Last week Learning Express sent $60,000 worth of toys to Nashville, Tennessee. With the help of the Toy Industry Foundation’s (TIF) Toy Bank, those toys will find their way into the arms of the children who lost their homes in the terrible flooding earlier this year.
There are many, many things that make me proud to be part of the Learning Express family, but watching more than 50 of our vendors pile up their product at the close of our convention last week was something really special.
Every year we hold a company convention where all our franchisees can meet with the top toy manufacturers and place all their orders for the fourth quarter. It’s an event that shapes the holiday season for us. This year, the convention was scheduled to take place at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville. On May 3 the Cumberland River rose above its banks and a series of flash floods caused 29 deaths and put Music City under water. The photos that came in from the Gaylord reminded me of scenes from Titanic. The damage amounted to over $225 million for that facility alone.
While our hearts remained with the people of Nashville, we went about rebooking the convention in Orlando, Florida and were forced to reevaluate our plans for toy donations.
Typically, at the end of the vendor expo portion of the convention, many manufacturers prefer not to ship their product back to their warehouse. So in the past we’ve selected a small, local charity to be the recipient of the product, provided the organization can find a way to come pick it up. This year it worked out a little differently.
As soon as we got the news I think everyone was thinking the same thing. It would be great to send the toys back to Nashville in support of the community, but the logistics were too much to work out in such a short time period.
Then, just a couple weeks ago, the Toy Industry Foundation sent out an email announcing that the Toy Bank (their donation organization) would be sending toys to the children of Nashville who had lost everything in the flooding. One of the biggest hurdles of philanthropy is distribution, and suddenly that was taken care of for us.
The final piece fell into place a few days later. In a small meant-to-be moment we found room in the budget to ship the product ourselves. Now we just had to get the word out.
Our vendors responded with overwhelming generosity. It took five of us from the Learning Express home office three hours to load all of the toys onto ten shipping palettes. At the end of the evening, we waved a final goodbye to the shrink-wrapped piles of product and tallied the numbers on the donation forms.
The video below is what $60,000 worth of toys looks like. A HUGE thank you to our vendors. We’re so thankful to have the opportunity to make a difference. And Nashville? We’re still thinking about you. Stay strong.
