Meeting Chris on Zoom, I could immediately feel her warm energy, even through the screen. This warm energy can be seen throughout her dedication to helping those in need within her own area as she is the co-founder of Grateful Gatherings, a dedicated community of volunteers who help furnish homes for families transitioning out of homelessness. Eager to learn more about Grateful Gatherings and its beginnings, I first wanted to learn a bit more about Chris.
Chris was raised in the Bay Area, where she still resides, and runs Grateful Gatherings today. When I asked about her upbringing and her exposure to volunteerism, she said that her family had always had a ‘helper mentality,’ but were never really involved in philanthropic organizations. She was more familiar with helping people in her neighborhood. For instance, her dad owned a bakery in San Francisco and she recalled him being empathetic to unhoused people, allowing them to come in and get coffee and pastries. She said she did not start volunteering herself until she was much older.
The idea for Grateful Gatherings began with her business partner Donna whom she had known for 27 years, as they were both TV producers. After they retired from the TV business, Chris began event planning and fundraising for a nonprofit, while Donna was focused on being a full-time mom and raising her kids. While doing so, Donna decided to adopt a family for Christmas each holiday season, giving them food and presents. One family she had given gifts to ended up moving out of their homeless shelter and Donna asked if she could help get her anything for her new house. When she responded yes, Donna asked the mother what she needed and she responded, “Well, everything.” Donna ended up sending an email blast out to 20 friends inquiring if anyone had any old furniture they could get rid of. And sure enough, they filled up her home within three days.
When she responded yes, Donna asked the mother what she needed and she responded, “Well, everything.”
At the same time, Chris was working at a homeless shelter and realized that when people left the shelter, they had no transitional support in the form of resources to start their new lives in their new homes. She recalled community members calling the shelter asking if they could donate extra furniture they had, but the shelter didn’t have the manpower or storage to take them. Because of this, people leaving the shelter would often enter into a home with nothing in it. As Chris described it, leaving the shelter without support was “essentially being homeless with a roof over your head.”After Donna completed furnishing the first home for a transitioning family, and was able to see what a difference it made, she was hooked. She shared her newfound passion with Chris. Together, they agreed that this was a real issue and believed they could help make a difference. As of this writing, they have served over 1500 people, have seven chapters in the Bay Area, and they help about 10 households a month. Theirs is a truly inspiring story.
With their current chapters, Grateful Gatherings has been able to streamline the process of their volunteering efforts. Throughout their process, they first identify a family that needs help through agency referrals. Then, either Chris, Donna, or a chapter lead meets the family and assesses their needs. Following this, an email is sent out containing everything the family needs, and people can sign up for donations using lists on PlanHero. Then, the furniture is gathered from the community and a moving sponsor picks it up and delivers it to the family’s home. Once all of the furniture is delivered, the volunteers come to the house and begin setting everything up–hanging curtains, putting pictures on the walls, making the beds, etc. While all of this is being set up, the family goes away for a few hours and then comes back for the big reveal! You can see the joy in the recipient’s faces here.
Each year Chris and Donna check in on the families they have previously helped move into new homes. This year, as part of this process, they helped 57 families with Christmas gifts through an adopt-a-family program. , When the families were asked how they were doing, 90% were still in the same home they helped furnish. Chris explained that because of the work of the Grateful Gatherings team, these new homes provide the families with a sense of dignity and incentivize them to stay as it feels like a true home.
When I asked Chris about how COVID-19 has impacted their organization, her response surprised me. Chris explained that COVID actually helped their business as they began delegating tasks to others more frequently during the pandemic. Before COVID, Chris and Donna were very hands-on; Chris was still going out and helping chapter leads with their gatherings, while Donna was helping heavily on the back end determining which families needed assistance. Chris explained that “COVID allowed us to take a step back and realize we didn’t have to do it all,” as she discussed the amazing people involved in Grateful Gatherings who were able to fulfill larger roles.
During COVID, Grateful Gatherings delivered necessities and cleaning supplies to the doors of those in need since they couldn’t go inside. Then slowly, they realized they could directly deliver furniture to their home too, they just couldn’t go in and set it up. So, they began working with a furniture bank in Marin. The family would go and pick out furniture and their moving sponsor would pick it up and deliver it to the family’s door. During the same time, they were able to find a warehouse space for storage, which was paid for by a fundraiser, something they did not previously have. Moreover, their moving company gave them a van to use, so now they were doing more direct deliveries in a month and were able to fulfill the whole process from start to finish.
When I asked Chris how Grateful Gatherings uses PlanHero, she explained their progression from planning signups to using another company to switching to PlanHero. Initially, Donna was sending out a full list of what households needed via email blasts and managing what everyone brought based on their replies herself. Once the list of what was needed kept growing – 148 items per home – they knew an email would no longer suffice. So, they began using another scheduling software but disliked that it was not customizable, it was hard to read, and it didn’t update calendars very well. And their least favorite feature of their former software platform was the ads all over the signups and dashboard. So, they began looking for a new platform to use. At first, they were looking to build their own scheduling tool as the solution. That is until they found PlanHero. Chris and Donna appreciated how PlanHero did not have any ads and that it was very aesthetically pleasing to use, something they felt matched their organization. Chris went on to explain that she appreciates how responsive the PlanHero team has been working with her over the years and loves how customizable it feels, which is what they wanted when looking for a new platform; “It’s really been great to work with and we really are so happy with it!”
