Thread: Charity Quilting

I was a Project Linus coordinator for a few years, and I spent about 30 hours/week doing it. Unfortunately, after becoming coordinator, I had very little time to do any quilting. In addition to administrative work, delivering blankets, setting up meetings, etc., I spent a lot of time mending and washing some of the donations that came in. However, I must say that the coordinatorship was very rewarding work, and I gained skills in non-profit leadership.

How much work there is to being a Project Linus coordinator depends on several factors. The size of the local organization and the number of volunteers makes a difference. The local chapters of Linus have very little structure and have only one person who is accountable (the coordinator). It is the coordinator's responsibility to recruit, train, and delegate work to volunteers. The more successful he/she is with that, the smoother the chapter will function and the more it will grow. With growth comes more work. There is a big difference in handling 50 blankets/month compared to 250!

I believe that projectlinus.org has a section of the website addressing interest in starting chapters.

I strongly believe in the Linus mission and continue to be a blanketeer, but I am happy to now have time to make quilts for other charities also.

Originally Posted by Daylesewblessed

I was a Project Linus coordinator for a few years, and I spent about 30 hours/week doing it. Unfortunately, after becoming coordinator, I had very little time to do any quilting. In addition to administrative work, delivering blankets, setting up meetings, etc., I spent a lot of time mending and washing some of the donations that came in. However, I must say that the coordinatorship was very rewarding work, and I gained skills in non-profit leadership.

How much work there is to being a Project Linus coordinator depends on several factors. The size of the local organization and the number of volunteers makes a difference. The local chapters of Linus have very little structure and have only one person who is accountable (the coordinator). It is the coordinator's responsibility to recruit, train, and delegate work to volunteers. The more successful he/she is with that, the smoother the chapter will function and the more it will grow. With growth comes more work. There is a big difference in handling 50 blankets/month compared to 250!

I believe that projectlinus.org has a section of the website addressing interest in starting chapters.

I strongly believe in the Linus mission and continue to be a blanketeer, but I am happy to now have time to make quilts for other charities also.

I had to laugh a little when I saw this post. I got recruited by our local Linus Project Chapter through the quilt guild I belonged to. Our local Linus Chapter produces between 800 and 1000+ quilt donations a month. We have one coordinator who handles stuff on the national level and a helper who records all of the donations and acts as the drop off and pick up place. She also provides her generous family room for our monthly sort. Ironically our local county has only one hospital. We always make sure they get at least 100+ quilts a month. The rest are distributed to hospitals in the Baltimore metro area. We have a number of volunteers who pick up the quilts after they are sorted and take them to the Baltimore hospitals. For most of those volunteers it is probably a 60 mile round trip. I don't know about other chapters but our volunteers make a lot of blankets by crocheting an edge around pieces of polar fleece. We also have lots of volunteers who make beautiful blankets by crocheting or knitting. I make both the fleece ones and others made from very large scale pieced blocks or kid friendly panels that I then machine quilt at least 4" apart. It has been my experience that many of the families who receive the Linus Quilts don't know how to care for handwork. That is why I make mine colorful and simple. I probably have 100 thank you notes I have received from grateful children or families of children. Being involved with Linus gives me an excuse to purchase more fabric and supplies without so much guilt. My own grandchildren and children all have quilts that I made just for them.

There is always the option to provide lap quilts to nursing homes, or quilts to hospice patients. Another option is to work with your local law enforcement persons to provide small quilts for children who must be taken from their parents and placed in a foster care situation. A small quilt of their own can be very comforting at a time like this.

Originally Posted by TexasSunshine

Thanks for your comments. I would rather do the quilting than all the admin work. I will still look around locally through the quilt quild or elsewhere for charity work.

Texas just do your own thing and quilt your will find an outlet for them, no problem. Check out local outlets like you local doctors surgery, hospitals etc. you don't have to be in an organization to give. I am a Project Linus coordinator in North Wales UK and I don't do as much as other branches do because I like to do my quilting, butevery little bit or quilt helps

I was a Linus contributor. Our cordinater auit after trying for 4 yrs to find a replacement. She said she had no time to do any quilting with all the admin work. I now just donate to local WIC program through the health department. They do not have any rules on size or theme. Most of mine are about 42" x 45". I skip the batting and use polar fleece as backing. Provides enough weight and is cuddly, also improves washability.

Our Linus group has a volunteer that is a professional long armer. Since she has a professional business, she doesn't have time to attend our weekly get togethers to sew, but we would love to have her if she ever has the chance to attend. She completes about 3-4 quilts per month for us and that is such a big relief. Thats 20 hours of time we can be working on other quilts. Further, we really appreciate how much she elevates our work. We love her!

I would still contact Linus headquarters to see if anyone else in your area is interested in starting a Chapter. You might find that there is already a coordinator for your region of the state, even though you don't have a local chapter. Our coordinator has a large district which encompasses many volunteer groups. Our group just does quilting, but other groups do crocheting and fleece blankets. Our coordinator collects blankets from all of these different groups and delivers them to 22 different organizations in the area. That is one reason that she has to work so many more hours.

In our local group, we don't really have a named leader. There is one lady who works with our group to get the quilts to the coordinator and presents us with any PL business. She doesn't put in 30 hours a week for admin stuff. She probably puts in an hour or two on most weeks and then when we have about 30-40 quilts, she will deliver them to our coordinator. Sometimes there are special events in the area that take a bit more work such as if there is a conference in town that wants to set up a PL room. That only happens maybe once a year. We have another lady who handles the weekly announcements (where the meeting will be held), list of quilts, and the email list of members. We have another lady that works with the two of them to handle everything else. Like I said, our group doesn't have named leaders, we just have several women pitching in to help everything go smoothly. I'm sure other groups are more structured, but that wouldn't work for our group.

If there is no coordinator, you could also contact other quilters in your area to see if someone else would like to be the coordinator that organizes the group.

I would hate to see you discouraged because you don't want to start the chapter. I'm willing to bet someone in your area would love to do the admin work. Remember, we also get blankets that are crocheted and fleece. So your group could be just quilters or all types of blanketeers. Your pool to recruit from is larger than you may think.

Good luck!