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Because I’m the type who can’t unsee things (even if it takes a little while to recollect, when some time has passed), I knew in the back of my mind there was some other reason it jumped out at me walking past The Crayon Initiative donation box at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant in Universal City.
It was more than witnessing the presence of a small, Danville-based nonprofit out of the blue while eating lunch with my brother in Southern California last month — which was a surprise, don’t get me wrong.
“Oh shoot, we never followed up on what happened with their executive director situation last year,” I soon thought to myself.
So I did a little more digging when I got back home and found out there was even more inside that crayon box than I anticipated. Founder Bryan Ware was back at the top of the webpage as the operational leader, and the nonprofit’s second executive director in as many years was gone.
“They chose to leave on their own … It wasn’t a big deal because, frankly, I didn’t really get out of (the day-to-day) with either of them,” Ware told me in an open and honest phone call last week. “The turnover at the top has not been an issue at all.”
With a breath, he lamented, “It’s a tough landscape at the moment … for all of us.”
Nonprofit stability has been on my mind in these post-pandemic years, and especially with some of the news stories I’ve taken on in recent weeks about executive director turnover (some glaringly unpublicized).
That red flag trend is perhaps a better topic for another day’s writing because the story of The Crayon Initiative right now is much more than just that – as the group is on the cusp of achieving its one-millionth crayon packet donation milestone.
“From a mission perspective, we are growing,” Ware said of his nonprofit, which is again now 100% volunteer-operated. “We’re way beyond what we did last year, which is better than we did the year before … We’re almost back to those levels (from 2019).”
The grassroots nonprofit that celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2023 is very familiar to us. We’ve written a handful of stories about The Crayon Initiative, and our organization honored Ware with our Tri-Valley Hero: Environmental Stewardship award in 2018.
The Crayon Initiative and Ware are also finalists for the Danville Area Chamber of Commerce’s 2024 Non-Profit of the Year and Citizen of the Year awards, respectively, with online voting going on now through Sept. 6.
The singular focus of Ware’s nonprofit is inspiring: Collect little-used crayons to divert them from the traditional waste stream, where they can be toxic, melt like colors down and reform them anew as a fresh pack of crayons for children’s hospitals around the country.
The directness and simplicity of the community-conscious mission worked on me. I can no longer have our family get a kids’ menu at a restaurant, let alone glance at the other tables, without wondering what will happen to those crayons when their often-single use is done with the meal. It’s been seared in my memory from the first time I learned about The Crayon Initiative.
But crafting a message that sticks is just part of the battle for a nonprofit born out of a light-bulb moment. The real hurdle to longevity seems to be logistics.
In Ware’s case, it applies to both ends of the supply chain – though mostly on the latter.
The Crayon Initiative now has thousands of boxes in various locations in the Bay Area, California and U.S.
About 80% of its donated crayons come from schools or activities related to schoolkids like drives by Scout groups, according to Ware. The remaining 20% come from restaurants including the whole Landry’s Dining Brands family (which explains Bubba Gump’s at Universal CityWalk).
The discarded crayons ultimately arrive at the nonprofit’s facility in Danville, where they’re melted down and reborn as packaged in groups of eight colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink and brown.
The packets are then shipped to more than 250 children’s hospitals across the nation (free-of-charge for the hospitals and patients) to help bring those crucial moments of joy, distraction and creativity for the kids and their families.
With a steady cache of committed volunteers, the processing side of things is largely buttoned up. Funds for shipping costs is another story in the current economic climate, where financial contributions to charities are down across the board, according to Ware.
That’s probably why you look to bring in an executive director, someone to handle operations so Ware and others on the board can focus on fundraising (or vice versa).
Bernadette Shanahan-Haas was hired in fall 2022 as The Crayon Initiative’s first executive director. She lasted all of three months. As the calendar turned to 2023, Jonathan Ziegler became the executive director … until leaving that October.
Neither turnover was actively publicized; I may be the only journalist to stumble upon it.
“They chose to move on and didn’t feel they could get us to where we wanted to be,” Ware told me, declining to elaborate more on the personnel matters.
According to Ware, the plan is to continue regrouping and refining the vision for the future and then embark on recruitment for a new executive director in mid-2025.
After all, The Crayon Initiative is getting close to a monumental achievement in the coming months.
“My perspective is we can always do better. But when you step back and go, we made a difference in almost one million patients … creative expression for these kids. It is amazing,” Ware said.
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the editorial director for the Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division. His “What a Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
