Cradles to Crayons

Cradles to Crayons® (C2C®) is a non-profit organization that provides free clothes and other basic needs such as shoes, diapers, coats, and backpacks with school supplies to children living in homeless, poverty, and low-income situations for free. Cradles to Crayons began with its first Giving Factory® warehouse in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 2002. Cradles to Crayons expanded to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2006 and Chicago, Illinois, in 2016. In 2021, Cradles to Crayons launched its national online clothing donation platform Giving Factory Direct, serving children in NYC and San Francisco with direct donations from across the United States. Cradles to Crayons partners with corporations, community groups, service organizations, media outlets, sports teams, and other organizations in Chicagoland, Greater Philadelphia, Massachusetts, NYC, San Francisco, and across the U.S. Supporters donate clothing to clothes donation boxes. Then Cradles to Crayons volunteers sort and package the donations and provide them to children in need of clothing, shoes, diapers, and school supplies.

History
Cradles to Crayons was concepted by Lynn Margherio when she was spending time with her young niece. She realized that children grow very quickly, leaving new and nearly new clothing and other children’s essentials unused. Interested in redistributing viable resources like free kids clothes and free baby clothes to meet community need, she tested a model to process and redistributed items and make them accessible to children and families. She founded Cradles to Crayons as a nonprofit organization and it officially opened its doors in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 2002. C2C provided free clothing and other essentials to 2,000 children in its first year and later expanded physical locations, warehouses called The Giving Factory® to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Chicago, Illinois. Through the development of an online clothing donation platform, Giving Factory Direct in 2021, C2C also serves children in NYC and San Francisco. The organization has Cradles to Crayons drop off locations in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. The new and gently used children's clothing donations go to support families and children in need. In 2020, they purchased a building and relocated their Massachusetts Giving Factory warehouse in Brighton, MA to a larger "forever home" in Newton, MA. Cradles to Crayons claims its goal is "making it convenient to turn compassion into action."

Clothing Donations
As more people become interested in textile recycling and donations and sustainability, Cradles to Crayons drop off locations are a solution for new and gently used children’s clothing. Because Cradles to Crayons provides free clothes to kids, any quality clothing donation will be delivered to a child in local communities. People who want to donate kids clothes or donate baby clothes, but are not near a physical Cradles to Crayons collection bin or location can donate clothing directly through the mail with the online Giving Factory Direct program. The organization uses donated clothing to help End Clothing Insecurity, distribute clothing to kids in need, and increase children's clothing access.

The Giving Factory
The Giving Factory brings in corporate, school, and neighborhood volunteers, ages 5 and older, who sort Cradles to Crayons donations based on the needs of orders collected from children service partners. These orders include clothing item, clothing size, and age. Based on the success Cradles to Crayons has had at its Boston,Philadelphia, and Chicago locations, in 2021 the organization created a digital clothing distribution model called Giving Factory Direct. Across all Giving Factories, Cradles to Crayons aims toensure that all children have access to clothing resources regardless of family income.

Giving Factory Direct
Cradles to Crayons Giving Factory Direct is a direct clothing donation program to support children facing Clothing Insecurity. Individual, family, and corporate donors from across the United States ship their clothing donation to a specific child with specific needs. By shipping clothing direct, more children can access the everyday outfits they need. Online donors are matched with children who need clothing and are given a packing list to ship two outfits or a winter coat to the child they’ve been paired with.

Impact
Since 2002, Cradles to Crayons has distributed more 5 million packages of clothing and essentials to children and families living at 200% of the Federal Poverty Line and below—including unhoused families and those in transition from domestic violence or other emergency situations— in Chicagoland, Greater Philadelphia, Massachusetts, NYC, and San Francisco. In FY23, Cradles to Crayons distributed 803,071 packages of essentials, including 152,888 packages of clothing and shoes, 8,589,750 diapers, 101,715 winter coats and accessories, 184,759 backpacks and supplies. In 2023 Cradles to Crayons engaged more than 112,994volunteers in the “Giving Factory” warehouses. Cradles to Crayons’ overarching goal is to provide clothing and essentials to help eliminate the effects of child poverty for children across the U.S.; their short-term goal is to continue connecting communities to share new and gently used clothing resources.

Boston
Cradles to Crayons was founded in the Boston area in 2002. In 2011, Cradles to Crayons Boston was recognized with the "Partnership of the Year" award from the Boston Business Journal for their work with Staples, and received the prestigious Neighborhood Builder Award from Bank of America. In that same year, C2C was chosen by Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick, to host his inaugural Project 351 event, a day of public service with 8th Grade representatives from each of Massachusetts' 351 cities and towns.. Deval Patrick led a day of community service in the warehouse with hundreds of students from Massachusetts. Cradles to Crayons has partnered with Project 351 on their Spring Service since 2011, bringing in thousands of pounds of donated clothing from across Massachusetts in support of C2C’s Spring Greening initiative. This initiative aims to support sustainability by keeping high-quality clothing in use and out of landfill, delivering it to other children in local communities.

