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 that would last for a few weeks. He would collect the new hats and then
deliver the hats to the local hospitals and we thought that would be the end of
it. Well, that wasn't quite how it ended
up. The local news stations got ahold of
his project and then it was sent to the Associated Press. To make a long story short, we ended up
having interviews with Lou Dobbs, Good Morning America, The Early Show, Fox
News, CNN, Oprah and the list goes on. Semi’s 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 22 years later and with
the help of many volunteers the Heavenly Hats Foundation has donated over
4,500,000 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 head wear is donated by large hat companies who provide us
with their end of season stock, some of our hats are donated by clubs, groups
or individuals. All of our fundraisers
that we hold are to raise money to ship the hats to the 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 a stuffed animal or toy in their box. An individual box of hats costs us
approximately $10.00-$25.00 to ship and a large box of hats to a hospital costs
us approximately $50.00 -$150.00 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 a tough
couple of years with this virus, but we are still hanging in there and
providing all of our hat packages free of all charges including the shipping.
I hope that this gives you a
little perspective into our foundation and we greatly appreciate any support
that you may be able to provide.