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In
2001 10 year 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 latest 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, and we thought that would be the end. Well, that wasn't quite how it ended up. The local news stations got hold 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 so 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 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 and tags 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, and clubs, groups, or individuals donate some of the hats. All of our fundraisers 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-$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 tough times, so we want the hat packages to be completely free to these
patients in need. It has been a tough year with this virus, but we are still
hanging in there and providing all our hat packages free of all charges, including the shipping.
I
hope that this gives all of you a little perspective on our foundation. I greatly appreciate any support that you can provide during these difficult
times.