Garments4Goodness is a non-profit that aims to reduce clothing insecurity, founded by sophomores Aadya Rai, Trishna Erukulla, and Mihika Kedia, according to the Instagram account, garments4goodness. There have been clothing drives in Virginia and multiple across the state of California, with 2,100 total clothing donations, cofounder Trishna Erukulla said.
Garments4Goodness is a fiscally sponsored non-profit, where another organization gives them a 501(c) certification, cofounder Mihika Kedia said.
“They give you nonprofit status if you sign a few forms with them,” Kedia said. “So you don’t have to pay the $500 to become a nonprofit organization, if you just do it through them instead, and they take a portion of your cuts.”
Garments4Goodness chapters were established across the United States primarily through social media, cofounder Aadya Rai said.
“There’s definitely a lot of TikTok involvement,” Rai said. “We started off just by making our Instagram account, website, and advertising on our mains (accounts), but then we realized that TikTok was definitely the way to go. So then we just stuck to that.”
Kedia’s interest in clothing in general came from watching upcycling videos on YouTube, she said.
“Milpitas has a pretty, fairly visible homeless population,. and I always just felt like there should be something that Milpitas students can do to help them,” Kedia said. “So I thought, ‘Maybe I can do something that’s fun,’ and it started with that.”
Garments4Goodness was also partly started out of an interest in social advocacy with her other friends, Erukulla said.
“We (Erukulla and Kedia) also really wanted to do something related to upcycling clothes,” Erukulla said. “And then, eventually, the idea (Garments4Goodness) came to us… We thought, ‘We really want other people to experience the joy through clothes that we experience.’”
The nonprofit’s future goals include going international, collaborating with other nonprofits, and reaching 3,000 donations of clothing, Rai said. However, when they first started the nonprofit, they thought it would be one of those high school nonprofits that start small and die within a month, she added.
“We honestly did not think we would end up getting 20 chapters, or 24,” Rai said. “When we started getting actual chapters and people across the nation, I think that was a really big encouraging factor.”