What Would You Do with 2,200 T-Shirts?
Here at Rackspace, it is no secret that we love our t-shirts – in fact, love is probably an understatement (take, for example our recent Wardrobe Games Competition). Rack Gives Back collects t-shirts throughout the year from various departments and events and has an annual T-shirt Garage Sale. The proceeds of this garage sale fund the purchase of back packs for the upcoming Back to School Fair. This year, the Back to School Fair will be held at the CentroMed and YMCA on Walzem Road in San Antonio, TX on August 18th. Rackspace has partnered with these organizations to provide immunizations, physicals, dental exams, vision screenings, haircuts, and brand new back packs full of school supplies to 1,500 students in our neighborhood. The funds raised by the garage sale will purchase the 1,500 back packs.
Last year, in addition to selling shirts we also sold BBQ plates for lunch. We mixed it up this year and had a raffle in place of the BBQ plates. The raffle was for a Trek Drift Star SS which comes with an interesting journey. We received the cruiser as a donation from Bike World for a silent auction we held at our annual benefit. The bike was won by Racker, John Duvall. John graciously donated the bike back to us since he already had two of his own! We were then able to raffle off the bike at the garage sale, with the winner being Barry Snell – the brother of the owner of Bike World! This is a true testament to how paying it forward circles back around. Through the auction, the raffle, and the generosity of those involved, over $1,000 was raised for the kids in our community – a total of 185 back packs were purchased!
Over-all, our goal to cover the cost of 1,500 back packs was to raise $7,500. We fell slightly short of our goal at a little over $5,000 raised. We are putting our heads together to come up with the remaining balance! For now, we are accepting donations through our click and pledge website. If you would like to make a donation and aid in providing back packs for the students of our community, you can click here to make a donation. Every $5 donated buys one back pack full of school supplies!
Thank you to everyone who participated in this wonderful cause! We wouldn’t be able to do great things without your support. If you are interested in participating with the rest of this year’s Back to School events, please contact Allie Howard, allie.howard@rackspace.com to learn about volunteer opportunities and other ways you can help out. We will need an army of volunteers for stuffing back packs on August 9th and for the day of the fair on August 18th. If you would like to make donations of spare Rackspace T-shirts for next years’ garage sale, please also contact Allie!
