What a wonderful conference --

The National Conference on Volunteering and Service, June 22 to 24 in San Francisco was absolutely amazing. An opening session headlined by Michelle Obama, supported by stars and politicos (Gov. Schwarzenegger and Representative Nancy Pelosi were balanced by Jon Bon Jovi and Mathew McCaughney) let the 5,000 attendees know how important and appreciated they were.

Two days of back-to-back, informative sessions, lots of networking and three days of great weather. By Wednesday most of the people walking around the exhibit area had a "glazed look" in their eyes.


One Warm Coat had an exhibit booth, right next to the food service (good planning on our part) and we met so many people who had organized coat drives -- and more importantly for this coming Fall, lots of people who expressed interest in setting up a coat drive in their community.


It was an inspiring event -- so glad it was in our home town. Check out our flickr page to see the booth rise up, in less than 30 minutes.

It IS a small world --

I went into a scrapbook supply store the other day -- what an amazing world of ideas, oh my! -- and was working with a saleswoman on the right paper for our table top displays for the National Conference on Volunteerism & Service.

When I pulled out the pages that would be displayed, she saw that it was for One Warm Coat. She was so proud to tell me that her two daughters had created a One Warm Coat drive last winter.

This summer they are continuing their "good works" by asking friends to clean closets for a new children's clothing store that will GIVE items to families in need.

This warms my heart --

New tools and resources

I just finished uploading photographs of flyers to our Flickr site. This gives us an opportunity to show some of the great ways that people are promoting their coat drive. We'll continue to upload flyers, photos and other items that our Organizers send to us.

And speaking of Organizers, we heard from several folks that STICKERS would be a neat item to give out at a coat drive. We will be sending FREE a sheet of square One Warm Coat logo stickers with each Promotion Package this Fall.

This year's Promo Packages will include the 3' x 3' banner, 2 box labels, and a sheet of stickers.

We're still pulling together items for the Promo Package, so let us know if you have any ideas or suggestions.

humming a song in my mind --

This past winter Jason Damato, a multi-talented musician and artist, was watching "Good Morning America" and saw a segment on the Warm Coats + Warm Hearts coat drive. Jason knew first-hand the importance of a warm coat, having been homeless for a time in Los Angeles.

When he reached out to us with the idea of writing a song about One Warm Coat we were very happy-- and when he offered to share the net proceeds with us, we were flabbergasted.


Here's the link to the iTunes listing. We hope you like the song, buy a copy and pass the word along. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=309837359&s=143441


Jason was recently intereviewed by DoSomething for their "Celebrities Gone Good" section: http://www.dosomething.org/blog/celebsgonegood/Jason_Damato_Interview


BTW, my favorite song by Jason is "Life You Love" --

Is OWC a "leaderless organization"?

Last December I read "The Starfish and the Spider" (http://www.starfishandspider.com/) and it is still noodling around in my brain. The cover caught my eye with the sub-title "The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations" -- and that's EXACTLY how I feel about One Warm Coat!

While I have the "title" of National Coordinator (and sometimes I will add the organizational title of President) I believe the project has grown because it does NOT have a leader.

More than 2,000 individual coat drives were organized last year -- and EACH coat drive has a "leader" -- someone who said "I can do that!".

Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, the Stanford MBAs who wrote this book, made many observations about differences between a starfish and a spider. Starfish = rely on power of relationships; there is no "head" just legs, if you cut off a leg, it will regrow this part. Spiders = rigid heirarcy and top-down leadership; cut off the head, and it will die.

As I said, I'm still absorbing some of their comments -- and I'll be back to share them with you.

Book marks -- the old fashioned kind --

I took the last month "off" from writing the blog -- used it to catch up on lots of reading, learning more about social causes, and warming up my golf game. I'll be writing some short "book reports" during April to share some of the ideas.

While cleaning out the office I came across this bookmark. Brownies from Troop 1979 put these bookmarks in the coats they collected. Very sweet words -- I hope they have given comfort to those who received one.

"Warm Coats + Warm Hearts" campaign

For two years we have partnered with ABC New's Good Morning America and Burlington Coat Factory in a national coat drive. This year more than 177,000 coats were donated and distributed locally.

A question that comes up a lot -- where do the coats go? We recently received a letter from Cornerstone Assistance Network in Fort Worth, Texas who received over 45 boxes of coats from their local Burlington Coat Factory stores.

Here's an example of how they distributed the coats: "I had a call from a mom that needed a coat for her son. I got his size and grabbed a donated coat and then took the coat to the boy that lived at the Fort Worth Housing Authority. School counselors told us the names and sizes of 50 individual children that needed coats. Thanks to you we were able to supply that need."

Yes -- the coats stay in their local community.

Thanks to the thousands who donated coats and, most of all, thanks to our wonderful partners , ABC News' Good Morning America and Burlington Coat Factory, who make this such a successful effort.