Founded in 2014, Linens N Love (www.LinensNLove.org) is a student-run nonprofit organization dedicated to collecting and donating to be discarded linens from hotels to local shelters, in the form of student-led deliveries and an educational tour of the receiving organization. To date, Linens N Love has donated over 16,000 linens internationally. Linens N Love is based in California, but we have donated & repurposed linens in other countries such as Mexico.

Our volunteering action is sustainable & environmentally friendly. Unlike typical cash donations solicited by most volunteer organizations, we ask for linen donations from local hotels that were planning to discard the items. We will not run out of donation sources, as there are thousands of hotels and they will continue to discard a sizeable amount of linens due to daily use.

Deliveries provide a valuable experience in which students learn why sympathy is important, and how they have impacted their local community and reduced landfills. When hotels discard their linens due to slight imperfections, it negatively impacts our environment as landfills accumulate concerningly high amounts of waste when they could’ve been put to good use. Linens N Love helps to reduce our landfills as we repurpose these linens and provide warmth to shelters.

While promoting volunteering, our organization seeks to redefine our perceptions of volunteerism by incorporating environmental awareness and social responsibility. Student leaders decided on this issue when visiting an animal shelter in 2014 for a school project and saw that the dogs and cats were shivering through the cold winter weather.

For the past 5 years, students have spread the mission of Linens N Love to more volunteers as we continue to organize deliveries to various shelters, including teenage shelters, women’s shelters, veterans shelters, and animal shelters. Inclusion is important so that volunteers have the opportunity to attend volunteer events.