Christmas in July? How Christmas Hope Brings Joy and Surprise to Families in Need.

Growing up in a household fraught with challenges, including a mother battling addiction, Paul Somerhausen's relationship with Christmas was anything but typical. Despite these hurdles, Paul turned his early life experiences into a mission of kindness, generating hope for those in need through his involvement with Christmas Promise. After moving to the United States and rekindling his passion for giving during the holiday season, he took the bold step of creating his own initiative, using his talents in event planning to support families and keep the spirit of anonymous giving alive.

Join us as we uncover the intricate and heartfelt process behind one of the most magical Christmas operations. Paul walks us through the logistics of the Christmas gift delivery program, where stories of families in need are shared anonymously for donors to embrace. Volunteer Santas, alongside their dedicated helpers, transform into real-life heroes on Christmas Eve, delivering gifts that bring unexpected joy and dignity to struggling families. The personal stories Paul shares highlight the profound impact of these gestures, not just on the recipients, but on the givers as well.

We also explore the ambitious dreams and challenges that come with expanding the Christmas Hope program. From establishing a self-funded endowment to juggling the complexities of donations, Paul paints a vivid picture of what it takes to run a successful charity operation. His story is intertwined with the inspiring dedication of volunteers, whose tireless efforts and generosity remind us of the true spirit of community. As we wrap up our conversation, we are left with a sense of warmth and gratitude, buoyed by the commitment of those who work quietly in the background to create a brighter holiday season for everyone.

To learn more about Christmas Hope, you can visit the website HERE. To enter the site, the password is "hope4all".

Thank you so much for listening to this nonprofit story! We appreciate you. Please visit the website to sign up for our email updates and newsletter. https://www.nonprofpod.com/ And if you like, leave me a voicemail to comment on the program, leave a question for us to ask in the future or a message for me, Jeff Holden. I may even use your voice mail message in a future episode of one of our incredible local nonprofit organizations. https://www.nonprofpod.com/voicemail. Thanks again for your support in listening, commenting and sharing the great work our local nonprofits are accomplishing.

Transcript

Paul Somerhausen: [00:00:00] When Santa Knocks on the door on Christmas Eve, he brings gifts, but those gifts eventually get eaten. They get worn. They break. They move on. What I think the most fundamental part of this program and Christmas promise was wasn't necessarily the material aspect. It's that any single parent that is a recipient of this, you feel pretty abandoned by society.

You're struggling, you're working two, three jobs. Everything is difficult. You're barely making ends meet. And so I think the part that lingers from this program is the hope, and that's, I think that's the bigger gift of this program. The, just the realization that you're not alone, that there are people that care.

And as long as you keep trying hard to, you know, do the right thing, people notice and they will try to help you.

Jeff Holden: Hi, I'm Jeff Holden. Welcome to the Nonprofit Podcast Network. Our purpose and passion [00:01:00] is to highlight a nonprofit organization in each weekly episode, giving that organization an opportunity to tell their story in their words, to better inform and educate the respective communities they serve, as well as provide one more tool for them to share their message to constituents and donors.

Our goal is to help build stronger communities through shared voices, and to both encourage and support the growth of local nonprofit organizations through podcasting. Thanks to our partners for their support in getting these stories Told smud, Sacramento Metropolitan Utility Districts Shine awards program, benefiting nonprofits for energy efficiency.

CAPTRUST fiduciary advice for endowments and foundations. And Western Health Advantage, a full service healthcare plan for individuals, employer groups, and families. Christmas in July. Well, sort of this episode is about the Christmas too many families may face and a [00:02:00] solution for some of them you've likely not heard of California Christmas.

Hope it's a small organization making huge impact on the lives of the families they're able to touch. The overall concept is familiar. Get needy families gifts for the holidays, but California Christmas Hope goes well. Beyond that, personalized gifts for each family member and the process they go through to get them delivered is, well, I might say mystical or magical.

Paul's summer Hausen shares his story of Christmas and how he didn't look forward to it and how he couldn't wait for it to be over. California Christmas. Hope is what he's doing to help as many families as he can, have a different experience, one family, one child at a time. It's a wonderful, fabulous story and we're getting it told with enough time to make a difference for families this [00:03:00] year.

Paul Summer Hausen. Welcome to the Nonprofit Podcast Network. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about what we're going to be talking about today because it's unusual to have a conversation about Christmas any other time, but the holidays. But there's a story that precedes. Story of the nonprofit, and I'd like for you to share it if you would, Paul.

Of 

Paul Somerhausen: course. I grew up pretty humble. My, my mother was an addict and I was not very good with, with money management and especially towards the end of the month, we'd, we'd have very little left. And during the holidays when you're poor, it's particularly difficult to, a lot of parents that don't have a lot of means can't come up with all the pressure that society puts on them.

Come up with the new Xbox and all the new toys. As a child, how that lands is that you end up getting whatever you get if you get anything at all. And so you usually know that something isn't right and then you go back to school after the holidays and then all your [00:04:00] friends have new shoes and new toys and they make fun of you because kids can be ruthless.

