“The generosity of our community is one of my favorite things I get to see,” says Dawnette Lusk as the season of giving gets underway in Amarillo and Canyon. Lusk is the local Toys for Tots coordinator in Potter and Randall Counties—a national program run by the United States Marine Corps Reserve, now in its 78th year.
But Lusk’s comment applies far beyond the program she manages. Every December, the Panhandle comes alive with a generosity that shines as brightly as any Christmas-lit home in Wolflin. Across the city, toy drives and charity programs work quietly and faithfully to reach families that need a little extra help.
These efforts are as varied as the organizations behind them. Some, like A Christmas Gift, began as individual efforts just a few years ago. Others, like Toys for Tots, have a history dating back decades. They all take a slightly different approach as they work to ease burdens for struggling families and bring joy to children.
But each of these programs tells the same story: It’s the story of a community that refuses to let its most vulnerable neighbors go unseen during the holidays. In every toy donated and in every volunteer’s smile, they display the spirit of Panhandle generosity.
A Christmas Gift
A Christmas GiftNow in its 12th year, A Christmas Gift brings together the local service organization 101 Elite Men with the Amarillo Fire Department to collect gifts for children who have to spend the holiday season in the hospital.
Starting in November, Amarillo fire stations will set out collection boxes for toys, inviting community members to fill them up until Dec. 23, when those toys will be distributed to Northwest Texas Children’s Hospital. “We do it for the kids going through tough times,” says Rondell Campbell, who founded the toy drive event. When he first had the idea to distribute toys to children in need, Rondell’s father—an X-ray technician at Northwest who has since retired—connected him to Becky Imel, the child life specialist for Northwest Texas Healthcare.
Imel pointed out that the Northwest Children’s Hospital includes the only pediatric oncology center in the area, which means children undergoing cancer treatment may have to spend Christmas in a hospital bed. Campbell loved the idea of bringing a little comfort and joy to those young patients.
“We just ran with it,” he says. “Being able to bless them and give them gifts has been great.”
Beyond serving as a toy collection location, the fire department adds another level of excitement to the Dec. 23 distribution event. Along with members of 101 Elite Men, the firefighters deliver the toys to four floors worth of kids—typically 25 or so, Campbell says, though the number varies from year to year.
“We’ll do a parade and the kids can look out at the fire trucks,” he says.
Campbell is friends with former NBA star and current ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins, who manages his own Christmas giveaway event in Beaumont. The two have been discussing ways for Perkins to get involved with A Christmas Gift this year in Amarillo. “We’ve been coordinating each year to make it better and better,” Campbell adds.
Starting in November, drop off toy donations inside the foyers of these local fire stations:
Station #5: 3200 S. Washington St.
Station #9: 2015 Paramount Blvd.
Station #11: 2401 N. Coulter St.
Station #12: 3100 SW 58th Ave.
Station #13: 6383 SW 45th Ave.
The Kettle Campaign
The Kettle Campaign“When people start seeing the bell ringers out, that’s when they know it’s Christmas time,” says Major Andrea Ellis of the Salvation Army. Those kettles have become one of the most recognizable holiday traditions, not just in the United States, but all over the world: The Salvation Army serves in more than 133 countries.
The practice began with a Salvation Army officer in San Francisco who was trying to raise money for a Christmas dinner for the poor. Today, the “Kettle Campaign,” as the organization calls it, has grown to symbolize the holiday spirit.
It serves as the primary fundraiser fort the Salvation Army of Amarillo, and every dollar given locally in Amarillo stays in Amarillo unless designated otherwise. Many bell ringers are volunteers. “We have families that sign up, volunteers, groups, kids that are trying to get [service] hours for school. We’ve had clubs and friends that get together,” Ellis says. “We’ve just had all kinds of people come together who want to ring those bells.”
However, if the organization doesn’t have enough volunteers, it hires bell ringers from the community.
The first day of kettle displays and bell ringing is set for Nov. 14.
Beyond that campaign, the Amarillo Corps of the national organization gives to local families through its Angel Tree program, which serves more than 1,000 local children every year from more than 300 families. Families apply for Angel Tree gifts, based on need, until the end of October, with the organization vetting each applicant to verify that they aren’t receiving duplicate services from another agency.
Tags are then created with the name of each child and a list of desired gifts. “You’ve probably seen them around town in the mall or at Walmart,” Ellis says of the trees. Community members are given the opportunity to purchase gifts and return them to the Angel Tree. The Salvation Army then organizes gift distribution a couple of weeks before Christmas.
In addition to those public trees, the organization also works with around 25 churches, businesses and civic groups that display private trees with Angel Tree tags.
Volunteer for Salvation Army kettle duty at registertoring.org, which allows you to pick a time and location during the Christmas season. The Angel Tree program also has an online component, with virtual adoption at tsamm.org/angeltree.
