Celebrate Mittens for Detroit's Sweet 16!

Time sure does fly when you are keeping people warm! 

November 1st marks Mittens for Detroit's Sweet 16th! We are so excited about this landmark as we kick off our 17th Season of Warmth!

The reason why Mittens for Detroit works is because the community wants it to work.Because of the amazing support of the community – that means YOU! – we've made it through the Pandemic in 2020 and our flood in June 2026. 

For sixteen years, you've dropped new, warm, durable mittens and gloves in our Community Collection Boxes. You've held MittenRaisers at work and as part of your birthday and holiday celebrations. When we've needed specific sizes of pairs, you stepped up. You've knit, crocheted, and sewn thousands of pairs sent to us from all over the country. Year after year after year. 

We've been part of your community events like Wild Lights at the Detroit Zoo, the Detroit Tree Lighting, and Cranbrook House and Gardens Holiday celebrations. More than 375,000 new pairs of mittens and gloves have been put on hands since our 1st Season of Warmth in 2010. To say that we are grateful would be an understatement. Especially this year. 

The flood caused a lot of chaos, and we lost 16,000 of the 20,000 pairs we had in our winter inventory. We're trying to rebuild our inventory, and if you donated to our Help Mitty Save His Mittens campaign, thank you so much! (I'm WAY behind on our thank you notes, I'm sorry to say.) Your support allowed us to start purchasing new pairs in September. We won't see Community Collections come to the office until late November. If you would like to give us a little boost during our Sweet 16 Month, it would help us to be able to make more purchases more quickly as the weather gets colder.

Maybe you can make your year-end donation in November! We won't be doing a big Giving Tuesday campaign in December, so you can get ahead of the game! And if you would rather just wish Mittens for Detroit a Happy Sweet 16, that would be terrific, too!

Thank you for all of your help all of these years. It's been an honor to work with you as our partners for change. Thank you for working with us as we warm hearts and hands together.

Warmly,

Wendy Shepherd, MFD Executive Director