Annual Clothing Giveaway has banner year

Lincoln's annual Clothing Giveaway started Aug. 1 in the Lincoln Community Hall and had extended hours this year. Organizers are looking at ways to make the event even more accessible next year.

Traditionally, the Clothing Giveaway was set up on Sunday and taken down on Thursday, giving people three days to shop. This year, organizers completed set-up on Saturday and were able to be fully open for visitors to shop starting Sunday and remained open through Friday.

"We started setting up Saturday. Sunday was going to be our set-up day, but since we got it set up Saturday, then a lot of people came in Sunday. I would say that was almost our biggest day," said Ginger Stocks, one of the event organizers, adding, "We've had a lot of donations this year."

"An overwhelming number of donations, which is good. We appreciate that," added Nadine Yonkovich, another event organizer, noting, "The tables really were absolutely overflowing and the hanging racks were bulging, and the shoes-we've never had so many shoes before."

The vast amount of donations were one reason the event extended hours through Friday. Another was to help limit the amount of clothes that volunteers would need to pack up and carry to other organizations.

"When we pack up, we have about four or five places that we kind of recommend, but people can take them to any thrift shop that they want. We try to give them to places that just give things away instead of somebody who sells them. We kind of divide it up between us and everybody takes a bag and distributes it," said Stocks, who has been helping with the event for about six years.

Stocks and Yonkovich shared that the event is well-supported by the community, not just in terms of donations, but through volunteer help setting up, organizing clothes and tables, promoting the event on social media and making signs. New signs were donated this year that allowed the event to be advertised to traffic on both sides of the highway, and it appears to have made a difference.

"There was a family here from Missouri. They were traveling through Montana and saw the signs and stopped in," said Yonkovich, who said the event also saw bikers passing through Lincoln, a trucker headed to Minnesota, and relatives who were visiting family in town.

"Some of our shoppers have volunteered to help next year, so that's exciting," said Yonkovich, who herself got started volunteering with the event by first shopping at it.

"They are such a great group of people here in Lincoln. It's work, but it's fun. You get to visit with a lot of people, and you know that you're helping them," she added.

"And the little kids are fun," Stocks noted, saying, "We've had a lot of the little kids come through, and there were a lot of smaller children's clothes donated. We had a lot of toys and things, stuffed animals."

Another addition to the event this year was a cash donation box. Donations were designated to help support the Community Hall.

Stocks and Yonkovich are looking for feedback about setting up the event on a Thursday next year and opening it up for shopping from Friday through Sunday to make it more available to people who work or visit Lincoln on the weekends.