Northside Toy Drive
Northside Toy DriveThis annual event started when Elton Bradley invited a few friends to a Christmas party and asked them to bring toys. They filled a small trailer with the toys and gave them away in the North Heights neighborhood, at what is now the Warford Community Center.
That small beginning kept growing until the Northside Toy Drive has become one of the highest-profile toy giveaways in the city. This year’s event is Dec. 13 at the Palo Duro High School Activity Center, when around 4,000 kids will be able to choose a Christmas gift within a five-hour time period. It’s supported by the Black Tie Affair fundraiser the night before, Dec. 12, which always sells out and—with around 1,500 in attendance—has built a reputation as Amarillo’s largest formal event.
“Our mission is to be the helping hand that lifts low- to moderate-income families during the Christmas holidays,” says Bradley, ensuring that every child who wants a memorable Christmas gets to have a memorable Christmas.
The toy giveaway, by this point, is an efficient, well-structured event. Families start lining up at 8 a.m. Kids sip hot chocolate while moms and dads visit booths from local service organizations, learn about bill assistance and even hear from companies offering employment. As the families enter the gym, a volunteer takes the child to the gym floor, while parents watch from the bleachers. Kids receive a book from the Leaders Readers Network, then get to select three gifts of their choice.
Briefly separating the children from their parents is intentional, Bradley says. “This allows the child to select whatever gift they want—what they truly want for Christmas, not what the parents want for them. When you have a parent walk with a child, the parent sometimes picks out what they wish they could give a child, or what they would have wanted at their age,” he says.
The gifts include everything from Barbie dolls and bikes to iPads, science kits and basketball goals. “Some kids want perfume and cologne. We have a complete section of board games. What we encourage our donors to do is give the gift they want their child or relative to have,” the founder says. “We want great gifts, not average gifts.”
He adds that, in the years since the Northside Toy Drive first came together, he’s begun to recognize just how much generosity characterizes the people of this region. “This city is a giving city. Amarillo is fully a city that takes care of each other,” he says. “The reason [the Northside Toy Drive] has grown to this size is because the community has continued to invest in itself.”
A few years ago, the organization introduced a Toyathon toy collection and fundraiser event to kick off the giveaway season. This year’s Toyathon is Nov. 14 in partnership with NewsChannel 10, FirstBank Southwest, the Amarillo Sod Poodles, the Amarillo Warbirds, Amarillo College’s Athletics Department and Texas Blue Lake Pools.
At this event, Northside Toy Drive asks local people to make donations or deliver unwrapped toys (for children ages 2 to 12) to FirstBank Southwest’s Wolflin Banking Center at 2401 S. Georgia St.
“With the local economy and the impact that everyone’s facing this year, we really need to do as much as we possibly can to raise funds and gather toys,” founder Elton Bradley says. “We’ve all seen the [price] increases and the need for financial assistance.”
Supporters can also make monetary donations at northsidetoydrive.com.
Sharing Tree
Sharing TreeWhen most locals think of toy drives, they probably picture a stranger (or an organization) distributing toys to children they don’t necessarily know. That’s not what happens at Sharing Tree, a partnership between Hillside Christian Church’s Amarillo North Grand campus and Mission 2540, an apartment ministry that works with families living in low-income apartments.
Sharing Tree is a pop-up Christmas “store” featuring toy donations from local people. For $5 per child or five cans of food, a mom or dad can shop for two gifts for each of their children. They can have those gifts wrapped on-site or take home wrapping paper to do it themselves. This process enables those parents or caregivers to give presents to their children—which the adults paid for and picked out themselves.
And these are not dollar-store gifts. They include everything from Nerf guns and Apple AirPods to purses and air-hockey tables.
“It’s a powerful thing for the parents because they want to provide Christmas gifts for their families but are on very fixed incomes,” says Brooks Boyett, founder of Mission 2540. [Disclosure: Brooks is the brother of Brick & Elm’s Jason Boyett.] “Parents get to pick out the presents their kids want and come home with wrapped presents and say, ‘These are the presents I’ve purchased and wrapped for you.’ There’s a lot of dignity in that.”
Hillside started the program in 2018, about a year before Mission 2540 got involved. That first year, the program was called Shepherd Tree. “We realized a real need,” says Juan Maldonado, pastor of the Hillside Amarillo North Grand campus. The church wanted to empower parents to give rather than performing the act of giving on their behalf.
Those parents begin lining up early on shopping day, which this year is Dec. 13 at the North Grand campus. Church and community members donate the toys or purchase from an Amazon wish list that ships gifts directly to Hillside. Around 150 volunteers participate every year, and close to 1,200 children end up receiving gifts. Hillside has had to invest in patio heaters to keep parents warm while they wait to enter.
Parents’ canned food payments are passed along to High Plains Food Bank. Every dollar paid by the parents goes to Mission 2540—and many of those families are already being served by the organization, which works with apartment complexes in the surrounding neighborhood. “It allows them to give back to the community, and then that money goes right back to serve those families,” Boyett says.
