Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Cheryl Mix. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Cheryl, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

We moved to Fort Worth approximately 12 years ago. Once we settled into our neighborhood, we noticed quite a few requests for children’s clothes by foster parents. I have grandchildren who had outgrown some of their clothes, so I dropped some off at one of the requests address. She also needed dog food and cat littler for a local animal rescue. With a little nudge from God, I researched our area and found that there were quite a few foster families and very little resources. So, I started collecting clothes from other neighborhoods, sorting by size, gender, and season, and placing in bags for families to pick up. At first we operated out of the garage. Then we were able to get a storage unit. Then two, then three, and so on. Our first year we helped approximately 124 families (479 kids). It was really hard working a full time job and then going around and picking up clothes and shoes from porches. Then I would run them to storage, sort for a little while before dinner, and then head home. The next year was even harder. Families that were not foster families were asking for help for their kids. I didn’t want to “qualify” people, so if they asked for the help I tried to provide it. Long ago, when I was a single mom, I had asked for help for my two kids. I was turned down because I made $12.000 that year. That barely covered rent, utilities, food, and day care. I didn’t have much left over for clothes and extras. I didn’t want any Mom to go through the defeated feeling of hearing no. So, in 2015 I filed for a 501(3)c so we could accept donations and offer tax receipts to our donors. I created a board and asked for as many volunteers as I could get. Because I didn’t want to track demographics, we didn’t qualify for Government money, so I had to beg on social media and neighborhood pages. Soon we outgrew our storage units and had to look for some kind of building. With a huge leap of faith, we found an industrial area with 2,000 sq feet. We now had a place for All families to come and get items they needed.

Cheryl, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Donation House is a service organization. We try to help as many people as we can with clothes, shoes, household items, baby items, and things that will help them “get over the financial hump”. All of the things we have to give are collected from our community. We don’t offer food or money, but hope by providing the things we do, a family can use their resources to pay bills. We are proud to be a volunteer run organization. Any and all donations we get go into helping families. We went from helping 124 families our first year to helping 1143 families in 2024.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Donation House is 100% community supported. That means we never know where the money is going to come from to pay the rent. We buy our own supplies to run the organizations. That comes from donations as well. We have two big events every year. We host a Back to School Event and a Christmas Event. Both are supported by the community. We don’t have sponsors. We have applied for several grants, but don’t seem to be big enough to qualify. AND YET, we have steadily helped more and more families every year. Our first year, we helped 479 people. In 2024 we helped 5148 people. It takes a lot of “out of my comfort zone” conversations to raise money, toys, clothes, school supplies, and basic needs.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Not every family “in need” is homeless, low income, section 8, or on welfare. Sometimes a family needs help due to a job loss or a tragedy. Hurricane Harvey sent a lot of families scrambling for clothes and basic supplies. Donation House helped approximately 250 Hurricane victims. I had to extend our resources and find other organizations that could provide housing or a safe place to park a trailer. I had to learn a new way to help.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mydonationhouse.org/
• Instagram: mydonationhouse
• Facebook: @mydonationhouse