/r/CFB Buys & Donates $6,250 in toys and cash to Toys For Tots (pictures inside) thanks to the 2016 Holiday Drive
##Intro
The 2016 r/CFB Holiday Drive: Just Toys, Just Tots is over and we raised $6,250.00 for Toys For Tots! Once again, I donned the Santa costume to become Raoul Claus as we made our donation run.
FIRST, take a moment to appreciate [all 140+ r/CFB readers representing who donated](https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/5hxop7/rcfb_holiday_drive_just_toys_just_tots_donate_now/) (with 61 different schools represented!).
SECOND, take a moment to recognize the r/CFB members who came to help gather, transport, and deliver toys here in the Twin Cities on a day that was -21 (without wind chill!) when we arrived at Toys-R-Us at 10am:
##The Plan
As last year, I chose a large Toys-R-Us/Babies-R-Us combo store because I wanted a lot of choices after learning TFT's usually lacks infant and teenager toys. Last year we emphasized the 0-3 bracket, this year we split the two sides that were lacking: Infants and Teens.
We went in with 3 basic goals for grabbing toys and making efficient use of the funds:
- Nothing that needs batteries (those toys are cheaper, they don't need batteries later, and—frankly—as a parent of two small kids I hate noisy toys and wouldn't want one in my house)
- Find stuff that's cost-effective (e.g. sales, premium branding isn't something an infant is going to care about)
- Try to focus more on 0-3 and teenagers
We mostly followed those parameters. Afterward we stuffed cars and headed down to the local TFT warehouse.
Here's the numbers breakdown:
- We raised $6,250.00.
- We spent $6,035.56 on toys.
- At the TFT warehouse I wrote a check for the remaining $214.44
- The Toys-R-Us manager agreed to give us an additional 10% off our entire purchase.
- We bought a total of 353 items, at a $17.09 per item average; last year we managed to buy more items for less ($5144.44 on 419 items at $12.28 per item), the discrepancy can be attributed to teenager items being generally more expensive per item.
##Here's how it went, in pictures:
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Efficiency: As we learned last year, check-out takes a long time when you're buying this many toys, so this time we had a constant check-out process while we all gathered toys.
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Halfway through checkout: As the full carts started to gather we had to push them to the side to not create a traffic jam. At one point a former Marine, who was there with his kids, noticed what we were doing and thought it was great—he said that giving the toys out was one of his best memories.
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Giant receipt #1: It's crazy how long these receipts get, and we dealt with a couple of register computer headaches (but nothing too bad).
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/r/CFB Champions of LIFE: Following the Words of Butch Jones, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.
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This year's haul: 13 full shopping carts! They didn't have the $20 giant stuffed bears this year so we didn't get as many pilots.
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Group Photo: A nice passerby took a photo of us in the (by then -15) weather...yes a vertical shot where horizontal would've made more sense—but this wasn't something I was going to correct when we were all freezing.
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The Return of Pirate Raoul Claus: I didn't wear the full Santa outfit at the toystore because (1) it was a pullover top and I didn't want to get hot and (2) more importantly, I didn't want to make all the kids think Santa was at the store. Last year someone joked the half-costume made me actually look like a pirate, so there you are—obligatory "Yarr" pose, this time with a Dilly Bar. Maybe this will be next year's intrusive sidebar photo! This photo was painful to shoot due to the wind and cold.
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Hauling toys: The warehouse was across the cities on the border of Minneapolis in St Paul, so we caravaned over.
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Photo at TFT's local warehouse: We pulled into the warehouse the Marines were using and unloaded all five cars and I gave them a check for the remainder of the money (judging by last year, I'll get a receipt by spring). The Marines were all as nice as last year, and when we asked for a photo they suggested in front of the big pile (which was shorter than earlier in the day); we decided to hold the long receipts.
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Here are the Toys-R-Us receipts: as you can see in the savings summary, we tried to also get sale items. In the end that's a lot of savings ($1,018.04) we were able to pass along into more toys for more tots.
Afterward I took everyone out to a local pub for lunch on me as thanks. Forgot to take a photo this year.
##Finally:
- Thanks to all of you who DONATED
- Thanks to all of you who HELPED
- Thanks for making r/CFB a great COMMUNITY
We did it, r/CFB!
Posted Dec 19, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC · edited