K.I.D.S.: making a difference in young lives

The K.I.D.S team includes (from left) President Janice Weinman, board Chairman Rick Schaub, executive committee member Meg Ostrom and Secretary-Treasurer Richard Miller.

Today, the agency focuses on six key programs that help victims of natural disasters and political unrest, homeless children, domestic abuse victims, children with low literacy levels, children of incarcerated parents/juvenile offenders and military families/wounded soldiers.

Kids In Distressed Situations collected items during Toy Fair for the Toy Industry Foundation's Toy Bank.

The organization tries to meet the needs requested by its agency partners by soliciting specific items from year-round donors — manufacturers, retailers and licensors. Once product is secured, it is shipped directly from donors to the recipient agency in the same local area whenever possible. Donating companies clear warehouse or storage space and can benefit from a tax deduction, which, in some cases, can exceed the value of the donated goods. One hundred percent of all product donated goes directly to needy children through a broad range of programs and services without jurisdictional or regulatory red tape. Tens of thousands of volunteers each year facilitate the sorting and distribution of product in local communities.

About 85% of donations are distributed in the U.S. and about 15% overseas. In the U.S. K.I.D.S. serves African Americans (59%), Anglo Americans (22%), Hispanics (17%), Native Americans and Asians (1% each). Internationally, World Vision distributes clothing, shoes, books and toys from K.I.D.S. chiefly to children in Africa, South and Central America and Asia.

Aside from its six core programs, the organization is always looking for other ideas and ways to reach out to communities. This year it has started a program in cooperation with Operation Homefront to support the spouses and children of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq by donating products for baby showers, birthdays and holidays.

K.I.D.S. received $150,000 from ABC toward this effort and in return K.I.D.S. has committed to providing at least $1.5 million worth of baby products to Operation Homefront for military bases across the U.S.

K.I.D.S. also has three other new programs. The organization is distributing cribs in three states for First Candle. It is also distributing bilingual DVDs to promote literacy among disadvantaged youths in four cities and on Native American reservations for the U.S. Department of Education's Ready to Learn initiative, and, in cooperation with Boys & Girls Clubs of America, K.I.D.S. is distributing books and other products to local Boys & Girls Clubs.

Janice Weinman is the president of K.I.D.S. and has been with the organization since 2003. Her role includes soliciting product and cash donations, providing direction to the five-person staff, representing the organization at events and meetings and providing strategic direction.

Weinman's background has primarily been in non-profits and she joined K.I.D.S. because she “felt it was an incredible organization.”

“The most important part of this job is going to the agencies and seeing the kids when they get the product,” Weinman said. “We went to a big event in New Mexico last year and gave lots of books to a school that had closed the gap in their achievement level. The children were so excited.”

The K.I.D.S.' staff handles the daily operations of the organization and receives its guidance from the board of directors, which is comprised of about 40 members. Board members not only represent different segments of the juvenile industry but they also come from service-related businesses like banking, legal and other foundations.

Rick Schaub, senior vice president/general manager of mom/infant & toddler group at RC2/Learning Curve Brands, is the chairman of the K.I.D.S. board and has been a board member for 13 years.

“I think just about everyone I know has a strong desire to give back,” Schaub said. “There are lots of folks in the juvenile industry who've been successful professionally and they are looking for ways to give back. This organization has filled that need for me in many ways. K.I.D.S. is doing so much good with so little resources.”

Schaub echoes Weinman's thoughts and says one of the most rewarding things about working with K.I.D.S. is the reactions from the children when they get the product and witnessing the dedication of the individuals working in the partner agencies.

“It also touches your heart when you meet the people who are running our partner agencies,” he said. “These people are helping the poor and disadvantaged. They're mostly small organizations — we work with more than 1,000 agencies in all 50 states. These people have such energy, enthusiasm and resourcefulness; they're incredibly impressive. When we have charity dinners or events, the high point is having these people in the agencies tell their stories.”

As chairman of the board, Schaub works closely with the other board members as well as the executive committee. The board members themselves are divided into teams: books/school supplies/educational/toys, juvenile products, shoes, apparel, marketing, developmental and audit and each team has a leader that works directly with the executive committee.

“The world's work really gets done in small groups,” Schaub said. “Each team is given goals and directives and the leader meets with the executive committee.”

The executive committee runs the month to month business of the organization and the board itself meets three times a year. There are meetings in March and September in New York and a teleconference meeting in December.

The team leaders are charged with making sure they have the right people on their teams to achieve their goals. For example, an industry-centric team might look around and say they need someone with a background or ties to a certain product category. These people are then invited to join the board. Sometimes people also volunteer on their own, as was the case with Schaub. He was familiar with the organization and wanted to get involved but at the time he was working for a company that already had a presence on the board.

After individuals are invited to participate, they meet with the executive committee and discuss what they can bring to the organization and what type of commitment they are willing to invest. The executive committee then votes on the person.

Historically, K.I.D.S.' biggest support has come from the children's apparel industry, though in recent years it has forged great partnerships with Toys “R” Us and ABC. Apparel accounts for about half the donations collected by the organization while juvenile products account for about 7% or $4.3 million. One of Schaub's goals is to increase that to $10 million by 2010.

“The team leader for juvenile products is Renee Pepys Lowe and she's done a great job,” Schaub said. “Our donations from that sector of the industry have grown in the last year or two.”

Some of the things K.I.D.S. has done to increase donations and awareness in the juvenile industry include stepping up its presence at the ABC show.

Last year, K.I.D.S. received a record $400,000 worth of product donations from ABC vendors, more than twice what they've received from any juvenile trade show. K.I.D.S. had breakfast meetings with key juvenile vendors during the show and was able to address the major juvenile buying groups. And ABC provided publicity for the organization in show materials.

“ABC is one of K.I.D.S. biggest financial supporters and they've made (for last three years) major financial support/grants,” Schaub said.

One of the board's biggest responsibilities is outlining the goals for the organization. This year the board has five goals that include reviewing K.I.D.S.' brand identity, training the board to focus its development efforts in a more targeted way and use their networks to connect financial supporters with the development officer, having each product team identify the top three to five potential donors in their segment, transitioning the focus of donations to being more of a demand-based program rather than a supply-based program and improving the organization's ability to track product distributions and measure the efficacy and impact of its donations.

Schaub says that currently the donation cycle is based more on when vendors have product available and they'd like to see that move to a program that's more consistently beneficial to the recipient agencies.

“Right now our donations aren't on a cycle; they're unpredictable for the most part,” Schaub said. “We want to move to a more demand-based donation model where we find out what the organization we're donating to really needs and then work with manufacturers to fill those needs.”

Schaub said that one thing that's motivated him to be involved with the organization so long is something one of the board members once said.

“They don't understand why more companies aren't more generous,” he said. “I personally believe there is so much more product out there and we can do a better job of partnering with people in the industry and communicating with more people about what K.I.D.S. does.”