This is a summary of the 2007 Used Clothing Drive on November 30, 2007 - December 2, 2007. Watch for details of the 2008 Drive on December 5-7, 2008!
Receiving: On Friday, November 30, 2007, as the drive begins, the clothing donations will be brought from the participating firms and organizations to this year's sorting location. Volunteers are on duty all day Friday to receive the clothes and set up the site for the weekend's activities. We welcome volunteers to help us receive the clothes on Friday, especially in the afternoon! By Friday night, the donations are usually enough to fill several large rooms floor to ceiling!
FOR 2007, WE WILL BE SORTING AT THE PORTALS III, on D STREET SW, BETWEEN 12TH AND 13TH STREETS, SW. Download a map that shows the sorting site, as well as a site plan for the building that shows the entrance on D Street SW where we will be receiving all deliveries of clothing. Please drop off deliveries at the D Street entrance. It will be clearly marked. Volunteers should also enter the building from D Street, SW.
Sorting & Distributing: On Saturday, December 1, the real heavy lifting begins. Volunteers dig in to the countless bags and boxes of donated clothing and separate them by gender and type of item. The donations are then bagged, labeled, and sorted, ready for delivery. While this is a time-consuming process, it is critically important in order to meet the stated needs of each of the shelters. At the same time, other volunteers deliver the donations to the shelters throughout town. The whole operation continues until the last bag is donated to the last shelter, usually late Sunday afternoon.
Volunteering: On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, volunteers are asked to sign up for one of the following four-hour time blocks: 8:30 - 12:30 am, 11:30 am - 3:30 pm, or 2:30 - 6:30 pm. However, we're happy to accomodate different volunteer scheduling requests...especially all day!! Breakfast and lunch are served on Saturday and Sunday.
- Children, accompanied by adults, are welcome. Friday afternoon might be a good time for a group of high school students who need to complete a community service requirement to volunteer.
- We also need lots of drivers to complete deliveries to all of the shelters we serve!
To volunteer, please contact Ceceile Patterson at 202-371-7695 or cpatters@skadden.com.
Firm Coordinators: The coordinators at each participating firm and organization are the real keys to our success. Beginning in late October, they publicize the drive: passing along information; soliciting clothing donations and volunteers; and obtaining monetary donations as well. The coordinators store the clothing donations until the Friday before the clothing drive. It is really amazing to see how the donations grow as the big weekend approaches. All the documents we provided to Firm Coordinators for 2007 (other than the Used Clothing Receipt) are available on the Downloads page. For a more detailed description of the Firm Coordinator position, click here.