New Idea....

So for the last four years, I've put together a clothes/food drive for the homeless during the holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas mainly). Every year it has gotten bigger. The first year was my first Christmas without my family so I thought I'd do something to help other people who might be alone for the holidays as well. I made 30 or 40 bag lunches and washed some of the older clothes I didn't wear anymore and drove to Santa Monica to hand them out to the fairly large homeless population there. I ended up staying there for hours. I would sit down and talk with some of them, some just wanted someone to listen, and I even got two guys playing some really good blues music on an old broken guitar and a badly dinged up harmonica. I went home that day feeling good about what I'd done and knowing that at least a few people were better off that day, even if it was only slightly.
The second year some friends who knew what I did the year before donated some of their clothes and two of them even came with me. The third year it grew again with donations and help. This last Christmas, I received over 1500 articles of clothing, I bought hundreds more, made 200 bag lunches, and had 14 people volunteer their Christmas day to do something good for other people. I had also arranged for us to go to a shelter and hand out somethings after they had their Christmas dinner. That went great. We literally pulled up to applause. I spoke with the director and she told me that she thought what we were doing was great, and if I ever wanted to do this legitimately as an organization, she would write a letter of recommendation to the state board for us. That is the main reason for my post.
After a lot of careful consideration I've decided I'm going to start a non-profit organization. I've done some of the work already and should have things ready to send out for approval in a few weeks. I'm actually VERY excited about this. I have a big group of friends who have all already volunteered their time and services without me ever asking a single one of them. I have friends who are social workers who said they wanted to help with mentally ill patients a few hours a week, a physical therapist, an ER nurse, a dentist, a psychologist, two teachers, a web designer, and many more people who just want to help people and now will have a trusted avenue to do it in.
Like I said, I'm really excited about this. I feel like I have a good group of people around me that will really benefit the organization once everything is up and running. I have two letters of recommendation from the directors at two state sponsored programs, a pre-approval from the chairman of the LA Food Bank to receive food donations as long as I registered as an NPO that could distribute food, and the help of a lot of good friends and good people. Now let's just hope I can get approved.....