in an effort to pass their “treasures” on to someone who appreciates them.
• You’re encouraging the values of
  1. Generosity – Show people an unusual way to give to others.
  2. Social Justice & Compassion – Help people focus on how much they have that they don’t need, and how much others need that they don’t have.
  3. Conservation & Environmentalism – Most people don’t know that used shoes can be tossed into a collection barrel instead of a landfill – you’re assisting their efforts to reuse, repurpose & recycle.
• A shoe drive works even if you need something more than a simple collection.
  1. Develop and distribute fact sheets about local poverty and homelessness OR disaster relief OR the need to support health & wellness in all communities.
  2. Invite a speaker from one of the agencies that distributes our shoes.
  3. Arrange for additional volunteer support of one of those agencies – or in current disaster relief efforts.
  4. Organize a race – with an entry fee paid in shoes and/or cash donations – to publicize the issues described in (a) above or to support the agencies that distribute our shoes.

WE MAKE IT EASY

Click here to find a checklist and a sample poster – in PDF & JPEG format – as well as sample flyers & door hangers you can modify to promote your event.