Many of your questions can be quickly answered by visiting the Organize a Coat Drive page and the Organizer Guide. Some of the most common questions/requests are answered below. If your question/request is not answered in the FAQ section, please visit the Contact Us page.
Coat Drive Organizer Most Frequently Asked Questions
All Coat Drive Ambassadors are able to choose during the registration process if they would like their coat drive to be listed on the public Donate Coats map. When registering, Organizers are able to add up to 5 collection sites to the map. If you have more than 5 locations, please email us before registering.
You can add or change your listing on the Coat Drive Map at any time through your custom coat drive webpage, by clicking “My Registration” from the top menu bar, then edit.
Coat drives are the perfect activity to engage employees in small local offices or in large companies with many locations. Employees can collect coats, financial donations, or both! Click here to learn more about achieving your ESG & CSR goals!
If you would like to explore customized marketing solutions for your company, please click here to connect with One Warm Coat’s corporate partnerships team.
Every Organizer has a goal bar to track their coat totals on their custom coat drive webpage!
In the top menu bar of your custom coat drive webpage, click on the button that says “Coat Totals”. From the Coat Totals page, you can enter the number of coats collected throughout your drive. Every time you report, the total will appear on the goal bar and an update will pop-up on your coat drive home page to update everyone following your coat drive.
One Warm Coat drives accept most types of outerwear: coats, sweaters, jackets, sweatshirts, scarves, hats and gloves.
If you receive coats that are not clean and wearable, meaning they have holes and/or stains, please do not donate them to a nonprofit partner, rather please recycle them! Google “textile recycling near me” or contact a Goodwill in your area (many Goodwill locations will accept unwearable items for recycling). Our goal is to keep the coats out of landfills.
One Warm Coat has teamed up with Retold Recycling as our official textile recycling partner. When coats have holes or stains, or just aren’t suitable for re-wear, Retold Recycling will take them and ensure they don’t end up in a landfill. As a One Warm Coat supporter, you can receive a 15% discount on your first order with the code WARMCOAT15.
Time for Step 3 – Sort & Deliver Your Coats! You will decide where you will deliver the coats you collected. Please use the Nonprofit Locator Map to find a nonprofit partner organization near you. (One Warm Coat does not pick up coats).
The Nonprofit Locator Map is not a complete list of organizations that support those in need — it is just the beginning. If you cannot find a nonprofit partner close by, you can donate the coats you’ve collected to any local nonprofit organization who needs them. Search google for a local homeless shelter or food bank to contact.
When personalizing your custom custom coat drive page, the ideal image sizing for both editable images is:
- Profile/logo image: 365 x 365 pixels
- Header image: 2500 x 785
Thank you for your donation! You can download a tax receipt, here. Please fill out the receipt with the number of coats or dollars donated and provide the receipt and value of coats donated (when applicable) to your tax professional.
One Warm Coat does not provide collection boxes. We encourage you to be creative and reduce/reuse/recycle old boxes, clean garbage cans – a container of any kind will work! Putting a collection bin together is super easy – we’ve provided step-by-step instructions for our registered Ambassadors.
No, One Warm Coat is not a grant-making organization. Any funds raised for One Warm Coat as part of a coat drive through One Warm Coat’s website or a third party fundraising platform, stay with One Warm Coat and support the Coat Drive Program.
To ensure that we are using funds in the best way possible and providing as many coats to our neighbors as we can, One Warm Coat’s resources are provide digitally! Registered Organizers receive a digital Welcome Packet once their registration is complete and given access to many free resources, including some which may be printed and shipped from Vistaprint.