PPB September 2021

FIVE MINUTES WITH Jeffrey Firestone President And Founder, ChariTEES Distributor’s ‘ChariTEES’ Helps ChangeThe World With Promotional Products For nonprofits to recruit volunteers, receive support from donors, reach the people they are in place to help and share critical information about their mission and work, they need the right marketing plan and the tools to make it happen. Jeffrey Firestone, president of distributor The Firestone Group, Inc., in Boca Raton, Florida, and founder of ChariTEES ® , the company’s philanthropic arm, provides these critical organizations with access to special pricing for custom- printed t-shirts, uniforms and promotional products along with core marketing collateral to promote their messaging during events, such as conferences, golf tournaments, charity walks and runs and fundraisers. ChariTEES, which was founded by Firestone in 1998 and offers name brands such as Nike Champion, Adidas Golf and The North Face, also operates a longtime program that matches apparel overruns and misprints from industry suppliers with charities in need. ChariTEES offers its clients—which include community organizations, service clubs, religious groups, schools and summer camps, and socially-conscious corporations—access to three core programs: ChariTEES ® CROWD, an ecommerce t-shirt fundraising store for nonprofits with no setup or monthly fees, and no campaign time constraints; ChariTEES ® ON CAMPUS, which teaches students about the philanthropy, fundraising and donation process using t-shirts, and includes an ON CAMPUS bookstore program; and ChariTEES ® STAR, which invites high-profile celebrities from the sports, entertainment and music industries to design their own collections of custom- printed t-shirts to raise awareness and donations for a charity of their choice. PPB spoke with Firestone to learn more about ChariTEES and how it can help nonprofit clients to further their messages of hope, and continue to improve the quality of life for those they serve. PPB What inspired you to found ChariTEES, and how has it grown and evolved over the years? Firestone In 1996, my first t-shirt clients were the Boy Scouts of America, the Light The Night walk by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and the American Heart Association’s Heart Walk. With this in mind, I asked myself, “What are we doing, and what do we want to accomplish?” and “How can I help the community with our core business and the profits we make?” It was just so obvious! I was selling custom-printed t-shirts to charities for walks and fundraising events, and I came up with the term “ChariTEES.” I For more than 15 years, ChariTEES has partnered with the American Association of Caregiving Youth, a Boca Raton, Florida, nonprofit that supports children and teens up to age 18 who regularly care for a family or household member due to physical and/or mental illness, weakness due to age, disability, substance abuse or other conditions. To help AACY further its message, ChariTEES has provided t-shirts and funded a scholarship program for high school graduates who have overcome related obstacles and are headed to college. 78 | SEPTEMBER 2021 | THINK