Philadelphia
Cradles to Crayons Philadelphia throws annual campaigns like their "Ready for School" initiative. This campaign urges individuals and businesses in Philadelphia to help provide resources to local homeless children. The money donated towards this campaign is used to distribute new "Kidpacks", which are filled with school supplies for homeless kids.

Chicago
In October 2016, Cradles to Crayons opened its Chicago location in a 20,000-square-foot warehouse facility titled the Giving Factory. In 2022, they moved to a larger warehouse in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago. The Cradles To CrayonsChicago Giving Factory warehouse is similar to the size of the organization's other locations in Boston, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The organization's main objective is to provide children with life's basic needs such as clothing, winter coats, diapers,  and school supplies. Several volunteers within the Chicago community welcomed Cradles to Crayons by contributing to the organization's goal of receiving 16,000 donations, so children facing Clothing Insecurity have the essentials they need to thrive. New and gently used clothing is donated  put through a screening process. If the items donated do not meet the organization's standards, they are recycled or given to other charity organizations that use them to support their own missions.

Services and programs
Cradles to Crayons' programs operate year-round to support children in need across the  Chicagoland, Greater Philadelphia, Massachusetts, NYC, and San Francisco, providing the clothing and essentials each child needs to overcome their unique situations and excel both inside and outside of the classroom. C2C Giving Factories collect new and gently used children's items through grass roots community drives. Donated items are then sorted, inspected, and packaged by volunteers. Cradles to Crayons packages are filled with basics to meet children’s needs like clothing, shoes, winter coats, diapers, and school supplies. These packages are brought directly to the families free of charge, through partnerships with hundreds of qualified social service partner agencies providing support to children and families such as Catholic Charities, The Home for Little Wanderers, and Horizons for Homeless Children.

C2C’s online donation program, Giving Factory Direct, connects individual, family, and corporate donors and donor teams to package up outfits or winter coats for specific children to be delivered directly. This program supports thousands of children in NYC and San Francisco and partners with organizations like WIN and Bill Wilson Center.

Cradles to Crayons' signature program, Everyday Essentials, operates without interruption throughout the year; programs are focused with seasonal initiatives. From July through September, Ready for School provides children with the materials they need to feel ready to learn from head to toe, including a special emphasis on providing new backpacks with necessary school supplies. Gear Up for Winter supplies kids with the cold weather gear that they need to stay warm. During the traditional spring cleaning months, Spring Greening encourages families to clean out their closets and donate their gently used items to C2C. Gear Up for Baby focuses on diapers and baby clothes throughout May and June.

2018
In April 2018, in partnership with Comcast and from assistance from hundreds of volunteers, Cradles for Crayons packaged more than 7,500 hygiene kits for children across Chicago. That same month, CTC also partnered with Metropolitan Family Services in their collaboration with Walgreens, Huggies, and former Chicago Cubs catcher David Ross to distribute a $10,000 donation, and 1.5 million diapers to the younger aid receivers. The following month saw CTC partner with television networks NBC 5 and Telemundo along with several Xfinity stores in an effort to gather more donations. Later in August, CTC teamed up with Jordans Furniture by collecting new and like-new clothing and shoes at all store locations and at the Taunton Distribution Center. The total amount of donations were enough to assist more than 3,000 children in need. October saw the nonprofit hold an interactive 21+ event in its factory that showcased daily operations and practices. In December, CTC held an event for volunteers to come into their warehouse on the Northwest side to help meet the increased demand for the holiday season.

2019
In June 2019, Cradles to Crayons teamed up with Jordans Furniture again by collecting new and like-new clothing and shoes at all store locations and at the Taunton Distribution Center. Jordans Furniture donation has helped Cradles to Crayons by collecting enough clothing to provide for 3,000 children. Later in August, Cradles to Crayons held an event in Chicago's Daley plaza to fill 50,000 backpacks with school supplies for homeless or low-income children. In October, twenty locations across Chicago, including the Oak Park Public Library, held that year's annual Gear Up For Winter initiative where gently-used coats and other winter clothing items were collected to later be donated.

Media
Cradles to Crayons was reviewed by Charity Navigator, an organization which evaluates the financial health, accountability, and transparency of America’s largest charities. They have been awarded the four-star rating since 2009.

Cradles to Crayons was featured in the December 2011 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.