And so for, for many years, Christmas just was, was something that I really did not have warm and fuzzy feelings about. It just was a. A very sensitive topic for me, and I kind of avoided it. But, uh, literally 20 years ago, a friend of mine who, who's one of those people that always organizes things throughout the community, convinced me to do two things that were outside my comfort zone.

One, to go sing at a senior center, which I don't have any experience in singing. I am a terrible singer. I'm a really good under the shower. But other than that, I, I don't do singing. But she convinced me and then, and consequently, she convinced me to go wrap some presents. Which I, I'm also not a star in, but when we went to wrap some presents, it was in a warehouse in Rancho Cordova.

And when we walked in, they told me, welcome to the North Pole. And on the wall there were all these stories of all these families that were in need and needed support. And once I got to know Christmas Promise as it was called at the time. I fell in love because the, the concept [00:05:00] is that there's all these families that are, are up for adoption.

They don't know that they're up for adoption. And then people like me could adopt 'em. And, and then on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus goes to their house and surprises them without, without ever letting 'em know who's all behind it. And for considering the background that I had and. Remembering when I was a kid, having to go to a shelter and asking for help and feeling so humiliated, or having to ask for help from other people because we didn't have enough.

The fact that this was all anonymous really resonated with me, and that there's just something really cool about being able to give something to someone and without them knowing and without you taking full credit for it. Especially in this day and age where. A lot of people do the opposite, where they take full credit in front of the camera and they, they make it a big broadcast.

The the opposite approach really, really appealed to me. So I was involved with that organization for quite some time and, and I just fell in love with the concept of anonymous giving. Where were you originally from? I was raised, born and raised in 

Jeff Holden: Spain. [00:06:00] Okay. And then when did you come to the States? In my early twenties.

So that childhood experience was in Europe? Correct. Okay. When you got to the states. What did it appear like to you? By comparison, 

Paul Somerhausen: I, I was here alone, so I didn't have family, so Christmas really wasn't an issue for me 'cause I could just avoid it. Ignore it, yeah. And ignore it because there was no social pressure on me.

And in the type of work that I ended up working in hospitality, I was always working anyway. So it was just an easy way to, to avoid it. So it did really, I didn't really feel that, that, that pressure that comes with Christmas at, at 

Jeff Holden: that point in my life. Mm-hmm. And you also have a successful business.

That has some downtime around the holidays, which allowed you to do some things creatively with staff. Tell us a little bit about that. So to, 

Paul Somerhausen: to fully connect the dots. Christmas Promise operated for I think, nearly 40 years, and the ladies that ran it eventually. Grew tired because [00:07:00] it's a massive undertaking.

They were serving 250 plus families per year and they were just retired ladies that, that were doing this just because they're, you know, saints. Mm-hmm. Unfortunately, despite my pleas, they would not hand me over the keys 'cause I really wanted to continue with their work. 'cause they already had a.

Infrastructure and a network and everything in place, but for whatever reason that I never understood, they decided to just close the, the, the project and, and move on. I was grumpy for a couple of years about that and actually worked with Front Street on, on delivering puppies and with, with Santa, and did some other side project like that.

But I just always felt this void. I, I really fell in love with the concept of, of. Christmas promise and as they say, if you know, be the change you wanna see. So eventually I said, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start it myself again, partially because I have an event planning company and we're, we're focused on food trucks, so we're seasonal.

So in the winter months we're not as busy. And so I have all these really talented event planners with not a lot [00:08:00] of work. So I kind of figured at least in the first couple years as we build things up, that they could help me with all the logistics. It's a lot easier with people that are skilled in that than having a bunch of volunteers that mm-hmm.

Have a lot of goodwill, but they don't have event planning skills because this is a pretty sizable operation, even at our size with 50 families per year. There's just a lot of moving parts. 'cause we're serving about 200 to 300 people and each of them has a, a specific budget and a specific amount of gifts, and we have to make sure everybody gets the same amount.

And so there's, there's a lot of moving parts and in coordinating all the donors and all the volunteers and it's, it's, it can 

Jeff Holden: be pretty overwhelming. So some of that admin costs that another organization might have, you're able to absorb through the existing business and it keeps everybody employed through the holiday and I'm sure they feel good doing it.

Correct. Now that leads us to the actual entity, which is Christmas Hope. It moved from Christmas Promise, the preexisting concept successful over [00:09:00] 40 years to what you do today called Christmas Hope. Tell us a little bit about that. 

Paul Somerhausen: So 

Jeff Holden: I chose 

Paul Somerhausen: Hope because. When Santa knocks on the door on Christmas Eve, he brings gifts, but those gifts eventually get eaten.

They get worn. They break, they move on. What I think the most fundamental part of this program and Christmas promise was wasn't necessarily the material aspect. It's that any single parent that is a recipient of this. Once they calm down and they realize like what happened, they can do pretty easy mental math and realize that there was a significant amount of people involved in what just happened.

And when you're coming back from homelessness or coming back from addiction or coming back from. Financial challenges or domestic violence. Domestic violence, you feel pretty alone. You feel pretty abandoned by society. You're struggling, you're working two, three jobs. Everything is difficult. You're barely making ends meet.