The event has grown significantly over the past few years. Volunteers hear multiple languages spoken and see excitement and relief among the moms and dads who are being empowered to take care of their families.
“It’s a partnership with them, the parents,” Maldonado says. “The toys are not the main thing. We wanted to invest in families.”
Find links to purchase gifts from Hillside’s Amazon wish list for children of all ages at mission2540.org/christmas-outreach.
Together We Can
Together We CanThe long-running, annual holiday food drive for High Plains Food Bank may not involve toys, but it does allow generous local people to spread Christmas cheer. This high-profile tradition began in 1992. “It brings together local businesses, churches and schools for one mission: to alleviate hunger in the Texas Panhandle,” says Zivorad Filipovic, the food bank’s director of marketing and communications.
This year’s drive takes place Dec. 1 through 5 in the parking lot of the Market Street United on Georgia Street, where volunteers and HPFB staff collect food donations and funds in an attempt to raise $250,000.
Most locals will recall the days of contributing canned food for this event—it’s right there in the name. But Filipovic says the focus of the event has shifted over the years from physical, nonperishable food items to monetary donations. “Any nonperishable food item is always needed at our warehouse, but monetary donations make a bigger impact,” he says. That’s due to the buying power of the food bank, thanks to relationships with manufacturers and suppliers. “We can take $1 now and stretch it to provide up to nine meals. It allows us to stock our shelves better.”
That kind of efficiency is necessary because the food bank has been busier than ever in 2025. “We’re serving more people recently than we did during COVID or during the last recession,” Filipovic says. As of this fall, High Plains Food Bank was assisting more than 13,000 families a month. “That’s the highest [number] we’ve ever served, and we’re seeing that need across all the 29 counties we serve. A lot more folks are reaching out to us about how they can get help.”
Those residents aren’t all coming directly to the Amarillo warehouse. HPFB works with frontline partner agencies across the Texas Panhandle, including churches, food pantries and community nonprofits. These partners distribute the food, while the food bank buys and warehouses it. This makes sure the families who need food the most are able to receive it.
HPFB also accepts donations online, and beginning Nov. 14, shoppers at United can scan a code at the register to make donations. (The United Family will match the first $10,000 raised in this manner.) Other local schools and businesses will make their own contributions during the campaign.
“We get such strong support from the community,” Filipovic says. He recalls a woman who came to the Together We Can event a couple of years ago with a five-dollar bill. She apologized because it was all she had to give.
“But every dollar counts. Add her gift to thousands of others and it becomes incredibly powerful. The generosity here is incredible and it really does add up.”
Bring canned food or monetary donations Dec. 1 through 5 or give online at hpfb.org.
Toys for Tots
Toys for TotsIn 1947, the wife of a Marine Corps Reserve Major in Los Angeles asked her husband to deliver handcrafted dolls to an agency supporting needy children. The officer couldn’t find an appropriate agency, so his reserve unit collected and distributed toys. By the next Christmas, Toys for Tots was on its way to becoming a national community action program for the Marine Corps Reserves, complete with a logo designed by none other than Walt Disney.
Amarillo’s Marine Corps Reserve detachment was deactivated in the late 1990s. That’s when John and Carol Hamlin took the reins of the local program. “If there’s not a Marine Corps [presence] in a community, then a civilian will do it, and Carol Hamlin and her family did it faithfully for years,” says Dawnette Lusk, who became the local Toys for Tots coordinator in 2023.
Today, the holiday program works mitten in mitten with another local nonprofit, Citychurch, where Lusk serves as outreach coordinator. Toys for Tots provides toys to more than 5,000 needy children in this area, and Citychurch collects toiletries, blankets, clothing and other comfort items. “It’s not just one toy,” Lusk says. Children receive three toys each, plus books, puzzles, games and a lot more, which the parents can distribute according to their own Christmas schedule. “Our community is amazing to donate to it,” she adds.
Those donations arrive via cardboard boxes placed at local businesses, where residents began dropping off toys as early as October. Large employers like Affiliated Foods and Dillard’s contribute money and toys collected from employees.
Parents apply for their children to receive Toys for Tots gifts until Nov. 22. Previously, parents would request certain items for each child, but this year—similar to the Hillside/Mission 2540 Sharing Tree program—parents will get to “shop” for their children. They’ll make an appointment in early December to browse a toy shop set up at Citychurch.
The program culminates in a series of Citychurch Christmas banquets for these families the second week of December. “They love the dinner,” Lusk says of the families who attend. “It gives them a chance to dress up. They’ll sit at a table and be served.” That’s when the children receive their comfort items and other necessities.
Lusk has been working with Citychurch for two decades, and she doesn’t discount the joy that even those comfort items bring. She describes encountering a single mom who was raising six young children. That family had received gifts from the program, and Lusk asked the kids what they liked most. “All of them immediately said, ‘the toothbrush.’ Because they had all been sharing a toothbrush, and now they each had their own.”
Volunteer, give or apply to receive toys at toysfortots.org.
