Before we can begin any season, we must assess the previous season and determine what works and what opportunities do we have to do things better. These opportunities drive change. And change is always needed to make improvements towards success.

Board

Vickie Maloney, Board Secretary

We did not have turnover in our board. We did, however, welcome a new Board Secretary in Vickie Maloney. Vickie has been a supporter of our mission for many years. She brings to us many skills that she uses in her full-time job at Progressive Insurance. She has been an asset to us this year. Not only does Vickie keep the minutes in our meetings, she also keeps us on task between meetings. Every organization needs a couple of people who keep things moving forward behind the scenes and Vickie is one of ours!

Veteran Services

We help everybody we find when we go into the night. We are looking for veterans, though. We have always wanted to do more to get veterans off the street. We want to empower them to return to society by educating them of the programs available.

Frankly, this was not good enough. veterans we encountered were not finding the programs that we were telling them about. The VA was not able to get out and contact the veterans where we were finding them either.

As a team, we knew that we needed to close that gap.

To that end, we added Tim Hickey as a veteran coordinator. Tim is a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war. Who better to relate to a veteran than another veteran? Tim’s role was limited in scope this year to a) network and find as many veteran affairs representatives and veteran centric groups as he could, b) determine what information those groups needed to contact, verify and help the veterans, and, c) train our team to get that information. After each mission this year, Tim worked to connect veterans with the VA and other groups.

Processes

One process was noted as a deficiency in our organization. That was the process of thanking our donors. Because we received so many donations in so many ways – through website, cash handed to team members, through the mail, through Facebook, through work teams, etc. – the most important part of our process, a simple “Thank You” was being missed.

This year, we made it a mission to have a 100% thanking policy. As a team, we focused on saying the words when we were in person with donors and supporters. Email thanking was implemented for online donations. Every check we received had a thank you written and signed by me before the check was cashed.

I believe that we thanked nearly everybody who donated to us this year, with one exception. We are still unable to determine who donates to us via the Facebook donation links. This is because Facebook is required to protect donor data. Because of this, we receive a check and statement. The statement, however, only shows us a donated amount and “Anonymous Donor”. We continue look for ways to thank the donors, but, until we do, if you donated via Facebook, please know that we appreciate you!

Our mission is centered around the homeless. With so much attention on social media spent telling the story of who we find and where, it is easy to forget the level of effort that goes into financing the purchase and delivery of warming items. This said, our Events and Fundraising Team worked hard and met every goal we set.

2019 Reverse Raffle

At the end of each delivery season (first day of Spring), our team takes a short break for 6-8 weeks. Our E & F Team begins to plan our series of events. This consists of signing contracts, seeking donation items for raffles, recruiting and training volunteers, making merchandise, creating literature, and many other tasks. These events are every bit as important as the work we do in the Winter. In fact, we don’t help a single person in the winter that isn’t paid for through work to raise funds in the Summer and Fall.

Our Events Season consists of five main events from June to November and a series of Stuff the Bus events from October until December. In all, after expenses, the events raised $37,000 for our mission and for the homeless! The army of volunteers who ran these events totaled over 1,200 volunteer hours. Simply incredible!

We also introduced a new program this year which allowed for our supporters to directly sponsor missions. With Mission costs estimated at $250 for shorter missions and $1,000-$1,500 for longer missions, we raised $12,500! Great job by our marketing team on this!

2018 Party in the Park

We have a number of ways to donate to us. Channels include Facebook and other social media channels, the donate button our website, checks via mail, cash and checks directly delivered to us. This year, our donors were so generous! Overall donations totaled $115,000. Other small fundraisers, our store, donations and main events combined to draw a total of $202,000.

While it might not seem like a large yield compared to other charities, with no salary overhead, we are able to channel all of that money towards the homeless!

GREAT JOB by the events and fundraising team! Great job by our marketing team, too!

