More words of thanks today from WestSide Baby executive director Nancy Woodland, who sends an update including the launch of a new diaper partnership AND a reminder of what WS Baby is looking for as a spotlighted nonprofit on West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day tomorrow:

About one month ago WestSide Baby put out an urgent cry for help securing donations. Thanks to this amazing community, the donations have been flying in and this is fantastic because we are filling an increasing number of orders, with a record week of 450 last week.

In addition to the many gently used things donated (like all that we hope comes from West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day on Saturday), WestSide Baby collects and purchases disposable diapers. About 200,000 will be donated by families this year. We gave out 540,000 last year though and the difference has been made up by our purchases and corporate donation gifts. We are so thrilled to launch a new program, Side by Side Northwest, which is a partnership between WestSide Baby and Eastside Baby Corner (in Issaquah) to receive a gift of 2,000,000 diapers over two years for distribution throughout King County. It is our first partnership of this kind and we are one of only six named Regional Diaper Bank Affiliates established through this gift by the National Diaper Bank Network.

We have learned that we need to ask, just as so many families need to ask for help. You have taught us that you will respond and we so appreciate that. Because of you, we are ready to scale up our impact to do more right here and to start to serve communities of great need such as those in the Central District and Rainier Valley. These diapers are an incredible jump start for the next two years. Believe it or not, we will still need your diaper support and we continue to need your donations of other gently used items such as children’s clothing and equipment like portable cribs, strollers, high chairs and car seats.

For this weekend, we are particularly hoping donors will drop off reusable car seats (those less than six years old) at collection sites during the West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day. We’ll still take them all but we have a two story high mound of car seats for recycling that will be cleared away (shortly) so we’ll be especially thrilled to get those we can use rather than recycle.

WestSide Baby’s special WSCGSD dropoff spots/hours can be found here.