The Eisenbalm Dispatch
One overlooked nonprofit on the front page each week. Funded in full.
Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere
Collect and distribute donated bras of all sizes to homeless women and those relying on low-cost clothing.
Each Thursday we select one small nonprofit most people have not heard of.
We tell its story, start to finish, on this page.
Every lip balm sold that week funds it. The full $21.00. 100% to them.
How it started
Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere began in 2009 with a shelter observation, not a strategic plan. Beverly Williams, volunteering at a Bay Area shelter, watched staff turn away homeless women who asked for bras because the shelter did not carry the right sizes. The need was specific. The supply chain for meeting it did not exist.
Williams brought the problem to two colleagues connected to St. Vincent de Paul's Society in San Jose: Lisa Collins, who would serve as director, and Eileen Hunter, an advocate for women facing homelessness. The three co-founders built the organization around a single, narrow premise — that undergarments are systematically excluded from clothing drives, and that the exclusion has material consequences for women without stable housing.
The group operated as a program of the San Jose Woman's Club rather than as an independent 501(c)(3). That structure kept overhead low and administrative requirements manageable for a volunteer-run effort. It also meant the organization never built the public financial record that a registered nonprofit would carry.
At peak operation, drop-off locations ran across San Jose, Los Altos, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, and San Francisco. Named distribution partners included LifeMoves, Sacred Heart Community Service, Career Closet, Home First Boccardo, and Santa Maria Urban Ministry — organizations with established shelter and reentry programs. The annual OctoBRAfest fundraiser at the San Jose Woman's Club combined collection with community education. A spin-off initiative, Operation Sports Bra, pursued new sports bras for girls and young women in collaboration with Sports Basement and Santa Clara County Supervisors.
The collection figures reported over the organization's life range from 32,000 bras, as cited by the Mercury News in December 2019, to 35,000 on the San Jose Woman's Club website, to 50,000 or more on the organization's own Facebook page at the time of its discontinuation notice. All three figures are organizational self-reports. None carries independent verification.
The need was specific. The supply chain for meeting it did not exist.
As of October 2023, the organization was on sabbatical, according to Green Matters. The Facebook page subsequently announced full discontinuation, with no date attached. The Dispatch located no IRS registration, no audited financials, and no current distribution partner confirming active operations. The address on the Idealist listing — a Mountain View PO box — differs from the San Jose mailing address used elsewhere, and that discrepancy is unresolved.
The gap Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere identified in 2009 remains real. Whether the organization that identified it is still positioned to address it is a different question, and the available record does not answer it. The Dispatch names the organization here because it scored highest among candidates this week. Confidence is low. Human verification — a registration number, a board contact, a single active distribution partner on record — should precede any donation recommendation.
The problem
32,000+ bras collected since 2009, per 2019 Mercury News report
50,000+ bras cited in discontinuation notice — vs. 35,000 on San Jose Woman's Club site; discrepancy unresolved
Drop-off network spanned 7+ Bay Area cities at peak operation
Bras are not collected in clothing drives. They are not stocked in shelter supply rooms. When homeless women ask shelter staff for one — the right size, in usable condition — the answer is almost always no. Beverly Williams encountered that answer firsthand while volunteering at a Bay Area shelter, and in 2009 she and two colleagues from St. Vincent de Paul's Society in San Jose built an organization around the single fact that the answer did not have to be no.
Clothing assistance programs concentrate on outerwear: coats, pants, shoes. Undergarments occupy a different category — intimate, sized, and rarely donated in usable condition. The result is a structural blind spot. A woman leaving a shelter for a job interview may have a blazer and no bra. The blazer came from a drive. The bra did not exist in the inventory.
Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere, known as BAD, addressed that blind spot directly. Founded in 2009 by Lisa Collins, Beverly Williams, and Eileen Hunter, the organization collected lightly used bras across the Bay Area and distributed them through named partners: LifeMoves, Sacred Heart Community Service, Career Closet, Home First Boccardo, and Santa Maria Urban Ministry. At peak operation, drop-off locations spanned San Jose, Palo Alto, Oakland, Mountain View, Los Altos, Morgan Hill, and San Francisco. The organization also ran a spin-off called Operation Sports Bra, collecting new sports bras for girls and young women in collaboration with Sports Basement and Santa Clara County Supervisors.
A woman leaving a shelter for a job interview may have a blazer and no bra. The blazer came from a drive. The bra did not exist in the inventory.
