Alicia Kabir has a professional engineering license. She spent years in environmental consulting before a board seat at Kesem, a nonprofit for kids whose parents have cancer, pulled her out of the for-profit world for good. She's now almost two years into leading Cradles to Crayons Massachusetts, and she'll admit she was doing budget forecasts the morning we recorded.
Cradles to Crayons is close to 25 years old, with operations in Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago, and a mission that's easy to say and hard to execute: ending clothing insecurity for kids from newborn through eighteen. In this episode of The PR Bunker Podcast, Alicia gets into how the Giving Factory in Newton actually works and why people keep coming back.
A few takeaways from the conversation:
The Boston team is about thirty people. They oversee roughly 30,000 volunteers a year and get clothing, shoes, diapers and school supplies to more than 115,000 kids across every county in Massachusetts, with Rhode Island and New Hampshire now on the map too. A volunteer shift is two hours, music on, and you leave knowing exactly how many kids you helped. Alicia says that clarity is why families, teens and corporate teams keep signing up. Project 351 alone brings in almost 15 percent of the clothing the organization needs each year.
Two days after we recorded, more than 800 corporate volunteers filled Agganis Arena at BU and packed over 50,000 backpacks with school supplies in about two hours. Many went straight to schools. At one distribution last fall, every kid in the building got to pick a backpack, not just the ones who qualified, and Alicia says nobody argued over colors.
Alicia's answer for why the organization runs this well after 25 years isn't the logistics, though her engineering brain loves the logistics. It's that donors and partner nonprofits know exactly where their two hours or their twenty dollars go. Trust drives short term support and long term support alike.
Cradles to Crayons is already thinking about winter coats and will distribute more than 50,000 this season. To volunteer, find a drop-off bin or donate toward diapers and wipes, visit cradlestocrayons.org. Every Old Navy in the state has a bin.
Listen to the full episode above.
Reading is the hello. SBGA is where we get to yes.
What does Cradles to Crayons do?
It collects new and gently used children's clothing, shoes and essentials, sorts them with volunteers at its Giving Factory warehouse in Newton, and distributes them through a network of partner nonprofits to kids in need from birth through age 18.
How can my company volunteer with Cradles to Crayons?
Groups from five to 150 people can book two hour shifts at the Newton warehouse through the website. Larger partners often join signature events like the back-to-school backpack-a-thon or winter coat drives, and a modest financial contribution helps cover costs.
Where can I drop off kids' clothing in Massachusetts?
Enter your zip code at cradlestocrayons.org for the nearest drop-off location. Old Navy stores keep a bin year round, and retailers like Simon Malls and Jordan's Furniture host seasonal drives.
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