1000 children were invited to the store, and all of the children were paired with their own volunteer personal shopper who helped them select clothing, shoes, winter coat, hat, gloves, school supplies and books.

It will take a few days before the professional pictures come in and I have the official number of kids who walked through the store, but I thought you might like to see a few pictures I snapped of the store in action.

As much as we do in advance, the final few days before the event is a whirlwind of activity. Volunteers show up at Central Reform Congregation (CRC) during the week before BTSS to unbox and organize all of the items we will be giving to the kids.

But since our site location is an active Reform Synagogue, and the store is held in the sanctuary, we can’t actually set up the store until the night before our event since the sanctuary is needed for Friday night & Saturday morning Sabbath services.

Steering Committee Set-Up Party:

The entire steering committee, along with their spouses, guests and older children, gathered at CRC tonight at 6 pm for dinner and to move all of the merchandise from the religious school classrooms into the sanctuary to create our store.

A wonderful dinner was provided thanks to our donors – Maggiano’s Little Italy, St. Louis Sippery & Cafe, Sam & Jake’s Pumpernickle Delicatessen, Rib City and Whole Foods. Homemade dessert was provided by our co-chairs and a handful of steering committee members.

After dinner, everyone was assigned a job from building a boys changing room out of pipe & drape to moving shoes or school supplies from the classrooms to the sanctuary.

Before…

Our volunteers in action…

After…

Now we just need the kids.

8 AM will be here before we know it, and the building will be swarming with people and smiles.

In order to pull off this massive one day event, we need over 400 volunteers to help with everything from helping the kids pick out their goodies to directing traffic throughout the store.

Event Day Schedule:

Sign up for either the morning, mid-day or late afternoon shift. Before the event, you will receive information by email or mail (you choose when you register) with more information about volunteering.

But to give you an idea of what you are signing up for, here’s a run down of what you can expect.

When you arrive at the Back to School! Store, you’ll head to the volunteer registration table to get signed in. If you are a personal shopper, you’ll be handed an apron to wear over your clothing. If you are a shoe fitter or restocker, you’ll be given a t-shirt to wear so shoppers can easily find you when they are looking for help.

Then you’ll head back to the volunteer training room for a quick overview of what you will be doing and information you will need to keep the store running smoothly and work with the kids.

At this point, you’ll be directed to your assigned job location and will be given specific instructions on what you will be doing.

• Personal shoppers – these volunteers work  one-on-one with 3 to 4 kids throughout a 3 1/2 hour shift, helping them choose their school supplies, toiletries and pick out a complete outfit. The personal shoppers ARE the store to the kids. As you and your child shop and talk, you are the one that will make sure this child has a wonderful experience. After trying on clothes and filling their new backpack, you’ll take the child back to the Family Waiting Room to re-unite the child with parents or guardians. Then you’ll head back and pick up another child and do it again.
• Dressing room attendants - these volunteers help keep the dressing rooms running smoothly, hanging up clothes that didn’t fit the kids and running out to the store to get alternative sizes for the personal shoppers. Since many of the little boys end up working with female shoppers who can’t go into the boy’s only dressing room, we especially need men who are willing to supervise the little guys in the dressing room, helping them try on their clothes and passing information to the shoppers waiting outside the dressing room so they can go grab bigger or smaller sizes.
• Shoe and coat fitters – many of our personal shoppers have no experience with helping kids pick out shoes and coats that fit properly, so a few volunteers assist the shoppers in these stations. We want to make sure that the kids don’t outgrow their coats before the first snow!
• Restockers – We start the day with every table and clothing rack filled, but it doesn’t take long for us to run out of items in the store. Our restockers keep the tables filled, return clothing from the dressing rooms to the clothing racks, organize hundreds of shoe boxes and help personal shoppers that are having trouble finding what they need for a child. Some heavy lifting is involved with the school supplies, so this is a great job for the guys who want to help but just can’t imagine being a shopper. Teens 16-17 yrs old can also work as restockers, and we are happy to sign off on any community service forms that teens need for their schools.

There are a few other odds & ends jobs, but the vast majority of volunteers will be working in one of the jobs above. There are VERY limited sit-down jobs, so please keep that in mind when you sign up. If you are a shopper, you also need to be prepared to help carry a large bag filled with clothing and goodies that the kids will take home.

Everyone is Welcome:

Yes, we know this is a Jewish women’s organization that organizes Back to School! Store.

But you don’t have to be Jewish or a woman to volunteer.

In fact, we would love it if every little boy had the chance to experience the store with a positive male role model helping them get excited about going back to school. Don’t let the term “personal shopper” scare you…you don’t need any special skills other than a smile and a willingness to help the kids.

