What started out as a Facebook group to meet new friends in Fort Worth morphed into a nonprofit that's providing clothes for people in need.
Haley Ballenger moved to Fort Worth from Houston about 7 years ago. While her husband is from North Texas, she's not from the area and didn't know anyone. At the time, her children were young and getting out to socialize was tough.
She created the Facebook group "Fort Worth Weird Moms Club" to meet new friends. The group now has more than 2,000 members and Ballenger has fostered close friends thanks to it.
“Fort Worth has been our home and it's it's brought us together for a good reason," said Ballenger.
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The mom of two said over the years she and about seven other women would meet up to swap clothes they cleaned out of their closets. Many times, it was to exchange sizes their kids had outgrown. They opened the idea to the Fort Worth Weird Moms Club and started to see more women from the community.
“We were hosting these swaps, either at our house or at R.D. Evans Community Center over on the west side, and after one of them, we're looking around, we're like, man, we have a lot of stuff left and it's still in really good condition," explained Ballenger.
Knowing that they didn't want to throw it away, Ballenger and her friend Kelly Warner looked into the details of how to run a clothing drive.
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"It has from day one just taken off exponentially," said Ballenger. "Just organically snowballed."
They created the Fort Worth Community Collaborative, a nonprofit started in 2022. Since its inception, they've held multiple pop-up clothing drives.
The group of friends including Warner, the president; Mona Ardoin, the vice president of outreach; and Kate Preston, the secretary, have spent the past 18 months cultivating a movement to help other parents in need.
"I’m proud that all of these women who come from so many different backgrounds and so many different hometowns have joined together to fill a need in our community," said Ardoin who lived in Louisiana before North Texas.
"We’re all transplants, most of us joined 'Weird Moms' because we didn’t have friends locally. It was nice to meet a community of women that we can not only rely on, but they’ve become our second family. We’ve been able to help one another, we’ve been able to become a 'framily' as we call it," said Ardoin.
Their recent numbers show that in the last six months, they've served more than 600 people with about 3,000 tons of clothes. Items that can't be used, they sew into shopping bags to avoid sending clothes to landfills.
"I don't have the words for it. I mean, it's truly incredible," said Ballenger about the impact they've seen in the last 18 months.
The clothing drives are open to everyone and anyone, no questions asked.
At one point, Ballenger was a single mother, and she remembers some of the struggles and challenges she experienced. She said finding help was also tough.
“I made too much money to qualify for benefits but not enough money to be able to survive. Luckily now I've remarried I have a dual-income household, my kids are older, they're more self-sufficient, but I remember what that felt like. Kelly, Mona, and Kate, you know, we've all had struggles where we're like, 'it really sucks and I just need some help. I need someone to give me a hand so that I can make it through this week so that I can make it through this month' and we're just honored to be able to provide that to other people in the community," expressed Ballenger.
They collect clothes from the community. They currently have two full-time storage units but need more. For now, her garage serves as a place to hold items until their next pop-up event.
Benbrook Library also has a donation station for people to drop off unwanted clothes.
"It's not a traditional library service, but this is something where the library can step in and be helpful towards the community," said Erica Richardson, the director of the library.
"It's a lot easier for moms and dads to come and drop off their kids' clothing that they've outgrown when they've gone through their kids' closets. To go somewhere that it's accessible, and that's something we can offer as a library," said Richardson.
Fort Worth Community Collaborative continues to grow, and Ballenger said their need for volunteers is increasing.
"We're booking pop-ups left and right. We welcome anybody to come to our events come see us in action. If you want to volunteer if you want to host a closet, if you want to be a donation station, we would love to work with you," said Ballenger.
The nonprofit's goal for 2023 is to visit all four quadrants of the city, North, South, East, and West, and they believe they'll complete that by next month.
They're now keeping an eye on North Texas Giving Day. They're participating for the first time and want to raise enough funds to have a bus they can turn into a mobile boutique.
"My hope is that not only do we have a mobile shopping experience for all of our customers, but that we are able to meet them in every quadrant of the city, that’s a huge deal for us," said Ardoin. "So many of our shoppers don’t have transportation, and to be able to meet them in their communities is a huge goal that I hope we can accomplish."
