One Warm Coat, a non-profit organization supporting local coat drives announced that the first ever Warm Coats & Warm Hearts Coat Drive collected 175,125 coats this winter. The partnership between One Warm Coat, ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Burlington Coat Factory has made great strides in achieving the goal of ensuring anyone who needs a coat has one.
Burlington Coat Factory provided the national retail drop off locations and employee manpower for coat collection and Good Morning America provided national media exposure to encourage involvement.
The Warm Coats & Warm Hearts Coat drive was launched in December with Ben Affleck having the honors of donating the first coats on Good Morning America along with Diane Sawyer. Burlington Coat Factory accepted the coat donations at its 379 stores in 44 states. One Warm Coat worked with over 185 nonprofit organizations across the country to accept and redistribute the donated coats to those in need free of charge. When the drive was completed on January 31, 2008, donations were well over three times more than anticipated.
“We were overwhelmed by the response from our viewers, Burlington Coat Factory employees and shoppers as well as our Times Square neighbors, coat manufacturers and Disney volunteers, who collected coats at various locations including the ESPN Zone and the World of Disney store in New York City,” said Bridgette Maney from “Good Morning America”.
“Burlington Coat Factory has a strong heritage of giving back to communities,” said Audrey Shapiro with Burlington Coat Factory. “We saw the need for a national coat drive, as 12.6 percent of Americans living in poverty are struggling to feed their families and heat their homes. For them a new warm coat is not a possibility. Working with One Warm Coat and Good Morning America was a great way to help these families.”