MINNEAPOLIS — His beard's turning gray; his spirit's Santa-like, too. Adrian Wilson is founder of Twin Cities Toy Drive, an initiative known for its decorative donation boxes.
"I made this one," said Wilson, pointing to a cardboard box adorned with streamers that, when moved, reveal a tinselly Santa Claus. "It's still a work in progress but it's going to be something beautiful."
The drive is also known for the fact that all toys dropped into each box will go to BIPOC kids. So far, the toy drive has supported more than 6,000 kids.
"Why not BIPOC kids? The reason why I wanted to do this for the BIPOC kids is because I am a BIPOC person," Wilson said. "Most importantly, I want to show our people in my skin complexion, or whoever the case may be, just to say like we are taking care of our communities. We're taking care of you. You're not forgotten."
"And my son is BIPOC and I just want to show my little boy that, hey look, we can do a lot of cool things for our community. It doesn't have to massive. Even though the toy drive really got big."
Now in its third year, dozens of businesses are committing to host a box on site.
"The first year … I pitched it to like 5 businesses and then that 5 became 15, and then 20, and it was just me and my wife and like 2 other people," Wilson said. "Right now, we are at 38 businesses at the official launch, and I'm pretty sure when it picks up traction we're going to probably bring in another 10 so I'm gearing up for that right now and having some extra boxes."
Those confirmed include big brands like the new Wilson sports gear store at Mall of America.
"I remember as a kid, because my last name is Wilson, I always said like 'That's my company one day,'" Wilson said, "and now to actually work with them?"
Wilson says they'll do a toy drive event together at Wilson December 16. Hotel Emery will host an event in its Grinch's Lair sometime in mid December as well.
Until then, a few professional artists are decorating boxes for the various businesses, but businesses like Bi Worldwide are opting to design their own.
"It made me real emotional," Wilson said. "How happy they were to say like, 'Look what we did, we really dove into this thing.'"
All boxes will be distributed by the end of November, and all locations will be listed online. Then, just before Christmas, partner organizations will distribute the toys.
"We're partnered again with the Sanneh Foundation for the second year," Wilson said. "We're in the talks with Sanneh Foundation just to kind of, how do we wrap this Toy Drive up, right? Should we do like a big shopathon? So we're working on that at the moment."
New this year, Impact100 Twin Cities is also partnering with the Twin Cities Toy Drive.
"Having them [both] apart of it has already catapulted the toy drive for it to be seen at a bigger scale," Wilson said. "Big partner, small ones, it doesn't really matter. It's just like hey we're doing something together and we'd love for you to join regardless of who you are."
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