Family Giving Tree Needs a Home for the Holidays

The is looking for a place to plant its roots before the holiday season.

The nonprofit organization holds annual drives to collect toys for underprivileged families in 16 nearby counties, but has spent months searching unsuccessfully for a temporary sorting facility for this year.

Storage space is vital to the group's operations - the organization needs space to hold and sort all of the collected gifts until pickups by local agencies take place at the end of the drive. Space is needed for the 300 volunteers who work during each shift. A whopping 7,000 volunteers are needed to make the entire drive possible.

"We borrow a warehouse every year," Cullenbine explained. "We need 100,000 square feet or more of warehouse space, and the only specific requirement it has to have, is two loading docks."

For the past three years, Family Giving Tree has been borrowing a vacant, 200,000-square-foot building from NVIDIA. Unfortunately, that space is not available to them this year.

Cullenbine said, the organization typically needs the space for about six weeks, starting in late October or early November, to the beginning of December. She added that they always keep the space in pristine condition, providing janitorial services to keep it nice and neat.

"We always leave the space as it was," she said.

Over the past few years, Family Giving Tree has collected, on average, more than 60,000 gifts for needy families each year. Cullenbine said that with the current state of the economy, the needs of local families just seem to keep growing.

“The need is ridiculous, compared to where we were four years ago," she said. "There are so many families who used to be helping needy families, and now they are the needy families.”

Borrowed storage space each year gives the organization room to sort toys and double-check Santa's list. The gifts are donated by a slew of local businesses and groups, which received the children's wishes on "Giving Trees." Members of those businesses and groups then take wishes off the tree that they would like to grant, and bring back the requested gifts.

Agencies then come back to the warehouse and pick up the gifts once they've been checked and wrapped by the Family Giving Tree.

“We check Santa’s list twice,” she said. “We have to make sure every single child gets exactly that [gift] or something very close."

Currently, the Family Giving Tree helps provide holiday gifts for needy families from roughly 250 agencies in the Bay Area.

This year marks Family Giving Tree's 22nd holiday season. Unfortunately, in many of the past few years, the organization has come down to the wire before securing the needed space for the year's drive, since they begin collecting wishes as early as mid-October.

"Half the years have been like this," she said. "October is always a scary month."

Cullenbine said the organization has already received more than 30,000 wishes for this year.

Regardless, she said she is optimistic about finding a facility.

"I love the magic of Christmas," she said.

For more information, visit www.FamilyGivingTree.org.