SleepSafe Celebrates Raising Over $1.1 Million in Funds
If you’ve followed our journey over the past few years, you’ll know that back in 2019, we launched what we called, a “non-profit charity initiative”. An initiative that was put into place after “months of research and planning by a team of passionate Sheridan employees from a cross section of our business.”
SleepSafe, our partnership with charity StreetSmart Australia, was born out of the idea of providing the simple comforts of home to those at risk of, or suffering, homelessness. Which, at any given night, can be 116,000 individuals.
How those comforts were provided? Through sleep kits — a towel and sheet set (flat sheet, fitted sheet and pillowcase). Our generous suppliers subsidised the products, manufacturing sheets and towels using excess fabric.
It was, and continues to be, as straightforward as every $15 raised = a sleep kit being donated.
At launch, funds were raised on an indefinite basis. In our first week, enough funds were raised for 923 sleep kits to be donated — the initial goal for the first year was to provide 25,000 sleep kits. By our second year, we’d tripled our impact — and the goalposts for our third year had to be moved. To a target of 60,000 sleep kits.
And now that we’re in our third year? Well, we’ve been blown away by the results.
What SleepSafe Has Achieved
Since our launch, we’ve eclipsed this initial goal threefold. We’ve raised over $1.1 million in funds.
If we’re being specific, we’ve raised approximately $1,149,443. That’s the equivalent of 76,628 sleep kits. This material aid is distributed to local shelters and refuges across the country — to date, 51,696 sleep kits have reached those who need it.
This remarkable figure is largely in part to customers and employees donating in time and instore. Funds are fed back into projects as close to where they’re raised — Street Smart’s original vision — which enables our stores and our donors to be able to really connect to the initiative at this local level.
How SleepSafe Helps Community Partners
The number of community partners we work with continues to rise and now stands at 491.
SleepSafe also aims to provide these shelters and refuges with much needed financial relief — which we’ve seen. Distributing material aid — something we know is so important — relieves partners of funding and sourcing pressure.
Our initiative has saved frontline homelessness services over $1.01 million — funds that these services would normally have allocated for material aid, that they can now distribute to other essential needs. SleepSafe also saves staff 840 hours each month — time attributed to sourcing this aid.
How SleepSafe Helps During Disasters
Whether COVID-19 or during natural disasters, we’ve had to pivot as required. During the early months of the pandemic in 2020, meals were labelled a priority — so funds were diverted to SmartMeals. Every $10 provided a meal to someone in need, with a total of 3,600 meals provided to vulnerable people.
During the recent devastating floods in Queensland and New South Wales, we diverted funds directly to community partners on the ground — as well as pledging over 640 sleep kits from our Life Changing Sleep campaign.
And we couldn’t have done any of this without you — the person reading this, who has donated to SleepSafe. Through donating in-store and online, your generosity has helped us reach this milestone, and has helped tens of thousands of vulnerable Australians across the country.
With your help, we can reach the next million.