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Could she have an application to volunteer?
Youngblood plans to retire later this year from her nursing job and wants to fill her time doing something useful. And besides, she loves shopping at the store and what it does for the community.
Top Drawer is an upscale resale shop that has been raising money for Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care for five years. Total raised so far: more than $900,000.
It was all done with donations and dozens of volunteers.
Heller is the only paid staff member. She came to Top Drawer from the Discovery Shop, a retail store that raised money for the American Cancer Society.
Heller was drawn to that job after her husband, Stewart, died of cancer.
“I needed to do something,” said Heller, who had not only extensive volunteer work but also retail experience at the former Woolf Brothers.
While working at the Discovery Shop, Heller met volunteer Carol Polson. Polson came along with Heller to Top Drawer and brought her strong work ethic with her.
Polson has consistently volunteered to work five days a week at the Top Drawer.
“I don’t know what I would do without Carol,” Heller said. “She has so much energy.”
But Polson said she gets a lot from her work at Top Drawer
“Volunteering is what it is all about,” Polson said. She said she learned that at an early age watching her mother make dolls to raise money for Easter Seals.
Heller said Top Drawer works hard to ensure that what it sells is top quality.
“No garage sale mentality here,” she said.
Indeed, clothes are carefully inspected for stains and rips. Volunteers pay for the dry cleaning themselves.
Other volunteers spend hours each week at the ironing board to perfect the presentation.
Unneeded items are given to churches and other nonprofits that can benefit from used clothes.
Top Drawer sells other donated items, such as books, china, silver items, oil paintings and glassware. It even sold a donated collection of 800 bells.
Many donations come from families who have had a loved one use hospice, Heller said.
“It’s a way for the families to say thank you, to give back,” she said.
Donations of new items have come from stores including Lily Pulitzer, Chico’s, Brighton and Peruvian Connection.
In the store’s five years of operation, gross sales have topped $1 million.
The store began with a mere 12 racks of clothes. In addition to the 4,500-square-foot shop, the organization has 1,500 square feet of storage packed with spring and summer clothes, to be displayed soon.
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