- Sub for Santa aims to serve a record number of families amid ongoing needs this holiday season.
- Utah Foster Care and Bonrue Bakery are holding a gift card drive to donate to teens in foster care.
- ShelterKids is working with Salt Lake County Youth Services to provide Christmas for youth in need.
Last year, United Way Utah County’s Sub for Santa program set a record for how many families it was able to help.
This year, it wants to set a new record, but there are still hundreds of families in need.
When Utahns step up to help kids and families in need have a brighter Christmas, organizers say, they make an “extraordinary difference” and help “everybody feel important.”
Donating through the Sub for Santa program is just one of many ways Utahns can give back to the community this holiday season. Other organizations looking for support include Utah Foster Care and ShelterKids.
With Christmas just a few weeks away, time is short to help people in the community be able to celebrate the upcoming holiday with cheer. Here are some ways help.
How you can sponsor a family through Sub for Santa
For over 40 years, United Way of Utah County’s Sub for Santa program has worked to help families in need have a Christmas.
Any families in Utah County that find themselves in need can fill out a form to receive gifts through Sub for Santa. When they are accepted into the program, they will be matched with a sponsor who donates items to help the parents celebrate Christmas with their kids.
“Our whole goal is to make people feel seen and heard, not only in good times, but also in times of trouble,” said Julianne Jones, the head of marketing at United Way of Utah County.
She added that 46% of families receiving gifts are first-time users of the program. The program is on track to serve a record amount of families in 2025, but hundreds of families are still in need, so Sub for Santa is continuing to seek donations.
“A simple gift card can make an extraordinary difference. The reaction on a teen’s face when they get to choose something of their own, whether it’s picking out a new hoodie, buying a favorite treat, or joining friends for lunch after school, is pure joy. It gives them a sense of normalcy, independence, and belonging that every young person deserves.”
— Utah Foster Care CEO Nikki MacKay
People can choose to either sponsor a specific family or make a monetary donation that will help fill in the gaps in the program. More information can be found online at the organization’s website.
Jones emphasized that the families give a list of things they need and the things their kids have requested for Christmas.
“We’re pretty prescriptive on really trying to match what the kids want. So if a little girl wants a purple jacket, we’re going to get her purple jacket,” she explained. “If a kid wants a black bike, we’re going to get a black bike, and he wants streamers on the handlebars, we’ll go the extra length to find those exact toys.”
Giving gift cards to teens in need
Utah Foster Care has multiple ways that people can help out this holiday season.
One is a gift card drive in collaboration with Bonrue Bakery.
The bakery will be holding a pop-up on Dec. 20 at the Utah Foster Care Murray office at 5296 Commerce Drive, #400, in Murray from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
There will be a delicious lineup of pastries available for purchase and the public is encouraged to bring a $10 gift card to donate for teens in foster care. Those who bring gift cards will receive a free gift from Bonrue.
Utah Foster Care CEO Nikki MacKay said this pop-up event is a “meaningful way for our community to wrap support around teens impacted by foster care, who are so often overlooked during the holidays.”
“A simple gift card can make an extraordinary difference,” MacKay added. “The reaction on a teen’s face when they get to choose something of their own, whether it’s picking out a new hoodie, buying a favorite treat, or joining friends for lunch after school, is pure joy. It gives them a sense of normalcy, independence and belonging that every young person deserves.”
Another way people can help through Utah Foster Care is Connection Kits.
Oftentimes when children enter a foster home, they can feel out of place and lonely. Connections Kits offer a tangible way to support kids as they create new memories with their foster family to help them feel safe and heal from the trauma they’ve experienced.
Utah Foster Care has created a Amazon Wish List which gives people a list of everything they need to order to assemble a kit.
“Supportive connections empower youth to turn pain into purpose, transforming challenges into opportunities for growth. Connection Kits provide the tools to build that resilience,” said Heidi Naylor, Utah Foster Care director of retention.
ShelterKids is helping kids feel like they matter this Christmas season
ShelterKids is a nonprofit that works with Salt Lake County’s Division of Youth Services to help fill in the gaps. The organization helps kids who are neglected, victims of abuse or in the foster system by providing them with clothes, birthday celebrations or the tools to be more independent.
“We just try to make everybody feel important and that they matter, because they matter,” said Emily Read, the ShelterKids board president.
ShelterKids has its own gifting tree program, which allows people to help give these kids and teenagers a Christmas.
“The youth are our future. They were dealt a hand in life that they didn’t choose,” Read said. “I think as society, our responsibility is to take care of children, period. And I think everybody can get on board and agree with that.”
This year, over 40 businesses have partnered with ShelterKids to put gifting trees in their stores or to do in-house donation drives with their employees.
People can take ornaments off the Christmas trees which list needed items, or can go online to ShelterKids.org to contribute. On the group’s website, people can order off the nonprofit’s Amazon wish list, give a monetary donation or see a list of additional needed items that they can purchase and drop off.
The gifting tree drive goes until Dec. 22, when volunteers will gather all the items donated and distribute them to youth in need.
“It helps not only for the holidays, because we take care of all the kids for the holidays and all the gifts, but then throughout the year as well, because, I mean, the need is constant,” Read said.
Monetary donations and other ways to help out
As Christmas quickly approaches, some organization have reached the deadline for when gifts can be donated for some of their giving programs, but there are still a lot of other ways people can help.
Salt Lake County’s Division of Aging and Adult Services has closed donations for its giving tree program, but people can still give monetary donations to the division. People can also donate to Meals on Wheels or volunteer to help deliver with Meals on Wheels.
“A lot of time, people are trying to do their holiday giving and they want to buy tangible things, but monetary donations often go just as far, if not farther,” said Afton January with the county’s Aging and Adult Services.
People can also reach out to volunteer at or donate to local homeless shelters, and Utah Food Bank takes donations all year round.
Note: This list of organizations accepting donations this holiday season is not all-inclusive and will be updated.
