The story behind the Heavenly Hats Foundation
In 2001, 10-year-old Anthony Leanna of Green Bay, WI, was on spring break from school and decided to go to local businesses, put collection boxes out, and collect new hats for cancer patients after his grandma was diagnosed with breast cancer. When Anthony started collecting the new hats, it was meant to be a small community service project lasting a few weeks. He would collect the new hats and then deliver them to the local hospitals; we thought that would be the end. Well, that wasn't quite how it ended up. The local news stations got ahold of his project, and it was sent to the Associated Press. To make a long story short, we had interviews with Lou Dobbs, Good Morning America, The Early Show, Fox News, CNN, Oprah, and more. Semis were dropping off pallets of hats in Anthony’s driveway. Anthony’s mom, DeeAnn, made a hard decision to leave her job and learn the non-profit sector so that Anthony could keep his Heavenly Hats Foundation and dream of providing hats to every patient who needed them alive.
It is now 24 years later, and with the help of many volunteers, the Heavenly Hats Foundation has donated over 6,000,000 brand-new hats to cancer patients of all ages around the United States. Heavenly Hats is the only nonprofit organization in the United States that donates (new hats, tags on) to cancer patients of all ages and genders free of charge, including all shipping charges. Most of our headwear is donated by large hat companies who provide us with their end-of-season stock; clubs, groups, or individuals donate some of our hats. All of our fundraisers that we hold are to raise money to ship the hats to individual patients and hospitals free of charge. Any individual who requests a "hat package" from us receives 6-7 brand new hats, and the children also get stuffed animals or toys in their boxes. An individual box of hats costs us approximately $10.00-$15.00 to ship, and a large box of hats to a hospital costs us approximately $50.00 -$100.00 to ship. The cancer patients who receive our hat packages are already facing very difficult times, so we want the hat packages to be completely free to these patients in need. It has been tough to survive as a non-profit organization these past several years, but we are still hanging in there and providing all our hat packages free of all charges, including shipping.
We hope this gives all of you a little perspective on our foundation. We greatly appreciate any support that you can provide during these difficult times.