This afternoon John and I went to the United Way warehouse in Provo to meet with Bill Hulterstrom with a few other former United Way board members for a tour of the Sub for Santa program and volunteers. It was really interesting and informative. This Utah Valley United Way does things really well and they have great support. It made me feel proud to live here. We take care of our own.
You can learn more about the program here.
Here is an article published this week about the needs here:
Utah County Sub for Santa program sees record need
Dec 12, 2025, 4:18 PM | Updated: 7:27 pm
Reporter/Anchor, KSL-TV (NBC) Salt Lake City
PROVO – Christmastime is supposed be joyous, but for many families across the state who are struggling to afford the basics, it’s not.
That’s especially evident in Utah County where the Sub for Santa program is seeing record need.
“This year the need is even greater than last year,” said Bill Hulterstrom, president and CEO of United Way of Utah County.
According to Hulterstrom, the Sub for Santa program – which is in its 43rd year – will serve around 2,700 families with more than 7,000 children in 2025. The program will also serve around 500 special needs adults, he said.
We are getting close to Christmas and there are still many families needing help.
A couple of days later, we came back to help. We selected 4 families. First we spent a couple of hours at the warehouse looking for donated gifts that filled these shelves, matching the needs of the children in our families. We were told the budgeted amount for each child is about $175. After finding what we could here, we went shopping for the rest. Delivering these gifts was a sweet experience.
The United Way has a huge data base with every family served from the last 40 years. They are all screened and they fill out a form with information about their kids (gifts only go to the kids). We had names, gender, age, pant, shirt and shoe size, favorite color, type of books they like, and gift ideas. We also had a short “Family Story” helping us know a bit about each family’s situation.
The donated gifts were loosely arranged by type and age.
Volunteers worked to fill a bag for each child with books (at least 3), clothing, a couple of toys and a gift chosen from their suggestions.
The bags for each child were put into these large black bags, usually one for each family.
These bags are now ready for delivery. In this room they are organized by towns in Utah County. Volunteers and families take these bags in a friendly face-to-face delivery at a time arranged with each mother.
As you can see, there is a lot of work to be done here and more volunteers are needed.
After visiting the Sub for Santa workshop, we walked over to the adjoining Food Bank for Utah County. This is where food is donated, organized and distributed to those in need.
I came away inspired and motivated to do more to help more. I think I will focus on buying books for children throughout the year to help stock these shelves and the shelves of the EveryDay Learner program and Welcome Baby recipients. We also visited those offices. There is more here I can do.
