One kid, a stack of crayon flyers, the winter of 2012.
What it takes to keep a promise this big.
Every December, a volunteer team gets tens of thousands of new toys to Bay Area kids across nine counties — built on one idea that hasn’t changed since an eight-year-old walked his first flyers door to door.
It started with crayon flyers.
It began in 2012 as a school project: come up with an idea that helps your community. Joey Childs — then 8 years old — chose a toy drive, made flyers with crayons and markers, and walked them door to door in his San Jose neighborhood.
The first collection was a few dozen toys, delivered to families having a hard year. He did it again the next December, on a bigger scale. A school project became a neighborhood habit, then a regional one — more toys, more families, every December.
The operation has grown every year since. The promise behind it hasn’t moved an inch.
Joey’s Toy Drive collects new, unwrapped toy donations and distributes them as Christmas gifts to children in need throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
Our mission, since 2012Started by Joey Childs at age 8 — San Jose, California
From a few dozen toys to nine counties.
What started with one kid’s flyers in 2012is now a regional operation — tens of thousands of new toys a season. About 120 partners — Fortune 500s among them — run collection drives every November and December, then send every toy to San Jose.
Bay Area counties served
partners hosting drives each season
Decembers, still 100% volunteer-run
paid staff, from the first December to this one
Volunteers pick the toys up, sort them at the San Jose warehouse, and deliver them to families across nine counties: Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Monterey, and Santa Cruz. Every toy collected in the Bay Area stays in the Bay Area.
Run entirely by volunteers. Still.
Joey’s Toy Drive has no paid staff. The team that organizes the annual drive, runs the warehouse, manages partner relationships, and coordinates delivery does this work outside of regular jobs and schoolwork.
Joey Childs
Founder & Executive Director
Dennis O'Donnell
Director of Operations
Brooke Childs
Volunteer Manager
Katherine Vargas
Office Manager
Regional ambassadors
Chris Ferris
Regional Ambassador
Support services
- Andrey Dini
- Adam Berg
The trucks, the warehouse, the freight.
Moving tens of thousands of toys through one warehouse in a single season — collected from about 120 partners and delivered across nine counties — is a logistics operation. It runs on the time and equipment of Silicon Valley Moving & Storage, whose trucks, warehouse space, and freight handling are donated to Joey’s Toy Drive every year.
It is the reason a volunteer team can deliver at this scale without paid staff.
The operation grows. The promise holds.
Thirteen Decembers in, the promise behind those first flyers is the same one it has always been. You can be part of the next one.