Our primary mission is to hand warming items directly to unsheltered homeless people. A secondary mission is to fortify shelters and warming centers. Always, we are looking for veterans among the homeless. We look for ways to get veterans who are unsheltered inside, if they will accept our help. Why wouldn’t they accept our help? There are many reasons, including disillusionment with the VA and suffering from PTSD.

Our delivery team is called The Blue Coat Missionaries because of the blue uniform coats we wear. This year, The Blue Coat Missionaries traveled further than we ever have, went out more times into the cold than any other year, and handed out more warming items than ever before!

The area we call our “footprint”, meaning someplace we deliver to one or more times each month during the season, is between Ashtabula and Akron. We also have a few “mid-range” delivery areas like Lorain and Erie, Pa. Finally, we have some long distance outreach. These are weekend trips to destinations 4-5 hours away. In all, our team deployed 61 times- 49 were night missions. The average number of missions per volunteer was 6.5 missions. In all, using 3.5 hours per mission as our average, we volunteered 917 mission hours. We served in 14 cities this year alone!

From our first delivery (around Thanksgiving) until today, The Sub Zero Mission has delivered over 12,000 warming items! Most of these were delivered directly to the unsheltered.

While the fundraising season was very successful, we are not without expenses. Rent for our warehouse and headquarters, maintenance on facilities and vehicles, administrative costs, insurances, fuel, marketing and warming items are only a few that come to mind. Our budget this year was $145,000. Our spending was $174,000. Much of the additional spending was determined to be related to outfitting a new bus, permanent materials (white boards, shelving, store items such as racks, etc.), and a lower number of items collected in our Stuff the Bus events.

We have set our budget for the upcoming year at $135,000. This lower budget was agreed upon by the board with the understanding that many of the purchases for our HQ and buses will not be needed this year. We also believe that we will need to purchase less warming items wholesale due to a) remaining stock from this season, and, b) increasing the total number of items collected in our Stuff the Bus events. $43,000 were spent in the last 15 months on warming items (see below for details).

The past year wasn’t all work. Our team had the chance to work on a fun project this year- our first graphic novel!

What started as a conversation about how to stop much of our paper advertising and stickers from ending up in the trash bin, became the first part of a story of PTSD, homelessness and acts of kindness. Chris Huber from our team and I worked with graphic artist, Adam Fields, on the story. Adam matched the storyline with his brilliant artistry. The result was a quality product containing information about the hardships of veterans, links to our site and other information all contained in an interesting story that we feel will live forever on book racks and coffee tables in libraries and lobbies at veteran centers.

Buy this graphic novel here.

One surprise this season came in the form of a phone call from Chad Kilpatrick from a company called Spreetail. Spreetail is an online retailer who also has a focus on community impact.

And, make an impact they did!

Spreetail had heard of The Sub Zero Mission through our friends at The Empowerment Plan. Some of you may remember them from reports in the past. They make the survival coats that we deliver that turn into sleeping bags. After a series of phone calls with Chad, we were told that Spreetail would be donating 500 of these lifesaving coats! Not only would they be donating the coats, but twice they flew two-man teams into Detroit, who picked up U-Haul, loaded up at The Empowerment Plan and then drove to our headquarters in Painesville, Oh. One team delivered the coats with us in Cleveland. The second team went with us to Buffalo. We picked up the final portion of the donated coats when we made our trip to Detroit this year.

This donation was a gift of life and godsend to so many. In all, we distributed 462 survival coats throughout the season. As far as we are concerned, these saved 462 lives.

Thank you, Chad, Quinn, Brandon and Evan for the time you dedicated away from your homes and helping us! Thank you Spreetail for your generosity!

As a non-profit, especially a BBB 5-Star Wise Giving Charity, it is important that when you collect more than you spend, you focus the additional funds towards projects that align with your mission statement. We are doing just that! Below are some projects that we intend to implement. All of these either directly or indirectly help the homeless. In all, we are dedicating $27,500 this year towards these projects.

As much success as we had this past year, in closing, we must reflect on the opportunities we have to improve. Below are several areas where we intend to focus to be the best we can be at what we do and make our supporters proud.