True to the season, Spring 2022 is turning out to be the beginning of significant growth for Thread Up Oxford. We have all sorts of exciting things to share with you and looking forward to growing the efforts in collaboration with our community.
We’re looking for more community members to join us on the board and as volunteers. There’s so much work to be done. The rest of this newsletter we hope gives you a sense of where we are today, how much work goes into Thread Up Oxford in how we support our community, and we hope this gets you excited to work with us in a more sustainable future by reducing, reusing, and recycling textiles and keep them out of landfills.
“We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.” – Anne Marie Bonneau.
Upcoming Event Announcement:
Tomorrow is the debut of our very first pop up Uptown at the Oxford Farmers Market! We will be debuting our Karma Bucks program, a method of having those who can afford to help us continue our work reducing textile waste in the community pay for clothes and other textiles, while those with a hardship can still shop clothes for free.
What you can expect to see:
A $2 karma bucks sale on ALL long sleeve women’s tops. Then at 11am there will be a bag sale on the shirts.
2 garment racks of mens’ button down shirts, women’s nice clothing, and some nice jackets and rain jackets.
Some of our craft items made out of upcycled items for display. Demonstrations on how to make some of the items.
Education and conversation about sustainable wardrobes and how our organization can help individuals, businesses, and other organizations reduce textile waste in the community.
Exciting Organizational Updates and Opportunities:
As an organization with a newly formed board of directors, we held our first retreat at the beginning of the year to build our relationships with one another, settle on our top priorities to enable the organization to thrive, made some decisions, and got to work! The Board of Directors decided that for the time being we would cease taking in all condition textiles on an ongoing basis with the exception of a few items or specific requests that will be communicated through social media and other channels. The reality is that Thread Up Oxford is currently based out of our Chair and Executive Director’s home, taking up over 700 square feet of space. In addition to her home, we have storage units acting as a clothes closet for our clothes sharing program, unsorted donations, and overflow. We simply do not have the resources to keep up and need some time to catch up. Keeping textiles out of landfills is no small feat and requires a lot of support through funding, volunteering, education/programming, and so much more.
The organization is moving quickly though! Since then, we have hit a major milestone as we are now officially a 501(c)(3) organization and now qualify as a public charity! Now that we are 501(c)(3) the doors are open to more funding opportunities to move the work forward as we are now eligible for more public and private grants as many foundations and government agencies limit their grants only to public charities. We are now also able to offer tax deductions to individuals or businesses that give charitable contributions as well! Despite the flurry of excitement among the board and the community, we face the reality that there is so much work yet to be done. To take this organization to the next level we are looking for additional expertise for our board. We’re particularly seeking individual(s) who have skills in grant writing, accounting, or legal to advance the work, represent us at events, and support the operations through volunteering and coordinating efforts for the organization. If you believe you can contribute in this way and have a passion for reducing textiles making to landfills, we would be absolutely thrilled to have you join our incredible team! To think that less than a year ago, Thread Up Oxford was just a good idea and now we have a board of directors, a vision and mission, and now we have reached 501(c)(3) status! Together we can do great things.
Recent Events and Activities:
The energy continues in making a big impact in reducing textile waste working with our community. Let’s take some time to appreciate how much hard work goes into this work and feature some recent events and activities that have supported our community and sustainability at large.
Some Highlights:
Facilitated the recycling of 164 pounds of denim which likely equates to over 160 pairs of jeans!
We received a grant of $1,183 from Butler Rural Electric Cooperative! This has gone towards expanding our clothes sharing program through purchasing more display and storage equipment to support our pop up shop and marketing. More to come on the pop up shops! We are grateful for every dollar we receive.
In March we received a working van. This van represents a new opportunity to serve our community. If you are a church or other organization that would like your community to have access to one of our pop up shops, please let us know! We have already put our new-to-us van to good use numerous times. Recently our cargo van went on an adventure to Cincinnati to bring 50 pounds of unwearable shoes to the Cincinnati Recycling & Reuse Hub as well as pick up 340 pounds of socks for Smartwool’s Second Cut Program. The community came together and sorted the socks and diverted perfectly wearable (and sometimes NEW) socks to give back to the community. 218 pounds of socks remained that were taken to Benchmark Outfitters in Cincinnati for Smartwool’s Second Cut Program. This is close to a quarter ton of socks! I hope that one of the things you take away from this is how often perfectly nice socks in our community are tossed aside intended for landfills. There were numerous packages of brand new socks worth easily $12 and thick wool socks that just needed some minor repair. What can we do about this? How do we encourage setting up a sock-darning program to encourage people to fix/darn socks?
In April, Thread Up Oxford partnered with Schwartz Tutoring and Miami Business Enterprises to do a Miami residence hall t-shirt drive/contest. Most of these t-shirts were from volunteer, organization, or sports events. For the good of our planet, we need to change this over abundance of t-shirts being produced in our society. How?
On April 15, Thread Up supported the Princess Project prom dress giveaway alongside Be Kind Harrison and other volunteers who made this prom dress giveaway a success. Students from several local school districts (and a couple of adults in need of a dress!) picked up 24 dresses, shoes, and jewelry.
Thread Up Oxford took part in Earth Fest (April 16) uptown where we shared the park with so many other great organizations working on sustainability.
On April 22, Thread Up prepared for a volunteer event by filling the van to the brim with sheets, blankets, pillows and much more.
Volunteers from Miami University’s Greek Spring Service showed up on April 23 to sort through the van to prepare everything to be redistributed! Many thanks to our volunteers.
Also on April 23 (two events at the same time!) we had a table at Fresh Air Fair (sponsored by Coalition for a Healthy Community in Oxford) where we made bracelets with kids from t-shirt yarn (sourced from overly produced organizational t-shirts).
Thread Up Oxford hosted a large Free Shopping Event in front of TOPSS on April 30. Despite some drizzles the first half hour of the free sale, we had a great day the rest of the time to make for some good attendance and a LOT of clothing and other textiles redistributed. By the numbers: We redistributed 672 pounds. We served 137 different individuals.
Many thanks to TOPSS for letting Thread Up Oxford make use of their parking lot and their many bags when we ran out. Inspired by the community working together and see such successful redistribution. We will be returning in the near future with the introduction of our Karma Bucks program although the community will still be able to acquire clothes from TOPSS, Talawanda School District, and other avenues.
We can always use the support of more volunteers. Please join us!
The Creative Thread Up Oxford Community:
We have an incredible community. So much creativity and support has been captured on our facebook group and we’re excited to feature some of the recent ones with you. We hope you’re as inspired by this as we are to get involved and get creative!
Back in February, a local Brownie Girl Scout Troop had a great time earning the sewing badge with felt and batting supplied by Thread-Up! The troop created some adorable little monster cuddlers.
Zoe Abbott, a young artist from Middletown, created art to feature in Beyond Vision Art exhibit in Dayton to create artistic experiences that the visually impaired can enjoy where art pieces leverage the sense of touch, smell, and hearing. Zoe sourced every piece of fabric of her submission from Thread Up Oxford!
Following the Princess Project prom dress give away, formal dresses that were past their prime to make it to the dance floor due to stains, rips, and age will be incorporated into woven wall hangings by 2 Girls & A Dream Homestead.
2 Girls & A Dream Homestead also had their first round weaving using an embroidery hoop using a lot of natural fibers and some yarn from Thread Up Oxford. Such beautiful artistry!