And so I think the part that lingers from this program is the hope is the realization that there's an an [00:10:00] significant amount of people out in society that actually do really care about you and are looking over you. And I would hope that that would. Pardon the pun, but it would bring them hope and that they realize mm-hmm.

Like, it, it's worth keep going because that there are, there are angels out there looking over me. And that's, I think that's the bigger gift of this program. Just the realization that you're not alone. That there are people that care. And as long as you keep trying hard to, you know, do the right thing, people notice and they will try to help you 

Jeff Holden: upon.

Totally accepted because hope is everything you lose. Hope you, you become desperate and desolate and, and abandoned and. All the families you deal with have children. So it's not just a solo individual. Tell us how you identify the families because you are not really associated, you know, in in the essence of where people come to you and say, Hey, I want this person.

I want this person. Somehow they have to be identified and brought to you. So who do you collaborate on? Or collaborate [00:11:00] with to get there. So you're 

Paul Somerhausen: correct. We don't have neither the skillset or the infrastructure to vet people ourselves. It's really difficult to do that. So we have a number of anonymous, uh, social worker elfs around the community in various nonprofits that deal with the aforementioned issues of homelessness, domestic violence, financial hardships, and, and drug addiction that, uh, know that we exist.

And right around early November we start poking at them saying, you know, send us your. Your, your, your families and then they, they start compiling information. We usually try to get child in that family to write a letter to Santa, sort of, to get a general sense of what they need in that household. But it also gives Santa a, uh, an excuse if you will, to say, I got a letter from little Jeff and, and I'm here to see him.

And that usually disarms the parent that's quite confused as to why there's a strange man dressed as a Santa. In the middle of the night on Christmas Eve at, at their door. 'cause they don't know we're coming. They have no idea who's behind it. So it really helps to have a little bit of [00:12:00] meat on, on that story and being able to talk about maybe their pet or, or the goldfish that died that year that they're like, whoa.

How do you know that? I'm like, I'm Santa Cla. I know everything. Uhhuh. And it continues the belief 

Jeff Holden: in the spirit. Correct. Which is what Christmas really is all about. I mean, it's, it's, it's the spirit of Christmas and to bring that family. It wasn't even an expectation of hope. It was the surprise of hope.

Tell us a little bit about how all this happens. 'cause you must have a warehouse or something someplace where you store it and put it all together. We do. We, we, 

Paul Somerhausen: we get, uh, generous donations of local property management companies that'll let us use their empty space. And so that's where we sort of set up our North Pole.

At the beginning of the season, we. We do all the wrapping. So the, the, the general process, how it works is we get the referrals, we put the stories up on, we an anonymize the stories if they're very identifiable. 'cause it's really critical for us to maintain the dignity of the families. And [00:13:00] so once we take out any easy to detect components, what we post those pictures, the picture of the letter and the story of the family on the website, and then folks can can jump on there and adopt them.

Once they adopt them, they go shopping, they bring it to the North Pole. We do inventory because sometimes there's a family that has a single mom, 8-year-old girl and two 15-year-old boys. That 8-year-old girl is gonna get four times the gifts that the 15-year-old boys get. So we, we then on the back end, just try to fluff it up a bit so that, that, that everybody feels even so that they don't start thinking that Santa is being selective.

Yeah, selective and, and unfair. And so once we have a general sense that the family has a pretty good balanced amount of gifts, then we send it to the, to the North Pole. There, it gets fully wrapped by volunteers. We had about 150 volunteers come through this this past Christmas, and they, they wrap it beautifully.

They have much more skills than I do. 

Jeff Holden: Same here. I I, I'm the worst raptor, especially when you're doing it at two in the morning for Christmas Eve to get it all done [00:14:00] thinking you're doing a good job and trying to hide it and fold it properly and put a stick, a bow on it. 

Paul Somerhausen: Newspaper. Yes. Yes. So they do a really nice job.

There's a lot of pride that goes into it. And then, um, uh, we store everything in the north, at the North Pole and then. Prior to Christmas Eve, we map out the entire region, uh, with all the, all the 50 families that have been adopted, and then we group 'em for the Santa. So we, we generally have between six and eight routes, um, for Santas to, to follow, and we try to keep 'em in the same area so that Santa's not going to Elk Grove and Rancho and Rockland all in one night with, with the traffic and everything else.

So we try to make it easy on Santa. 

Jeff Holden: How many Santas do you have that deliver on? Is it Christmas Eve all the time? Yeah, it's, 

Paul Somerhausen: we 

Jeff Holden: follow the 

Paul Somerhausen: tradition. It's, it's always Christmas Eve just to sort of stick to the story that this is, this is Santa, this is, I'm supposed to be here. Have you not paid attention?

Look at your calendar. Uhhuh. So we, we always try to maintain that. We have about 12 to 15 different Santas that rotate through the years, depending [00:15:00] on their availability. Sometimes that Christmas Eve date is a little difficult for some folks 'cause they have family obligations or traveling or whatever.

But we always end up with enough, um, Santas because it's just always a Christmas miracle 

Jeff Holden: and explain. Because we really didn't cover, I, I, I think people are probably grasping a little bit of what the essence of this is, but literally your Santas, your volunteer Santas pack up in their vehicle, X number of families, six 10, whatever that number may be, and they go to the house and deliver the gift on Christmas Eve unbeknownst to the family.

