Chester / Central Montco - Consolidation Process

This page is designed to offer information for Drop Sites that

need more detailed information on the Consolidation Process

It is important to understand that this is relevant for the Chester / Central Montgomery PA campaigns  only. Each Toys for Tots campaign is run independently, and have their own processes and procedures. Just like our campaign cannot be expected to offer something another campaign does that we cannot, applicants outside our area should not expect their local campaign to work this way. Your local campaign is solely responsible for the processing of your application and the conditions they choose to set. 

Background

Each Toys for Tots campaign is responsible for determining how to collect the gifts donated by the public. Our campaign does not have enough volunteers to pick up from all our sites, but the large area we are responsible for also makes it unattractive for all our drop sites to bring the gifts to our warehouses

We therefore have a Consolidation process. Rather than one place to bring gifts, we set up a dozen, so it is (hopefully) not too far for someone to drop off their gifts. Our Consolidation partners open their facilities to allow multiple sites to drop off, which can look something like this

Here is how the process works

Consolidation Sites Recruited

We begin recruiting our consolidation sites in mid November, with the goal of having them finalized by the end of the month

Consolidation Sites Published:

Consolidation Site information - location, business hours, etc - will be published to the Drop Sites registered in the appropriate county. This is why it is critical to have Drop Sites registered in our system - without an appropriate contact email address, there is no way to tell people where to drop off their gifts

End of Collections

Wednesday Dec 3, 2025  [Montgomery County] 

Wednesday Dec 10. 2025  [Chester County County] 

We ask our sites to stop collections no later than the day before Consolidation begins. We do not have enough volunteers to handle both Counties at once, so must stagger the collection dates

Drop Site to Consolidation Sites

Thursday Dec 4 / Friday Dec 5  [Montgomery County] 

Thursday Dec 11 / Friday Dec 12  [Chester County County] 

Drop sites are asked to bring their gifts to one of the local consolidation points. 

Consolidation Site Collections

Saturday Dec 6  [Montgomery County] 

Saturday Dec 13  [Chester County County] 

Toys for Tots rolls a truck to the Consolidation Sites and brings everything back to the warehouse. 

Sorting and Packaging

Saturday Dec 6- Friday Dec 12  [Montgomery County] 

Saturday Dec 13 - Friday Dec 19 [Chester County County] 

We then sort everything by age and gender and prepare to package gifts for distribution

How does that look? If we don't have enough space, it looks something like this

Not a lot of room to pack things

This is why Toys for Tots seeks about one square foot per child we serve in warehouse space. That looks more like this, after we've sorted everything

Gifts are packaged both for individual family requests, and for Agencies / Nonprofits

Distribution

rday 

Saturday Dec 13 - Sunday Dec 14  [Montgomery County] 

Saturday Dec 20 - Sunday Dec 21  [Chester County County] 

We bring all our gifts to the warehouse and get them distributed in about a week - so the tens of thousands of gifts you see above are collected, packaged, and distributed in a very narrow window

This is one of the reasons the Consolidation process is critical to our campaign. We don't have the volunteers to retrieve gifts from 400 drop sites, and we *need* those gifts to be available when they are to have any chance to get them ready to help the relevant children for the holidays. 

That is one of the reasons we struggle to support late drop offs - not only are the gifts often too late to be given to a child this Christmas, we need to pay to store them for the next year.