The Metropolitan Police Department continued this year the program began last year to provide new winter coats to kids in DC who have never had one.  The first distribution was for three children in Southeast DC,  The second distribution in Northeast DC was at a community center.  Deputy Chief Dianne Groomes and other on and off-duty officers helped get the coats, hats, scarves and gloves matched up for mothers and grandmothers who were taking the more than 30 new coats home for their kids.

 This year, MPD has scaled back plans for this year's coat distribution and plan to have given 200 children new winter coats before Christmas.

For the past four years, the Coats for Kids Foundation has had significant support that has allowed us to meet the need for winter coats far beyond our immediate area.  In fact, we have delivered coats to 26 states and the District of Columbia!  Almost 7,000 of the 12,000 new coats have been distributed in VA, DC, MD!

Today, we very much want to continue to help groups outside of our area, but our funding sources require us to give a clear, focused  priority to Alexandria, VA and the surrounding DC metropolitan area.

"We went to this meeting with the sole objective of helping these leaders who will work with each of the agencies and military services better understand how CFC helps small local charities who do not have paid staff, " said Paul Darby,president of the Coats for Kids Foundation.

CFK was asked to personalize the campaign for these leaders on behalf of the nearly  4,000 local charities who are a part of the 2008 campaign.

CFK emphasized that each of these charities participated in a very thorough application process which required each charity to provide three years' financial reports (IRS 990s), a copy of its 501C3 approval letter from the IRS, and demonstrated results of how the charity provides and measures service to the capitol region.

The new order system is on-line and it is different from prior years.  Here's how:

 1.  All coats in the Washington DC metro region (MD, VA, DC) are underwritten by contributions from the Combined Federal Campaign (federal employees via payroll deduction), Kids Helping Kids, Inc., Alexandria, VA, and the Susswein-Gottesman Fund, Alexandria, VA. 

2.  Fundraising will be necessary at the local, community level, to offset CFK's expenses to source and ship the coats outside of the DC metro region.

Make a difference in the life of a needy child today. You can now help  Coats for Kids by making a  secure contribution using Paypal.  You do  not need to have a Paypal account to donate.

 The Coats for Kids Foundation was established in January 2004 as a public, charitable foundation by Paul and Cheryl Darby of Alexandria, VA. It received IRS recognition as a 501(c)(3) in March 2004. The Coats for Kids Foundation mission is “to ensure that every child who needs a winter coat receives a new one.”