Paul Somerhausen: Correct. 

Jeff Holden: That's the, the magic of this program. The, the only thing I'm thinking is. That could be quite shocking in some cases. You probably have a few stories 'cause I know you're one of the Santas. Share a little bit of that with us. The good, the and, and the funny about it all of what that experience is when you show up at the door and, you know, a a six two [00:16:00] largely built gentleman, opens the door and sees Santa standing there on Christmas Eve with.

Gifts that he wasn't able to provide for the family, for whatever reasons. So the, the, the 

Paul Somerhausen: actual pro process is each Santa has a driver. 'cause you're not allowed to drive. If you're in a full Santa outfit, your periphery vision is not very good. And you, you're supposed to be, your beer gets in the way, you're supposed to be reading your file so that you have some information on the family you're about to visit.

And then you're gen generally followed by between three and five vehicles. So each vehicle has one of the families in them because there's, each family is getting between four to 10 big commercial grade garbage bags that are red, uh, full of gifts so that they're getting a, a pretty large amount. Mm-hmm.

And we go to the address, Santa goes to the door, knocks on the door, and, and aforementioned, large gentleman woke, opens the door, was looking at me, confused. And I say, good evening, Jeff. I'm here to see little Jeff and I say it loud enough so that little Jeff hears Santa and comes running to the door because once.

Little Jeff is at the door, dad really, or [00:17:00] Mom can't really kick Santa out anymore. So there, there's a little bit of trickery there. At that point, I invite myself into the house and I close the door. I sit myself on the couch or wherever is most appropriate. At this point, I'm giving my helpers as much possible time to take all the gifts to the front of the door.

I have my, my Red Santa bag and that Red Santa Bagg. I have one small gift for everybody in the family. Depending on how many bags there are, I try to buy as much time as I can. So I give everybody their gift. I ask them to open it. I ask the, the typical Santa questions, have you been good? Tell me something about school.

And once we've killed enough time and I, I, um, I get tired of the parent growling at me, I invite them all to the front door. And at that point we do the big reveal. At that point, 95% of the time the parent loses it because they a, they're really sus first. They're very suspicious of you. Rightfully so. Sure.

We're not serving Granite Bay, we're serving rough neighborhoods. Mm-hmm. And in the middle of the night unannounced. They don't know what's going on. A lot of people are nervous. Rightfully so. I would say the grand majority of the, of the people we serve [00:18:00] are women. So a single mom in a rough neighborhood, middle of the night, some weird dude is knocking on your door.

250 Santa suit. I, I, I am, I am in awe of the fact that I've been doing this for 20 years and I've, I, I've not. Been turned away. Like that's, to me is a, a miracle in itself. I've had a couple people really, really suspicious, but I've always been able to sort of convince them, especially once I start getting into the details that I know things about them, that they just know that that's not typical, that I'm not some stranger.

Eventually they always let you in and that's, that's, that's that miracle of Christmas in itself. Then as far as individual stories, there's, there's, you can imagine I have, I have quite a few. The gentleman you referred to is, is a real gentleman. Several times I've had big construction burley guys that looked like they belonged in a motorcycle gang rather than as a teddy bear.

And first they're kind of looking at you really suspiciously and wondering what's going on, asking you a lot of questions. But once they realize what's going on, I've had so many of them just crying on my shoulder. These big, burly dudes just breaking down saying, I tried to pick up [00:19:00] as many shifts as I could and I couldn't make vans meet, and we barely paid rent, and I thought Christmas was lost.

Thank you so much to a mom a couple years ago that her husband had passed away from COVID and she had three kids by herself. She was a, she was a stay-at-home mom and was a recent immigrant and just didn't have, didn't have much going on, but she was an incredible. Volunteer in the community. Always helped at school.

Helped at at local centers and and had been nominated because of it. And when I arrived she was alone at home. In the dark because she was very upset. It was our first Christmas by herself, and Santa got to spend about 15, 20 minutes with her just kind of trying to cheer her up. We did a FaceTime call with the kids that were with some family that came home to a presents, and so Santa has to be pretty nimble sometimes.

'cause sometimes you get a really elated reaction. Sometimes you get really upset and people are, they've gone through a lot. We've had families dealing with murder. We've had families. I had a a 8-year-old boy that I'll never forget had been moved from. [00:20:00] Arizona to hear from by Child Protective Services because his mom would burn cigarettes on him.

Um, because he was, he was stealing food. 'cause mom didn't have any food. She had an addiction issue and this boy was the sweetest little boy. And to look at a kid like that and just realize like life is just so unfair for some kids. How can you not be motivated by that? Mm-hmm. So there's just so many stories like that where you knock on the door, they don't know you're coming.

So you get to see uncut, unedited. And Jeff, don't forget, this is, this is not, this is not some third world country where this is Sacramento. We're the capital of the richest state of the richest country in the world. Mm-hmm. And we have people literally living in, in squalor and, and they're our neighbors.

