Our Mission

Thousands of people in the Bay Area are not able to obtain the basic necessities of life. The Family Giving Tree was established to help these individuals obtain warm clothing, bedding, and household supplies, as well as important items for children such as baby car seats, clothes, educational supplies and toys.

The goal of The Family Giving Tree is to offer assistance to as many people as possible through the Giving Tree programs, by creating a simple and effective way for anyone to enrich their own life by helping others.

Our History

The Family Giving Tree program began in 1990 as a San Jose State University MBA class project. Jennifer Cullenbine and Todd Yoshida were asked to "create a program that adds value to someone else's life."  They created the Family Giving Tree with the hope of providing Christmas gifts to 300 children in East Palo Alto. Encouraged by the success of the first year, Jennifer decided to continue the program. In the 16th year of the program's existence, the number of gifts donated had swelled to 63,000, making the Family Giving Tree the largest gift donation program in California.

Our Process

The program works by selecting families and homeless people who have registered with the recipient social service agencies . These families are interviewed to ascertain their current needs. Their requests are printed on cards and distributed to host companies throughout the Bay Area and placed on Giving Trees. Many of the hosts place their Giving Trees in break areas or cafeterias so their employees can participate in the program. Other hosts place their Giving Trees in more public locations such as building lobbies where customers, as well as employees, may donate gifts. Employees and/or customers pick one, or more, wish cards from the tree, purchase the gift, then return it, with the wish card attached, to the Giving Tree. Volunteers collect, sort and distribute the gifts to the recipient agencies.

In addition to the Holiday Program, the Family Giving Tree runs a "Back-to-School" program to collect and distribute backpacks filled with school supplies to children in September.