Nonprofits provide cheer to their neighbors in need—and East Tennessee steps up to help
By Susan Alexander
Appeared in Cityview Magazine, Vol. 41, Issue 6 (Nov/Dec 2025)
Santa needs a lot of help to get the big Christmas job done. He needs reindeer to fly and elves to build toys. Mrs. Claus to keep his energy up with lots of cookies. Sleigh maintenance guys. Red suit manufacturers.
Even south of his headquarters, Santa relies on community partners to ensure the spirit of Christmas giving is shared far and wide. Here are five such partners in the Knoxville region who make wishes come true.
Fantasy of Trees
Pumpkin spices arrive these days in July and Christmas decorations before Halloween, but in the world of Christmas-centric nonprofit efforts, Christmas launches at Thanksgiving in East Tennessee. For more than 40 years, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital has raised money through the help of thousands of volunteers, sponsors, designers, school kids, and more at Fantasy of Trees, which turns the Knoxville Convention Center into a confection of fairy lights and festive activities the week of Thanksgiving.
Natalia Havasy, the hospital’s director of marketing, started volunteering at Fantasy when she was 10, she says. Now she oversees the whole shebang. She recruits designers and others to decorate trees and wreaths and gingerbread houses in March, and in September she asks for volunteers to set up and man the show. About 60,000 people will admire the decorations, complete the holiday-related crafts, shop the vendor booths, sip hot chocolate, enjoy the performances of various arts groups, and visit Santa between Nov. 26 and 30. A pre-Fantasy gala launches the celebration on Nov. 25.
The event has raised millions of dollars for ETCH, and this year’s profits will go to reimagining the hospital’s hematology/oncology center. The hospital received
a $1 million donation toward the project from a Louisiana-based initiative that raises money through barbecue competitions, and the Fantasy money will round out what they need to complete the center. Havasy expects that amount to be upwards of $1 million.
“The new center will provide more privacy for chemo treatments and allow more children at a time to receive infusions since there won’t be the worry about exposure,” she says.
How can you help? Attend! Volunteer slots are full for this year’s Fantasy, but watch the website next year if you want to get involved. Head to etch.com/ways-to-give/events/fantasy-of-trees for more info.
Toys for Tots
For Marine Staff Sergeant Matthew Martinez, who is coordinating the Toys for Tots distribution this year, the project strikes a personal chord.
“I had four siblings and a single mother growing up, and she relied on programs like these some years,” he says. “This is a very big deal for me.”
It’s a big deal for the whole community, in fact. Last year, Toys for Tots collected and distributed more than 23,000 new toys to nearly 8,000 kids from 0 to age 17.
Martinez is an active duty member of the Delta Company Fourth Combat Engineer Battalion in Knoxville. The Marines have sponsored Toys for Tots around the U.S. since 1947.
Families in the area needing help this holiday season can apply at the website of the local campaign, knoxville-tn.toysfortots.org. Martinez receives those applications and reviews them, then responds to the families or nonprofits who submitted them. People who want to help with the effort go to the same website.
And there are lots of ways to help. Donating a new toy or two at one of the collection points around the area is one. Local businesses can also request to be one of those collection points. Some organizations host an event to which all attendees bring a toy; a local Marine will be on hand to say thanks. Yet another way is to help sort toys by age and gender or help with distribution Dec. 16-18 at Callahan Road Baptist Church, where Toys for Tots warehouses their inventory.
“This is an amazing program,” Martinez says. “I’m looking forward to seeing happy faces in December.”
Dear Santa
The Helen Ross McNabb Center provides mental health care, substance use, social and victim services throughout East Tennessee. Amy Fellhoelter, community relations coordinator, say nearly half of its 51,000 clients are children. The center’s Dear Santa program relies on its caseworkers to identify families with the most need and the fewest resources to receive toys for Christmas.
Once those families have been chosen, kids or their parents submit their wish lists to Santa; they usually include necessities like clothing or shoes as well as special gifts. Once they’re on paper, those lists go to Fellhoelter, who matches them with area elves to fulfill them. Some of those elves are individuals and families; others are churches or organizations who choose to help dozens of kids have a great Christmas.