They're, you drive by them every day and you have no idea because we, we generally kind of. Stick to our, you know, economic tribes and we, we don't see how other people live. And when we show up unannounced, they don't have time to clean up. They don't have time to pretend. We see the reality, and it's the hardest part for Santa, is to keep his composure Sometimes when, when you see the conditions under which people live and, and [00:21:00] you, you have to be cheerful and jolly and you're like, oh my goodness.

Poor kids, how you live like this. Right? 

Jeff Holden: Yeah, I can imagine. The joy on Santa's exit once you're walking out of there. Just, just what a, an incredible experience it must be each time. How many do you do in a night? How many can you do reasonably in an evening? It depends. Generally, 

Paul Somerhausen: most Santa's deliver about six to eight.

Okay. Families. But I've, I, I was really ambitious when it was Christmas promise and we would do up to 15 or more. Yeah. So I would be delivering past midnight and then it really got interesting. 

Jeff Holden: Yeah, I would imagine you have to be careful when it's that little. Yeah. You better come down through the chimney or something like that.

You're gonna think you're breaking in. But just the, the emotional I, I don't on both ends. The emotion to the receiving family and, and the kids. And the parents to the emotional experience of being the person able to give it. [00:22:00] Each time, you know, 5, 6, 7 times in an evening and you've been doing it for 20 years.

So you've got familiarity with what this is like. I mean, that's just, just amazing. It's not easy though, I'll 

Paul Somerhausen: be honest. 'cause it, it's, it's so hard for me. Adults get to decide how they want to live their life. Kids don't, they don't have a choice. They have to get dragged along to whatever their parents' poor choices are.

And that's the hard part for Santa to, to see kids, especially the older kids, always resonate with me because. And usually the oldest kid in the family is the adult of the family is the one that's doing the shopping and keeping the family and. Together. And when you see the 14, 15, 16-year-old and you realize like, oh, you're, you're the adult in this family.

The, the parent may or may not be fully in control or, or is now trying to get back in control, but that child has carried, having been in that position, it always really resonates with me in my heart just, and I always try to give a little extra attention to, to, to that child in particular, to just to let them know that Santa [00:23:00] knows and, and, and is proud of them.

On the other side, the reactions are mixed. It depends on the family, obviously, but most of the time, especially the kids, they lose their mind. They, they're so excited because it's, I mean, how often do you literally get real santa knocking on your door? Mm-hmm. And so they, and then when they see all the gifts, bikes, believe it or not, Jeff, after all these years with all the technology.

A bike always is, is a home run. Every time the kids lose their mind, they get, because they've never had their own bike and they've certainly never had their own brand new bike. So they get so excited about that and to see that joy and to see the parent just so emotional and. They usually become quite religious and start, you know, thanking God and, um, but they, they're, they're, they're not very helpful logistically.

'cause Santa then has to bring in all the bags mm-hmm. Into the house so that it's, you know, safe and, and the kids are trying to help. But oftentimes the kids are little. So, um, and then usually in the middle of the commotion, I sometimes I'll try to sneak out so they, they don't even notice I'm gone.

Doesn't always work. [00:24:00] Sometimes, depending on the family. I'll sit. I'll stay with them a little bit and take some pictures and usually you start getting some questions. No, seriously. Who sent you? It's Mrs. Klaus. This is, this is Christmas Eve. This is what I do. And then they insist. And insist and then just, and just, just, it's okay.

It's okay. 

Jeff Holden: Merry Christmas. And to be clear, this is not an experience you get to share because these are very, very private. It is anonymous. They don't know where the gifts came from. They don't know how they got nominated and nor do you know the entire situation of the family. So it's not like, let's take pictures and this is a happy family.

We're gonna post it up socially. You don't get the benefit of sharing to the people that would be interested in funding you the literal, visceral experience of what happens to that household. We just get to do it by telling the story, and you did a fabulous job of, of painting that picture of, of what it looks like.

Let's take [00:25:00] a break from the stories to hear from another great group of people, those who make this program possible. 

SMUD: Make our communities bright with Smudge Shine awards. Now through July 31st, your nonprofit can apply for a chance to receive funding for projects that improve and revitalize communities in our service area.

We're seeking proposals that support Zero carbon workforce development, environmental justice inequity, inclusive economic growth, and STEM education. SMUD Shine Awards are competitive and funds are limited. Submit your proposal by July 31st. Learn more at smud.org/shine. 

Jeff Holden: I am thrilled to have Western Health Advantage partnering with us as they do so much to support so many nonprofit agencies in our community.

As a truly local health plan, you'll find individual and family options, employer options plans for CalPERS and Medicare Advantage. From medical services to pharmacy health and wellness support, as well as behavioral healthcare. Western Health Advantage has a plan that fits what you [00:26:00] need. As an employer for profit or nonprofit business, individual or family, you can find more@westernhealth.com.

Scott Thomas: Hello, this is Scott Thomas with CAPTRUST in our Sacramento office. I specialize in working with local nonprofits and associations annually. We survey private and public nonprofit organizations across the country to better understand challenges they see in today's environment. In our more recent survey, we heard concerns about proper board governance, mission aligned investment, and how to implement alternative investments.

If you would like a copy of the survey or to discuss your organization, look me up, scottThomas@captrust.com. 

