Did you know that approximately 61% of students enrolled in Alamance-Burlington Schools receive free or reduced breakfast/lunch? Or that sixteen of our local public schools provide every student with free breakfast/lunch? This indicates a large need in our community. Though necessary for a student’s success, school supplies are often pushed down on the priority list when families are struggling to make ends meet. This is where the Classroom Collection Campaign comes in. Designed to collect basic school supplies to benefit students in the Alamance-Burlington School System, the Alamance Chamber ran its Twenty-Third Annual Classroom Collection Campaign this summer.
Photo provided by Alamance Burlington School System
Each year, the Alamance Chamber works with representatives from Alamance-Burlington Schools and Labcorp to coordinate the Classroom Collection Campaign. Running for a month in the summer, through a combination of public drop boxes, internal employee drives, and an online platform for giving, the Campaign brings in enough school supplies to support over 3000 students annually.
School social workers identify items needed across grade levels, and the Chamber works hard to be strategic in providing the items requested. The Chamber creates and shares a list each year of priority items, though of course donations of any new school supplies are happily accepted and put to good use. Responding directly to feedback from social workers about what students need most, this year for the first time the campaign also accepted donations of personal hygiene items and clothing. Donated supplies are stored in a central location accessed exclusively by school system social workers who distribute them to the students they identify as having need. This ensures the supplies are distributed throughout the system to those who need them the most.
The Alamance Chamber is proud that there are no costs for running this campaign. Boxes, printing, marketing and labor are all donated. That means all sponsorship dollars and donations collected are used to buy school supplies. This has been one of the keystones to the Chamber’s success. This money has allowed the Chamber to purchase more expensive items such as book bags, ear buds, and flash drives – important items that are typically only donated in limited supply.
On Thursday, August 15, over 25 volunteers from the Leadership Alamance Alumni Association, the Alamance Chamber Ambassadors, and Labcorp came together to count and sort this year’s donations, to organize and clean out the closet, and to get everything stocked for school social workers to access ahead of the first day of school for ABSS. We are incredibly grateful for the work of these volunteers!
Many Alamance-Burlington School students are now equipped with the items necessary for a successful 2024-25 school year. This success is only possible because of a generous community. Thank you to this year’s sponsors: Bobbitt, Cone Health – Alamance Regional, Glen Raven, Labcorp, Truliant Federal Credit Union, and Impact Alamance. Thank you also to the businesses and organizations that acted as public drop sites, hosted internal campaigns, or ran collections events this summer, including Alamance County Public Libraries, First Baptist of Elon, Down Home Harley Davidson, IIGNC, Geico, Select Bank, Alamance Arts, Main Street Vinyl, Alamance Community College, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Providence Montessori, the Professional Women’s Council of the Alamance-Caswell Builders Association, Alamance Rotary, the Town of Elon, Proponent Federal Credit Union, Gold’s Gym, Honda, Indulor, Chick-fil-A, Buff City Soap, Triad Kids Dental, Burton Logistics, and anyone else we might have missed. There are so many of you who support this campaign, it is hard to keep track of you all! And most importantly, thank you to everyone who donated supplies – we are ultimately successful because of you.
