BOUNTIFUL—The countdown to Christmas has begun and while everyone else is shopping for that last minute gift or a ham for dinner, there are many people who are wondering where their next meal is coming from or where they can go for warm clothes. 

Thanks to the generous support of the community, the annual Warm Bodies, Warm Souls winter clothes drive was a success and bags of clothing and monetary donations were delivered to 15 charities from Logan to St. George to be distributed to those in need. The drive was organized by the Bank of Utah, Arctic Circle and Red Hanger.

“We’ve been doing the coat drive with them for years and years,” said Bountiful Food Pantry Executive Director, Rebekah Anderson. The Pantry received $669 from the drive. “It’s great to help multiple groups of people, those who need coats, hats and scarves then the pantry gets funding for food. The same people need food too. We’re serving the same group in one big event to help a lot of people in the community.”

Anderson said the pantry is feeding so many more people this year than before. “Financial donations or food donations – we’ll take them all. We had one generous donor that gave us enough money to buy hams and we’ve received money to buy milk and cereal. Those were much appreciated and we’ve gotten great food donations.”

There are so many ways for people to help at home, she said. “Families can donate time when they get together (completing projects) and bring them to the pantry after the holidays.”

Bank of Utah got started with the drive about 13 years ago, said Megan Kenley, AVP Marketing and Communications Manager. “The bank has always been interested in being involved in the community and helping where we possibly can. Not only from a financial standpoint but also the communities that we serve outside of that as well.”

In 2014, Arctic Circle Restaurants and its foundation Arctic Cares joined in the initiative, she said. “A few years later we started working with Red Hangar as well. It became a really amazing flourishing partnership. I don’t think we’d be able to do it to this level without the help of Red Hanger and Arctic Circle.”

Arctic Circle has a lot of foot traffic coming in and they’re doing a lot of donations there, said Kenley. “Then Red Hanger’s got the fleet of trucks that help us go pick up the donations, house the donations and then help distribute them across the state.”

This year they received about 561 bags of clothing, she said. “Then also a couple years ago we started a monetary donation as well and we had just over $10,000 in monetary donations.”

“We’ve had a relationship with the Bank of Utah for many, many years,” said Red Hanger owner Ryan Fish. “At one point they came to us and said ‘hey, do you want to be involved?’ We said ‘yes absolutely.’ It’s so much fun to be a part of this.”

Red Hanger’s role is a lot of logistics, he said. “We have a lot of vans on the road. So it’s our job to go to all the Bank of Utah locations and all the Arctic Circle locations and the Red Hanger locations and assemble all of the donations and bring them into a storage facility where we hold onto them for the duration of the drive.”

Then they load up all of the vans and take them to all the different charities, said Fish. “It’s just a really fun thing to do.”

Each year donors receive a free double cheeseburger coupon from Arctic Circle or a shirt-cleaning voucher from Red Hanger as a thank you, he said. “It’s just a fun way to say thank you and to try and encourage a few more people to come drop off a donation.”

It’s always so humbling to go to these charities and listen to them talk about what they do for people, said Fish. “You know we were at the Road Home and they were talking about the close to 750 people that they expected to sleep there that night or feed that night or think about that night. That’s a huge number.”

Fifteen charities is a lot to be able to help across the state of Utah, said Kenley. “But there’s still so many out there that need help too. We’d love to see it grow and be bigger and bigger so we can help more and more people out there.”