Jeff Holden: Let's talk a little bit about funding. So how do you get money for 

Paul Somerhausen: this? That's the biggest challenge of a secret charity because we are a secret. Even our website is password protected because we don't, we don't wanna get in a situation where people start coming to us directly asking for help because A, we have to say no to all of them, and B, it just, it kind of stinks to have to do [00:27:00] that 'cause.

We imagine that if you're asking that you probably are in need, and I don't wanna make you feel worse. Mm-hmm. So a lot, a hundred percent of this is word of mouth. And then on top of it, as, as you just mentioned, most organizations that wanna donate, they'd like a picture with a check and they want, you know, sponsored by.

And I totally understand that. That's part of marketing. It's part of, you know, community engagement. But in this situation that's not. Part of the equation, they're, it's literally the opposite. So folks that either volunteer or donate or adopt, they do it with the understanding that they're doing this without getting any credit.

The only thing they get is an email a couple days after Christmas where we try to elaborate on each delivery. On each Santa is asked the write a paragraph or two about the delivery itself. So they can see what the reaction was on the other end. Mm-hmm. But we don't do video, we don't do pictures. We, we just, we do that very, um, very purposefully because we don't, there's no dignity loss.

There's 

Jeff Holden: nobody to think exactly the word I was gonna use. [00:28:00] Yeah. It maintains the dignity of the family who is in need. And most people have that sense of pride. They don't want people to know that they need help. And it's one of the hardest things for any of us to do is to ask for help. 

Paul Somerhausen: We, we take that out of the equation and we don't give 'em a choice.

We, we've essentially kind of force it on them and then we disappear in the same way we showed up and they're just confused as heck and they don't know what just happened. And that's exactly the point. And hopefully we leave a lot of volunteers and a lot of donors will tell us that they were recipients of a program like this in the past and that's why they're participating.

'cause they know what it's like to be on the receiving end. And so that's the part where it gets difficult because we can't put ads on the radio or social media. We don't. We don't have any social media channels because we don't want to have direct exposure to the public so that we didn't get inundated with requests.

So it, it is really a, just truly a organic and its fullest form program where we just rely on people that hopefully if you are someone that was raised like me and with, with humble origins and you got lucky in life and, and found comfort [00:29:00] and home and food security. Then you relate to this and you're like, I, I'd like to help with that.

That that's something that really resonates. I remember what it was like to be poor during the holidays, and, and that's, those are, I have two Santas that are, come from that background, and they will help every single year because they, they remember what it was like and that they, they know how important it's to, to keep this going.

Jeff Holden: Well, to have that hope. It's not all lost 'cause you didn't get anything on Christmas. Something actually showed up. And as a, as a child and many families of faith, maybe you're just praying, I get a new pair of shoes or a pair of pants, not a bag of things that overwhelms you even, I'm sure because it's a little bit of everything in terms of that funding it, it really is coming Then from individual donors, maybe you have a few businesses that will, will contribute.

How do they get to you? To make their contributions. How do they know? 

Paul Somerhausen: Usually a friend will introduce them to the program and they'll relate them to the website. And once they're on the website, there's multiple [00:30:00] ways they can buy off of a, we have an Amazon wishlist where they can buy individual gifts if they don't want to like adopt a whole family, but they don't want to just give cash 'cause some folks wanna be more, make it more personal.

A lot of folks will donate cash directly 'cause they don't wanna, we have a couple families that have been supporting this for quite some time that will give enough money to adopt a whole family. We just do the shopping for them. They just didn't wanna deal with all the logistics, but they want to be able to support Sure.

A family without having to do the shopping. So we're pretty creative in terms of adjusting to what the donor wants. We have, uh, finally picking up a few corporate sponsors that are comfortable doing the, the anonymous route. So that's been an encouraging and. Literally just yesterday was talking to someone that works at, at one of the biggest companies in the world that is also gonna get us in their system.

And so the, those are, those are big ones because that one big corporate company this year, every raised $6,000 and that's seven families basically. I was gonna ask, what is the average It's about, depending on the person, but [00:31:00] it's about $250 per person that would Per family. Okay. Depending, give or take. If it's a family of 12, then it would get a little more efficient, but.

Uh, we, we try to make sure that they get the clothes, they need a good amount of food that we usually give them a gift card to a supermarket to target because there's things that we, the child that wrote the letter is gonna include a few things that they think that mom and sister needs, but they don't really know.

So we try not to guess wrong. And so we try to give the parents the discretion to get what they 

Jeff Holden: need. Sure. So they get the gift card makes it a lot easier Yeah. Than go in and find it. On their own. And to be clear, you are a 5 0 1 C3 in case anybody's thinking, well, wait a minute, what about my, how do I know where my gift goes?

Correct. Yeah. So it it, this, this, we're not talking about somebody who's just taking a contribution. This is a bonafide organization and it has been in existence and you've been doing now Christmas Hope for what, six years? Yep. Which gives you that, that credibility and those repeat donors [00:32:00] who have.

Benefited from that experience and, and comprehension. If money wasn't an object and you look at the organization as it's been. Somebody says, here's a blank check. Do what you need to do this Christmas. What would it look like? 

