Core Volunteers: Bill, Paul, Diane, Clarence, and Mari meet the real Santa & Mrs. Claus!

Interested in a year-round volunteer position that impacts the community and spreads joy to children throughout San Antonio, Bexar County, and the surrounding area? We have opportunities open!

Some jobs are less intensive and require sporadic work, while others are more intensive in October, November, and December. Some jobs require year-round work, including website maintenance, office work, and social media.

Although most of the Elf magic occurs in December each year, Core Volunteers work behind the scenes year-round. It takes a lot of dedication and prep work to deliver over 36,000 toys each year! From January to November, Elves are hard at work at the warehouse every Tuesday and Friday. The program begins in January as Elves return to the warehouse, inventory the remaining toys, tape, and wrapping paper, and select and order toys for the coming December!

The Board of Directors and Core Volunteers meet in February to discuss the prior year’s toy distributions and to decide how many families will be helped in the current year. They discuss what went wrong, what went right, and how they can improve the system or make things easier.

With the winds of March, the Elves call over 200 application agencies to update their contact information and determine the application needs for the coming year. This lengthy process takes months to complete and requires a lot of calling and emailing. This takes several dedicated Core Volunteers!

April showers, May flowers, and June heat bring the Elves into the warehouse to await toy deliveries. These are always great months to work at the warehouse. The deliveries have to be inspected and verified against the order invoices. It is tremendous fun to be the first to see the incoming gifts—dolls, stuffed animals, toy cars, and trains. Oh, to be a child on Christmas morning!

In July, August, and September, the elves are finalizing the agency lists and preparing application envelopes for distribution. The agencies will pick up the applications and begin selecting families for the program. The Elves are busy ensuring the behind-the-scenes activities are on time—forklifts ordered, Radiothon dates set, and the website updated.

October, November, and December come rolling around really quickly. The Elves are crazy busy entering application data into the computer, verifying and sorting the addresses, and preparing pallets with supplies for transfer to the workshop. This is crunch time for the Elves to get everything right to ensure every child on the list receives toys for Christmas.