The Mercury News reported in December 2019 that BAD had collected over 32,000 bras since its founding. The San Jose Woman's Club website puts the lifetime total at over 35,000. The organization's own Facebook page, in a discontinuation notice, states 50,000 bras donated since 2009. All three figures are organizational self-reports. None is confirmed by an independent audit, a distribution partner on record, or a local news citation with a verifiable methodology. The discrepancy between 35,000 and 50,000 is unresolved.
BAD operated as a program of the San Jose Woman's Club, not as an independent 501(c)(3). No IRS registration has been located. The organization held an annual fundraiser called OctoBRAfest at the San Jose Woman's Club, combining donations with community education. As of October 2023, Green Matters reported the organization was on sabbatical. The Facebook page subsequently announced full discontinuation, with no date specified.
The Dispatch applies the same standard to a neighborhood nonprofit that it applies to a public company: a registration number, a board, at least one distribution partner willing to confirm the relationship on record. BAD does not currently meet that standard. The gap it identified — undersized, undersupplied, systematically overlooked — is real and documented across shelter intake records and social service reports nationwide. Whether BAD, in its discontinued form, is the organization to close that gap is a different question. The need exists. The verifiable entity, at present, does not.
A Specific Gap, an Uncertain Status
Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere began in 2009 with a shelter observation so plain it barely sounds like a founding insight. Beverly Williams, volunteering at a Bay Area shelter, watched homeless women ask staff for bras. The staff did not have the right sizes. That was the problem. Williams brought it to Lisa Collins and Eileen Hunter, both connected to St. Vincent de Paul's Society in San Jose, and the three built a collection-and-distribution program around it.
Collins took the director role. Williams continued as a volunteer. Hunter worked as an advocate for women facing homelessness. The structure was modest by design: the organization operated as a program of the San Jose Woman's Club rather than as an independent 501(c)(3), which meant no separate IRS registration and no standalone annual report. What it had instead was a network. At peak operation, drop-off locations spanned San Jose, Los Altos, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, and San Francisco.
Named distribution partners included LifeMoves, Sacred Heart Community Service, Career Closet, Home First Boccardo, and Santa Maria Urban Ministry — organizations already embedded in the region's shelter and services infrastructure. The Mercury News reported in December 2019 that the group had collected over 32,000 lightly used brassieres since founding, delivered to nonprofits serving women affected by homelessness, domestic violence, and financial insecurity.
The staff did not have the right sizes. That was the problem.
The 32,000 figure from 2019 does not stay fixed. The San Jose Woman's Club website cites over 35,000 bras collected and distributed in the Bay Area since 2009. The organization's Facebook page, in a discontinuation notice, states 50,000 or more bras donated since 2009. The gap between those two figures — 15,000 bras — is unresolved, and both are organizational self-reports without independent verification. A reader is entitled to know that.
The program also extended into adjacent territory. A spin-off initiative called Operation Sports Bra sought to collect new sports bras specifically for girls and young women, developed in collaboration with Sports Basement and Santa Clara County Supervisors. The annual OctoBRAfest fundraiser, held at the San Jose Woman's Club, combined fundraising with community education about the organization's work.
As of October 2023, Green Matters reported the organization was on sabbatical. The Facebook page later announced full discontinuation, with no date specified. The Idealist listing shows a Mountain View mailing address — PO Box 1015 — while other sources list a San Jose address; that discrepancy is also unresolved. Collins, Williams, and Hunter identified a gap that clothing drives had ignored for decades. The mechanism they built to close it is no longer operating. Whether the gap has since been filled by another organization is not established in available sources.
The case
Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere
The standard the Dispatch applies to any organization is the same: a registration number, a board of record, at least one distribution partner that can be reached by phone. Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere, founded in 2009 by Lisa Collins, Beverly Williams, and Eileen Hunter through their connection to St. Vincent de Paul's Society in San Jose, clears some of that bar and not others. The gap it identified is unambiguous. The organization's current status is not.
Beverly Williams, one of the three co-founders, volunteered at a Bay Area shelter and watched homeless women ask staff for bras that were not in stock and not in the right size. That observation is the founding document. Clothing drives collect coats and jeans. Undergarments — sized, fitted, functional — are systematically absent from donation bins and distribution tables. An organization built around that single omission is, on its face, a reasonable use of organizing energy.
At peak operation, the group's drop-off network spanned San Jose, Los Altos, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, and San Francisco. Named distribution partners included LifeMoves, Sacred Heart Community Service, Career Closet, Home First Boccardo, and Santa Maria Urban Ministry — organizations with addresses, staff, and verifiable histories. The Mercury News reported in December 2019 that the group had collected over 32,000 lightly used brassieres since its founding. The San Jose Woman's Club website later cited 35,000. The organization's own Facebook page, in a discontinuation notice, stated 50,000 or more. All three figures are organizational self-reports. None has been independently confirmed.
