Emily Douglas is just 28 years old, but she has already given away more than most people can dream about making in a lifetime.
Douglas is the executive director of Grandma’s Gifts, a nonprofit volunteer organization that has distributed more than $12.5 million in goods, services, and opportunities to Appalachia regions in Ohio and six other states. She founded the group in 1993 when she was 11 years old.
“Grandma’s Gifts projects have helped families, school libraries, and food pantries in our area on a year-round basis,” said Julie Payne, a fourth-grade teacher in Ironton, Ohio. “Emily has provided support to help our students go to the Columbus Zoo, visit COSI [the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus], and bring COSI on Wheels to our campus. Her organization has donated science equipment and dental hygiene products to improve the health and well-being of our student body.”
Douglas founded Grandma’s Gifts in honor of her grandmother, Norma Ackison, an Ironton resident who passed away in 1991 at the age of 60 due to breast cancer. Ackison and her husband were known for supporting the community that had helped her family in years past.
“My grandmother believed that sometimes people are put in situations that they can’t help,” Douglas said. “People who have the ability to help should help.”
Grandma’s Gifts started when Douglas contacted family friends and raised enough money to buy Christmas gifts for three needy children. Seventeen years later, she continues to manage the planning, funding, execution, and auditing of projects supported by more than 10,000 donors, including Fortune 500 companies, minority and family-owned businesses, schools, and individuals in all 50 states and more than a dozen countries.
The organization provides items such as books, classroom supplies, eyeglasses, personal hygiene supplies, diapers, toys, clothing, blankets, coats, shoes, and food to the working poor in counties labeled as distressed or at risk by the Appalachian Regional Commission.
Douglas has been honored with more than 35 international, national, and state awards. In 2010, she received the Sienna Medal from Theta Phi Alpha fraternity. The international award is the highest given to a nonmember whose life’s work is a testament to the fraternity’s patroness, St. Catherine of Sienna.
In 1999, Bill Clinton presented her with the President’s Volunteer Service Award, the highest honor given to a U.S. citizen for public service. She received the International Service to Mankind Award from the International Sertoma club in 2003.
Douglas has been profiled in national magazines including People, Family, Parents, Seventeen, National Geographic, and Time and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Hannity’s America.
Amazingly, Douglas operates Grandma’s Gifts in her spare time. She is a project director for Battelle for Kids in Columbus and travels frequently to consult with school districts on strategic compensation, process improvement, and human capital projects. Douglas is writing a book about Grandma’s Gifts and her experiences as a young volunteer.