Christmas Curbside Donation Drive Starts Next Weekend:

Saturday, December 17th – Saturday, December 24th!

St. Anthony’s 24^th Annual Christmas Curbside Donation Drive begins on Saturday, December 17^th. St. Anthony Foundation staff and volunteers, wearing easily identifiable red jackets, will take delivery of food, clothing, and monetary donations at curbside, so donors won’t even have to leave their cars! Donated items are distributed free of charge to San Francisco’s most needy residents.

Your donation of NEW SOCKS, clean and ready-to-wear clothing, canned and dried foods are all much needed and appreciated! And if you’ve been working on hand knit scarves as holiday gifts to our guests, bring them in!

WHEN: December 17th-24th, 2011 – Weekends from 9-3 & Weekdays from 8-6

WHERE: St. Anthony Foundation - 105 Golden Gate @ Jones

NEEDED ITEMS:

Clothing
We need all kinds of clothing for men, women, and children – our most critical needs are for the following items:

Socks, Shoes
Underwear
Winter coats
Jackets
Hats

Monetary Donations

St. Anthony’s is happy to accept cash or checks for donation during Curbside and is prepared to issue receipts onsite for tax purposes.

ITEMS WE CANNOT ACCEPT:

Empty clothes hangers
Knick knacks
Used toys
Children’s car seats
Furniture
Medical equipment
Dirty, stained or torn items
Books and magazines
Exercise/sports equipment
Housewares
Computers, electronics

If you have any questions about donations, please call us at (415) 241-2600.

And in case you’d like to volunteer and join us for the holidays, call the St. Anthony Holiday Line at 415-592-2829. We look forward to seeing you!

St. Anthony’s 24th Curbside Holiday Donation Drive kicks off on Saturday, November 19th. St. Anthony Foundation staff and volunteers, wearing easily identifiable red jackets, will take delivery of food, clothing, and monetary donations at curbside, so donors won’t even have to leave their cars! Donated items are distributed free of charge to San Francisco’s most needy residents.

Your donation of turkeys, clean and gently worn clothing, canned and dried foods are all much needed and appreciated!

WHEN:
November 19th-24th AND December 17th-24th

• Weekdays from 8-6
• Weekends from 9-3

WHERE:
St. Anthony Foundation
105 Golden Gate @ Jones

NEEDED ITEMS:

Clothing
We need all kinds of clothing for men, women, and children – our most critical needs are for the following items:

Socks, Shoes
Underwear
Winter coats
Jackets
Hats

Monetary Donations
St. Anthony’s is happy to accept cash or checks for donation during Curbside and is prepared to issue receipts onsite for tax purposes.

Other
We also need these items:

Shopping bags – with handles
Blankets, comforters, sleeping bags
Luggage, bags, backpacks
Toiletries – new only, please
Towels, washcloths
Stuffed animals – good condition only
Children’s toys – new only, please
Strollers – in good condition
Canes – not crutches, walkers, wheelchairs

Items We Cannot Accept
Empty clothes hangers
Knick knacks
Used toys
Children’s car seats
Furniture
Medical equipment
Dirty, stained or torn items
Books and magazines
Exercise/sports equipment
Housewares
Computers, electronics

If you have any questions about donations, please call us at (415) 241-2600.

And in case you’d like to volunteer and join us for the holidays, call the St. Anthony Holiday Line at 415-592-2829. We look forward to seeing you this holiday season!

Among the most cherished items that will be collected are hand-knit scarves which will be given out to Dining Room guests on Christmas Day. To date, over 3,000 scarves have been received from 20 states. The curbside donation drive opens on Saturday, December 18th at 9am, where clean, cared-for warm clothing, canned or dried bulk foods, and monetary donations can be dropped off to St. Anthony’s “donation valets”. As more and more people turn to the 60-year old non-profit for basic necessities as a result of the current economic crisis, the support from everyday citizens is needed, welcomed, and appreciated. (more…)

If you were at Renegade Craft Fair this weekend, you surely got some of your coolest Christmas shopping taken care of. And you may have seen or contributed to Renegade attendee’s scarf collection for St. Anthony’s- beautiful greens and browns, soft whites and warm reds- lovingly knitted and packaged and ready to be distributed on Christmas to guests at St. Anthony’s. Thank you Renegade! Thank you Knitters!