“The stories I receive back from caseworkers make you melt,” Fellhoelter says. “One year a kid asked for a chicken coop so his family could have eggs. Another wanted a bike; he lived in an area where he could get a job, but had no transportation. A mother of six had to choose between rent and utilities or gifts. So the requests go way beyond just wanting toys.”
This year the program will make wishes come true for 1,500 local kids. If Fellhoelter doesn’t find enough people to sponsor all the wish lists, the McNabb Foundation will step in to fund the rest. But even with that, she’ll need help shopping. Volunteers can sign up to shop at the Target store in Turkey Creek and the McNabb Foundation will foot the bill.
Want to help Santa with this important work? Sign up at mcnabbfoundation.org/event/dear-santa. Fellhoelter accepts volunteers through most of November. We guarantee there’ll be no coal in your stocking come Christmas!
Angel Tree/Silver Bells
Be an angel and help supply a happy Christmas to
a child in Knox, Anderson, or Campbell County. Or ring in the holidays with gifts for a Silver Bell.
Angel Tree and Silver Bells are Christmas projects of the Salvation Army under the direction of Major Paula Henderson. The Salvation Army gathers information about families and senior citizens in need in the three counties it serves, then local businesses, churches, families, and other groups step up to sponsor them and help fulfill their holiday wishes.
Tracy Weber, the development and communications
manager for the local Salvation Army, says people applied for assistance in September. Last year, more than 2,000 people were served.
Santa’s helpers aren’t just at the North Pole — they’re right here in East Tennessee, turning wishes into reality one child at a time.
“They can ask for specific things they’d like to have, and that serves as a guide for the people who choose to help. But I can tell you they usually buy way more than what was requested.”
Once people do their shopping and turn in the gifts they’ve selected, Weber says familiar faces gather to organize them and prepare to distribute them. She mentions that a group of employees from the Knoxville Utilities Board has helped with the process since at least the 1990s.
What happens if there aren’t enough shoppers for the Angels that have been chosen? “I can tell you that’s never happened. We work until we find someone to adopt each one. No child on our list will not receive presents.”
Distribution day is a festive affair filled with holiday cheer. “We want it to be a joyful time,” Weber says. “This is such a great program. East Tennessee is so great to support it. It’s so much fun to be involved with it.”
Because Weber has a reliable list of longtime volunteers, she now encourages others to help by getting involved on the shopping side of things and finding an Angel Tree in the community. If you need help finding them, go to southernusa.salvationarmy.org/Knoxville.
Empty Stocking Fund
While gifts are important to share during the holidays, so is a wholesome and festive meal, and that’s what the Empty Stocking Fund provides. The program, sponsored byNews Sentinel Charities, has been around since at least 1910, says Joel Christopher, executive editor of knoxnews.com and president of the News SentinelCharities board.
And while that holiday dinner is top of the list as far as what will be distributed to 3,000 families the week before Christmas, the huge box of groceries each recipient gets also includes enough supplies for a week of nutritious meals for a family of four. Each box contains 40 items, including a five-pound ham, cranberry sauce, and stuffing mix.
Money is collected to fund the program both through stories written for knoxnews.com and through the efforts of community partners. “Alliance Brewing sold a Full Stocking beer to raise money,” Christopher says, “and Scott West donated the proceeds from a Battle of the Bands.” Longtime partners like Food City, Weigels, and the Haslam Family Foundation offer support as well.
Recipients apply for help through the Knox County Community Action Committee, and the week before Christmas hundreds of volunteers converge on the Jacob Building at Chilhowee Park to assemble boxes of food in assembly-line fashion and then distribute them.
“What’s remarkable about the Empty Stocking Fund is how long it’s been around — through two world wars and a pandemic — and it is 100 percent volunteer-run. Every penny goes back into the charity. We’re making sure we’re feeding people and we’re focused on building a solid foundation for the future.”
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