The gap it identified is unambiguous. The organization's current status is not.
Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere operated as a program of the San Jose Woman's Club rather than as an independent 501(c)(3). No IRS registration has been located in available sources. That structure is not inherently disqualifying — fiscal sponsorship and program models are legitimate — but it limits what a prospective donor can audit independently. The annual OctoBRAfest fundraiser ran at the San Jose Woman's Club and combined community education with collection drives. A spin-off called Operation Sports Bra sought new sports bras specifically for girls, in collaboration with Sports Basement and Santa Clara County Supervisors. These details suggest an organization with genuine local roots. They do not resolve the verification gap.
As of October 2023, the organization was reported to be on sabbatical. The Facebook page subsequently announced full discontinuation, with no date specified. A woman served through a partner shelter or clothing closet in 2019 received a bra that fit because someone drove it to a drop-off location in Mountain View and someone else sorted it by size and delivered it to LifeMoves. That transaction happened. Whether it is still happening, and through whom, is the question this issue cannot answer.
The Dispatch names Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere here because it is the top-scored candidate this week. It does not name it with confidence. A donor who finds this piece and wants to act should first confirm whether a successor organization has taken up the work, whether any of the named distribution partners now run their own bra collection programs, or whether a regional affiliate continues under a different address. The PO Box listed on Idealist — Mountain View, CA 94042 — differs from the San Jose mailing address used elsewhere. That discrepancy is unresolved. Verification should begin there.
The game
A sorting game enacting the work of Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere. Donated brassieres fall on a conveyor labeled by size (S, M, L, XL). Move the collection bin left and right using arrow keys or touch to catch each item under its matching size label before it reaches the end of the belt. Correct sorting fills the distribution quota; mismatches and misses count against you. The belt speeds up over ninety seconds. Reach the quota of twenty-five correctly sorted donations to complete a distribution round and learn about the charity's work.
The ad we made them
Advertisement (spec)
This advertisement does not ask for your money. It asks for your attention to a problem that clothing drives do not solve and that most donors do not think to name.
Bras are not donated. Not in quantity, not in correct sizes, and not to the women who need them most. Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere was founded in 2009 by three women connected to St. Vincent de Paul's Society in San Jose — Lisa Collins, Beverly Williams, and Eileen Hunter — after Beverly Williams, volunteering at a Bay Area shelter, observed that homeless women frequently requested bras from shelter staff who did not have the correct sizes available. That observation became an organization. At peak operation, drop-off locations spanned San Jose, Los Altos, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, and San Francisco. Named distribution partners included LifeMoves, Sacred Heart Community Service, Career Closet, Home First Boccardo, and Santa Maria Urban Ministry. The Mercury News reported in December 2019 that the group had collected over 32,000 lightly used brassieres since its founding. A later figure of 35,000 appears on the San Jose Woman's Club website; a Facebook discontinuation notice claims 50,000 or more. The discrepancy is unresolved. All figures are organizational self-reports without independent verification.
The discrepancy is unresolved, and all figures are organizational self-reports without independent verification.
The organization operated as a program of the San Jose Woman's Club rather than as an independent 501(c)(3). No independent IRS registration has been located. As of October 2023, the organization was reported on sabbatical. A subsequent Facebook notice announced full discontinuation, with no date specified. The annual OctoBRAfest fundraiser, held at the San Jose Woman's Club, and a spin-off initiative called Operation Sports Bra — focused on new sports bras for girls, in collaboration with Sports Basement and Santa Clara County Supervisors — represent the operational record that exists. It is a real record. It is also incomplete by the standard this publication applies before directing a reader to give.
The gap this organization identified is real. Undergarments are systematically absent from clothing assistance programs, and the specificity of the work — correct sizes, direct shelter delivery, named partners — is precisely what distinguishes a functional program from a stated intention. Whether the organization that identified the gap remains the one positioned to close it is a question this issue cannot answer. Verification of registration, current board, and at least one active distribution partner on record would resolve it. Until that verification exists, this page names Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere because the need it addresses does not wait, and declines to recommend a donation because the reader is entitled to more than a self-report. That is the standard. It applies here as it applies everywhere.
Each week a scout, an advocate and an editor argue over the shortlist. The result is published here.
Picked
United States
THESIS.
The Dispatch podcast
Pipeline deliberation transcript for the issue spotlighting Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere.
Audio coming soon.
How you can help Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere
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