Students from Mercy High School, an all-girls college-preparatory school in San Francisco, just brought a van full of donations from their most recent clothing drive.

The clothing they collected will go to help poor and homeless families and individuals at St. Anthony’s Free Clothing Program.

Thanks, ladies! You are awesome!

“Knit 2500 scarves.  By hand. By Christmas.”

That’s the idea behind St. Anthony Foundation’s Holiday Scarf drive planned for this year’s Christmas Celebration. We want to give every guest who comes to us for a meal on December 25th to leave with a brand new, hand knitted scarf to keep them warm for the following winter months.

We’ve got a lot of work to do in the next six months to insure that all our guests get these thoughtful gifts by Christmas. We’re still undecided on what to call this outreach of crafty support, that’s why we’re reaching out to you.

Have an idea of what to name it? Leave your naming idea in the comment’s field below by Monday, May 31. We’ll take the best name’s a present them on the blog to be voted on soon!

Download: PDF Flier with more information. Please feel free to email it to your friends and family and encourage them to participate as well!

Update: The votes are in! This project will be known as “Scarving Artists”. Thanks for the suggestion, Bill S.!

We heard through Filipinas Magazine that YFPA hosted a sock drive benefiting St. Anthony Foundation of San Francisco. Thank you!

The Hoodie People had this to say about their 2nd annual Hoodie Drive, and the hoodies they donated to St. Anthony’s (thank you!):

The 2nd Annual Hoodie Drive was another small victory for www.hoodipeople.com. We surpassed last year and showed up at St. Anthony’s with 100 warm pieces of clothing including items from our own closets. It was actually raining while unloading the hoodies and there were lots of homeless people, including women and small children, squeezing under store over hangings for shelter. Seeing families in the cold is no joke and showed us first hand how bad homelessness gets. When we got inside the worker behind the glass said, “Oh, wow. Those will be gone quick.” Experiences like these certainly make us want to do more and re-confirm why we do this each year. Our bin had hoodies, sweaters, jackets, and rain coats donated at hoodiepeople.com’s One Year Anniversary Party. We had donations from Triumph 4th Street in San Rafael, CA again this year too.

And what a holiday donation drive it was. The Ramallah Club kicked off the giving spree on the first day with 96 turkeys.  Eighteen young people from The Joint Youth Ministry came all the way from San Jose with 26 bags of clothing which some of them spent their day sorting and bagging while others unloaded donations from people driving up to our doors with food and clothing for our guests.  We received a record 1163 turkies over the week before Thanksgiving and hundreds of deliveries of clothing and toiletries over Christmas week.

Our friends heard our cry for socks. More than 3,000 pairs, in every size, color, and pattern, with plenty of plain but very warm crew socks and work socks to fill Christmas gift bags for all the guests who came to the Dining Room. Gymboree donated hats, chocolate, bags, and labels that said “Happy Holidays” and put the bags together. The Palace Hotel came through with 2800 mineral washes for the bags and cartons of other useful gifts for St. Anthony residential programs. The Hilton and other hotels gave shampoo and lotion. And Jane and John Doe just kept giving and giving and giving.

Anything that didn’t go into a gift bag will be given to our guests for months to come, as the rains continue and the cold grows sharper. This is how the 5,000 get fed. And clothed and healed and living better, safer lives: when people of good will are not too afraid for themselves to open their hands and share what they can.

Thanks to the students of the Jefferson School for collecting 1020 pairs of brand new socks for our guests in their sock drive! Here are a few pictures from their visit.

Thanks to the Kelly family from Menlo Park, who dropped off a Suburban full of clothes from their drive on Monday. What a great way to do a drive! They emailed their friends and said:

“We’re collecting clean, gently used clothes for St. Anthony’s. If you’d like to donate men’s, women’s, or children’s clothes, just email us back, then Sunday morning leave the bag outside your front door. We’ll drive around and pick them up.”

So many people are doing drives for us. It makes such a difference to our guests, who are really struggling this year. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

“It’s like grabbing two high tension wires and being electrified with love and compassion.”

– Lama Tharchin Rinpoche, explaining how devotion and compassion work together. The more intense our devotion, the more vast our compassion, the brighter we shine.