Paul Somerhausen: I think the first part would be automating a lot of the process because it is really labor intensive doing the inventory process.

I've thought about reaching out to some of the big tech companies in town and to see if they would contribute some type of a QR code type system, but I haven't had to bandwidth for that just yet. And then hopefully one of them is listening. Yes. And then the second part, I would probably set up some type of a account that that would be self-funded.

And so that just the, the interest of it, you know, and the, what, what do you call those? Uh, like an endowment of source endowment. I would set up an endowment to, to where it would be self-funded from moving forward. 'cause then, then the, the, the key is just getting the proper amount of families adopted and, and then we have a pretty good network now of donors of.

Of, of, um, [00:33:00] shoppers and wrappers we're, we're still at about 70% of capacity. We can definitely use more growth to, to make sure that every year we can meet our goal of 50 families. And obviously if once we hit that goal of 50 and then assuming this check was real, then I would look to get it much bigger and start hiring full-time staff.

And because it is a full-time operation, if, if we had that bandwidth, we would have somebody working at least six months of the year. Maybe somebody that's retired and wants to reengage that, that can look at the sales when there's, usually after the holidays there's some really good sales on wrapping paper and toys and gifts that we can then pick up and use for, for the next store for later 

Jeff Holden: in the year.

Sure. Yeah. The infrastructure, I think is a really neat idea because you could build the infrastructure so that it doesn't require the time as much time, and then it just repeats itself, you know, over and over and over again. So it scales. Exactly. And then. I take it back now to pre-Christmas, there is a budget and you have to [00:34:00] live within it to some degree.

What's the greatest need? Generally 

Paul Somerhausen: folks to adopt families, that the more we have of that, the easier it is for all of us. Because once somebody adopts a family, then we have to wait for them to do the shopping, which depends. Some people are super efficient, but on average it takes 10 days to 15 days for people to shop 'cause they have to go to multiple stores.

And they're doing this as a, as a. Side project, it's not their primary function. So sometimes the elfs have to nag quite a bit to get the families to come, bring in the gifts because they don't understand how much more work is left after they've, it's not just like they drop off the gifts and now it's ready.

Now we have to inventory it, supplement it. If they forgot, if like the little girl really, really wanted a Barbie and it wasn't purchased, and we'll go get that Barbie. We wanna make sure that their mission is accomplished and then it needs to get wrapped and then it, and then obviously delivered. So. The, the more folks interested in either supporting it financially so we can find shoppers or people that are willing to, to adopt families.

And particularly, [00:35:00] uh, Christmas Promise had a lot of corporate clients that would adopt 10 at a time or 15 at a time and they would just post them up and, and different people, employees would, would do different parts of it. And that if we could find one or two of those, I would go a long way because if we have a few churches that adopt a couple of two or three families at a time.

And that helps. 'cause you know, obviously our goal is to get everybody adopted every season. And that way we, we, we bring as much joy as we can within the, the logistical limitations we have. 

Jeff Holden: So today, let's say because of the way that you're set up, it's roughly 50 families that you can, you can get to, and that's using your staff in November, December, maybe a little bit of January for cleanup.

If it were a hundred families, you would need everything to double as well. Every part of the backend. You need more wrappers, you'd need more Santas, everything. So it just compounds this. This is a literal, you know, one-to-one. Growth. Correct. The good news is, Hey Paul, we got you some, [00:36:00] some more families.

And it's like, no, no, that's not necessarily all that good because we have to service 'em. Oh, here's the good news, Paul. We got you the money for the families. That's better. But now we have to find the people to help us to do it for 

Paul Somerhausen: the 

Jeff Holden: families. 

Paul Somerhausen: The financial logistics are there. We can, amazing part about this that, that gave me my faith back in Christmas is that Christmas miracles do happen.

Like half the time. You're a day or two before Christmas Eve and you're like, how is this gonna get resolved? In some some ways, somebody always steps up, so I'm not worried about finding a goodwill in the community because if we send out a distress call, like we need two more Santas. Not this Christmas, but the one before three Santas called in sick like days before.

I think a couple had COVID and then, and it, it was unavoidable. And so suddenly we are down three Santas and out of nowhere, four showed up. I don't know how it happens, but it always does. So the, the goodwill is there and that, that just really gives me faith in humanity in that sense. 'cause every time we've asked for help from the community, it always appears in what we [00:37:00] need.

The challenge isn't so much in finding the human help, it's the, the, the capacity of processing capacity. It's just, it's, it's a, it's a really complex operation. It doesn't, may not seem like it from the outside, but when you, when you think that, you know, each person is receiving about $200 plus in gifts, that's a lot of gifts that have to be inventoried and wrapped and, and keeping track of everybody, making sure everybody's, it's, it's fair.

And then also, um, getting the stories that we get from the social workers aren't always. You know, Jeff is having a tough year. Well, that doesn't help us. We need the details. So just everybody's having a tough year. We need, we need to know more and we need meat on that bone so that people get compelled by that story and they feel, you know, they wanna adopt him.

So then poor social workers are already overworked. They, they're doing this as a favor to us, essentially. And so then they have to come up with more substance on it. So there, there is just a lot of stuff that happens behind the scenes that is not necessarily obvious, that is pretty labor intensive and it has to be accurate.

