Continuing in our short series of frequently asked questions, today we cover one of my absolute favorites. People often ask, “How did you come up with the idea for Hannah’s? How was the original need discovered?”

Let me start off by saying that there was never this big brilliant master plan to start a non-profit or to serve at-risk youth. Hannah’s just sort of happened. In 1999 I was working for Lexis Nexis and sat on their Community Cares Board which awarded employee grant money to local non-profits. As I participated in this committee, I became aware of a lot of local non-profits that worked with at-risk youth. This was an amazing educational experience for me, had I not sat on this committee, I would not have known about many of these wonderful organizations.

It was during this same time, I became pregnant with my daughter, Hannah. Our friends were very generous and passed on many of their baby items to us, in an effort to rid their basements of the buildup of items they had stored over the years. The only thing was that Hannah would be the first grandchild and the first great grandchild in our family, so we really lacked for nothing. In having the nursery already done and everything imaginable for a new born awaiting her arrival, there was a lot of extra stuff occupying my parking space in the garage.

In an effort to gain back an inside parking space during the Dayton winter, I began brokering out the items which had been given to us to the agencies that I had become familiar with through the Community Cares Board. Essentially, I was dealing children’s items in parking lots on my lunch hour, meeting social workers and handing off needed baby items. It truly amazed me the need that existed right here in the Miami Valley. A simple phone call to donate a crib or other items turned into a longer conversation on the many needs of an agency for a number of clients. Getting rid of the items in my garage was not going to be a problem – or so I thought. Friends, co-workers and friends of both began to hear what I was doing and graciously passed along additional items. The garage never did get emptied, it just migrated to the basement, and then to our first location, and to the second and to the latest location.

Hannah’s now occupies 8,000 square feet of warehouse space in Centerville near the high school and distributes over 185,000 items a year. It has a way of growing to fulfill the need of our local community in a way that baffles me daily. But, no matter what, each and every day, Hannah’s touches the life of a child and makes it better.