Tips for Volunteers:

First and foremost, wear comfortable shoes! This is a very ACTIVE event and you will be on your feet most of the day.

We do our best to keep the building cool, but when you fill it with hundreds of people, sometimes it can get a little warm. Casual comfortable clothing is recommended – jeans, shorts and t-shirts are just fine!

We do have a hospitality room so volunteers can grab a morning coffee or water throughout the day. Light snacks are available all day, and volunteers who work two consecutive shifts will be provided with lunch.

Finally, parking is a bit of a challenge. CRC has a relatively small parking lot and street parking fills up quickly. Plan on arriving 15-30 minutes before your shift and walking a block or two. Carpooling is strongly encouraged. You might even consider parking a few blocks away on the other side of Kingshighway, and grabbing something to eat before or after your shift.

One last note about parking – the church across the street graciously allows us to use their parking lot AFTER 12 pm. However, they need the lot for their own parishioners for morning church services, so please do not park in the church lot if you are working the morning shift.

Sign up to volunteer…

Questions?

Leave a comment below or give the office a call.

Since school supplies don’t go on sale until right before our annual event, we end up scrambling every year to purchase everything we need. We did pick up a lot of deeply discounted school supplies last year in the weeks immediately following the 2009 event, but there always seems to be a lot that we just can’t find.

When you are outfitting 1000 kids, you have to buy a lot of pencils and folders!

Tracy Goldberg stepped in and volunteered to help us with the school supply shopping. Good thing she has a big car!

If you have any connections who can donate school supplies or provide them to us at a wholesale price, we would love to hear from you. In the upcoming weeks we will be finishing up the purchase for this year’s event on July 25 AND we will be locating as much as we can so we can be prepared for next year’s event.

We are very honored that Back to School! Store was one of the 2010 finalists. Along with the award, the newspaper will be feature our project in the Ladue News issue on news stands today!

Along with naming us a finalist and the wonderful publicity that will come along with that, Ladue News awarded us with a $1000 check which will be a big help in purchasing all of the items that we still need to outfit the kids.

See all of the pictures from the award ceremony on our Facebook page…

Join Ladue News in Supporting our Kids with a Donation

If you haven’t already made a donation to the 2010 Back to School! Store, please consider sponsoring a child. Outfitting 1000 kids is a massive undertaking and foundations are simply not giving out as many grants as they used to.

We need your support in order to make this wonderful day happen for the kids.

For only $150, you can sponsor a child…providing everything they need to go back to school ready to learn. If your budget doesn’t allow for $150, please give what you can. Your $25 donation let’s us buy a child a winter coat, hat & gloves. A $10 donation buys a child a pair of tennis shoes.

Even a dollar would help. If you could help spread the word and get your friends and family to join you in making a $1 donation, it would all add up to taking care of our kids.

Have you been looking for a way to help support Back to School Store?

Help raise money to outfit 1000 St. Louis school children AND make new friends too!

Keystone of St. Louis is having a happy hour on Thursday, June 24 from 6 – 9 pm at Felix’s in Dogtown. Your $20 ticket provides you with all you can eat & drink…and a portion of each ticket will be donated to BTSS to help our kids.

What is Keystone?

Keystone of St. Louis is a 501 C(3) tax exempt charitable organization made up of community conscious young professionals.

Keystone was formed in 1990 to raise money for worthy local charities in need of financial support.

Keystone plans 4 events a year to raise money for charity. You don’t have to be a member of Keystone to attend. Everyone is welcome.

So join the fun and help back to school store at the same time.

Click on the Keystone flier for all of the details…

We are so excited to be one of the 9 finalists that Ladue News chose to honor.

We would love to win. It’s a huge honor plus the additional publicity could really help us raise desperately needed funds for the Back to School! Store. But regardless of the outcome, we are thrilled to be included in this amazing group of charities!

Ladue News Charity Award Finalists:

• National Council of Jewish Women
• Give Kids a Smile
• St. Patrick Center
• Ranken Jordan Pediatric Specialty Hospital
• Voices for Children
• Family Support Network
• Women’s Safe House
• Caring for Kids
• Sunnyhill

The annual award will be announced at the Ladue News cocktail party on June 17 followed by publication of the winner and finalists in the June 18 issue.

Click on the image above to hear

Jenny Abeles talk with Doug McElvein

about the Back To School! Store on KMOX Radio!

Help Raise Money for BTSS by Going to Dinner

Join us at California Pizza Kitchen in Creve Coeur (Olive and Old Olive) on May 4 from 4 – 9 pm for dinner to raise funds for BTSS.