We can't, you know, we can't make up people in a family and we, we have to correspond to the [00:38:00] actual need that would defeat the purpose of this program. So we really try to make sure that we we're getting the right amount of people in the house. We would feel really bad if Santa shows up at a house and a 6-year-old sister wasn't included on the list.

So, oh boy. We verify that. We always verify all the addresses. Either we'll drive to the addresses to make sure that they match or with, you know, Google, uh, street, we'll, we'll look at 'em to make sure that it's not a seven 11, that it's actually somebody's house. So there's, there's a lot of verification that happens up front because of the nature of our clients.

They move a lot. Some of 'em live in motels, some of 'em live some, we had two homeless families this year. Altogether. We had a family living in a domestic violence shelter. Then there's logistics around that because those are secret. And so we mm-hmm. We had to work, we had to work Santa's magic through that and it always works.

It really is remarkable how it always ends up working, but there's corresponding stress with it because you wanna make sure that the family that that got nominated and adopted gets, gets the stuff that they, they were supposed to. Absolutely. 

Jeff Holden: It is a secret [00:39:00] to some degree, but there is a website and is that the best way for people to orient, to learn a little bit more to.

Engage with you to find out how to contribute. Yes. The 

Paul Somerhausen: website is California Christmas hope.org. One word and there is a password and it's hope for all. So it's HOPE, the number four a LL, all lowercase. And then you, you can see the, the full, the full breadth of the program. We have examples of deliveries we have.

We still have the families that were up for adoption from last year up so that people can see the what, what, what we're dealing with. There's donation portals there, and right now obviously we're in the, in the off season, the elves are building all the toys and working on the logistics, but once, once we get closer to November, we could go into full gear again.

And then, then if people are interested, they can sign up to be included in a newsletter and, and, and make sure they get alerted once. Awesome. So you do have 

Jeff Holden: a newsletters? Yeah. Excellent. That's a great way to keep in touch with everybody. Yeah. Through the database. Wonderful. [00:40:00] And we will post in the show notes.

The location, the website, URL, so people know they can, they can get it and access it from hearing this. And I would even imagine some of our other nonprofits will hear and say, boy, we might be able to help in some way, shape, or form. We might be able to help with volunteers. We might be able to help with families if we can coordinate, you know, the appropriate volunteers to support the whole thing.

Because we found that so much of the collaboration that takes place in the community for. The right causes and purpose really get the engagement of everybody. And I, I think what you're doing, Paul, is it's so unique and I know it's not for everybody, and we have other organizations that do a great job of getting gifts to families.

The novelty of this one is, it's just a little bit unique and it's self-serving. It's not siphoning out from other organizations because it is so very, very different. And the anonymous nature of it [00:41:00] is what? Really makes it special that just that surprise. Is amazing, you know, so for your group of volunteers, those people rapping, you know, my nemes is, I just hate that, uh, you know who, who are doing it.

We know that their fingers gotta be getting raw by the end of the, the holiday of getting everything together and, and the bags and all this stuff that they're doing just to get it prepped for Christmas Eve in a time bound situation. It's, it's, it's incredible. You know, thank you for doing what you're doing for those.

Who are in such need. Thank 

Paul Somerhausen: you. What, the gift that comes back is that obviously the doing the deliveries on Christmas Eve is special, but what's so neat is on the nights that there's wrapping and I go and, and give a pitch about the story of, for the folks that are there wrapping, I. When you realize in a world that we live in now where it seems to be so much more division and there seems to be a lot of despair for a lot of people to see that when, when you really need folks to step up to help, [00:42:00] not only do they show up, but you see people just really putting a lot of focused effort into it.

They just really want this to look nice. They're, they're, they're, they're voting three hours of a holiday evening when they're probably could, could have been shopping or doing other things. They're coming and, and devoting time to people they don't know, and then they're, and some of 'em come back night, after night, after night.

And, and it just really gives you a true look at what you, at the end of the day, I really, truly believe humanity is good despite all the stuff that happens in the news. Our neighbors are good people and they're willing to help. It's just, you just have to give them an opportunity. And when the opportunity is there, they step up and they help.

And, and when you see 200 people coming together for a common mission and none of them want any credit for it, that's pretty remarkable. 

Jeff Holden: Very well spoken. Paul Summer Halls and Christmas Hope. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff.

Thank you for listening to the Nonprofit Podcast Network. I hope you enjoyed the episode. [00:43:00] If what you heard moved you, please reach out to that organization and do what you can to help. If you like and appreciate what we're doing to support local nonprofits, please give us a positive review. Subscribe and share.

If you're a nonprofit with an interest in participating in an episode, you can reach me at jeff@hearmeowstudio.com. Once again, we're grateful for the businesses who have made this program possible. CAPTRUST fiduciary advice for endowments and foundations. You can find them in Sacramento, Roseville and Folsom captrust.com.

SUD Shine Awards helping support our nonprofit community with grants for more efficient energy usage, smud.org/shine and Western Health Advantage, a full service healthcare plan for individuals, employer groups, and families western [00:44:00] health.com.