An annual holiday gifting event built on the belief that every family deserves to celebrate without the burden of cost.

Event Type: Community Service Event / Annual Program
My Role: Event Manager
Scale: 275 families; 1,081 children served; 150 volunteers managed

Background

Christmas Toy Store began in 2015 as a coordinated partnership with Hope for New York’s His Toy Store. Within a few years, Renaissance Church had grown the program into a fully independent annual event. What started as a collaborative initiative became a signature event on the church’s calendar, one that has served more families and more children every year since.

The core offering was a toy shopping experience: families would arrive, select gifts for their children, and check out with the help of volunteer shoppers who followed a script designed to surface any additional needs beyond toys. The intent was right. The setting wasn’t. Asking families about food insecurity or financial hardship in the middle of a busy shopping floor, with a script in hand, wasn’t creating the conditions for honest conversation. It was creating an awkward transaction.

Goal

Produce an annual community service event that provides toys to Harlem families with children, connects them to holistic community resources, and delivers an experience that feels generous, dignified, and celebratory rather than transactional.

Strategy

Managing CTS meant owning the full production cycle from planning through execution, and rethinking one of its core components entirely.

On the procurement side, that included sourcing vendors, purchasing toys, and managing decor and equipment rentals. On the logistics side, it meant building and managing the family registration process, tracking sign-ups, and ensuring toy inventory was matched precisely to the number, age, and gender of registered children so that every family arrived to a voucher that actually worked.

The most significant change I introduced was the addition of a dedicated community lounge alongside the toy shopping area. The existing model asked volunteer shoppers to follow scripts surfacing additional family needs mid-transaction, a setting that wasn’t conducive to the kind of honest, open conversation that would actually help. I wanted to create a space that felt warm and unhurried, somewhere families could sit, have refreshments, make crafts with their children, and talk without the noise and movement of the shopping floor around them.

I brought community partners on-site to staff the lounge directly, so that families could access resources immediately rather than receiving referrals to follow up on after the event. The difference between a referral and a resource in the room is the difference between a maybe and a yes.

The full event experience:

• Toy store: Families check in and receive a voucher reflecting the number and ages of their registered children, then redeem it for one toy per child from a curated selection
• Literacy component: Every child receives a free book, reinforcing a commitment to family literacy and reading together
• Community lounge: A dedicated space for families to make crafts, enjoy refreshments, and connect with on-site community partners and members of the church’s prayer team in a relaxed, unhurried setting
• Community resources: Families are connected to food banks, gift cards, and resources specifically for women and children through partnerships with community organizations, available on the spot rather than as post-event referrals

Funding for the event combines a church budget allocation of approximately $20,000 to $30,000 annually with financial donations from congregants and the broader Harlem community, as well as in-kind contributions from community partners. Volunteer coordination was its own production, requiring the recruitment, organization, and management of approximately 150 volunteers across every function of the day.

Results & Impact

Christmas Toy Store has grown every year since Renaissance Church launched its independent version of the event, serving more families and more children with each iteration.

2024 Stats:

Families served	275 annually
Children served	1081
Volunteers coordinated	150
Annual budget	$20K-30K church allocation, supplemented by community donations; $50K total spend, 2024
Program tenure	Annual since 2015; independent since 2017

The event has become one of the most anticipated dates on Renaissance Church’s community calendar, not just for the families it serves but for the volunteers and donors who show up year after year to be part of it.

For privacy reasons, families and children are not photographed during their shopping experience.