Click on this link to print the coupon.

Filed under: Donations Tagged: How to Help ]]> http://ncjwbtss.org/2010/04/20/httpswww-formrouter-netforms01cjwbtss-2010back2schoolstore-cpkcoupon-pdf/feed/ 3 Ellen CPK image http://ncjwbtss.org/2010/04/16/help-by-surfing-the-internet/ http://ncjwbtss.org/2010/04/16/help-by-surfing-the-internet/#comments Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:41:13 +0000 Karen Goodman http://ncjwbtss.org/?p=284 ]]> We need your help!

There are a lot of reasons why we set up this website for the Back to School! Store.

In no particular order, this website is designed to:

• Make volunteer registration much easier
• Offer prominent exposure for our event sponsors
• Help our volunteers stay involved with the project throughout the planning process
• Get the word out about merchandise and services that we need

But to be honest, the primary goal of this website is to help us raise money by getting additional exposure for the event and making it much easier for people to make a donation.

More Time than Money:

If you would like to help the BTSS but simply aren’t in a position to make a donation (or already made a donation to the store!), we can still use your help.

And you can help without making a single phone call to ask people for money!

Help Us Get the Word Out about BTSS!

The best way for us to raise money for the Back to School! Store is to get to word out about this great event. You never know who might be touched by our cause and will sponsor a child or has a connection who could get us shoes for the kids.

How to Help:

Facebook and Twitter:

If you are a regular on Facebook or Twitter, please help spread the word about this event by posting the links to this site. You can post links to the blog updates or to any page on the site, and leave a comment that lets your connections know that we really need donations. One suggestion would be link to the Photo Gallery page – everyone loves to look at pictures!

Let’s make this event go viral through the social media world.

Commenting on Blogs and News Articles:

One of the best way to get people to visit a website is to leave a comment on blog posts or news articles. All you need is some time and an internet connection to help.

How to Help though Article Comments:

1. Find related articles – Do a Google search to find articles which talk about kids or charity events. The goal would be to find articles which are written or read by people who will appreciate what we are doing.
2. Read the article – Spam comments are despised, and won’t help us at all. In order to have your article comment do us any good, you need to read the article and find a way to relate our event to the discussion.
3. Leave a comment – When you register to leave a comment, include at least your first name and include our website address in the field for the URL (http://ncjwbtss.org). Make sure your comment isn’t just a blatant request for someone to donate money or visit our site. Find something to say about the article, and mention that you volunteer for a charity event which helps kids with their Back to School needs.

How Does it Work:

When you leave a comment on an article that adds something to the discussion, the article author and many of the website readers will want to know more about who you are and the charity you mentioned. By adding the Back to School! Store’s website URL when you register to leave a comment, they can click on your name and it will bring them to our site.

Hopefully, they will be touched by the pictures of our kids and the description of our event, and will decide to make a donation.

They may even write a story about our event or tell their twitter or Facebook friends about it. The goal is to use the power of the internet to spread the word about what we are doing for our kids.

Sample Comments:

Here are some suggestions for how to leave GOOD comments which will encourage people to click through and check out our site:

I’m really touched by what your charity is doing to help the kids in your community. I’m sure it makes a huge difference for the families too. I’m involved in a charity in St. Louis which outfits low income kids for Back to School, and I know that it takes a ton or work to pull off something like this. Thanks for all you do!

You have such great ideas on how to keep kids safe. I really enjoy reading your tips and am glad you’ve put this list together for families. I volunteer each year for a charity in St. Louis which helps low income kids with their Back to School needs and know that our families would benefit so much from reading these tips. Thanks you for putting this together!

I love reading about events happening in St. Louis. Thanks for putting together this list of things to do in St. Louis. Another thing people should keep in mind is how they can make such a big difference by volunteering while having fun too. I’ve been volunteering for an amazing event that is held in the Central West End each July. This year, we’ll be outfitting 1000 kids in a 1-day event so that they have all of their Back to School needs met. You should check it out!

Here are some examples of what does NOT work in blog comments, and might make people more annoyed than anything else:

We are trying to raise money for our charity event. Please donate!

We need donations to buy clothes for our charity event. Please go to: http://ncjwbtss.org. (leaving your website address directly in the comment is normally considered bad manners unless you are pointing out a specific post that is informational only and not requesting a donation or a purchase)

Great post.

Help our charity please.

Try to add something that is adding to the discussion or let’s the author know why you appreciate the article they wrote.

Compliments to the author are always well received!