LOS ANGELES, Jan. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Big Sunday, one of the USA’s foremost organizations connecting people through helping and opportunities to volunteer, now in its 27th year, will host its 14th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Clothing Drive & Community Breakfast on Monday, January 19, 2026, at South Park Elementary School,
8510 Towne Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90003 from 10 AM until 1 PM PT. This popular event is an inspiring big block party that brings together volunteers of all ages, races, religions, backgrounds, beliefs, and ethnicities who have fun working together to collect, sort, assemble and donate thousands of new and gently used clothes of all kinds for people who are struggling. A variety of clothes and footwear will be collected and sorted – for work, school, casual, athletic, formal, costumes, or anything else. Volunteers will sort through mountains of items, including clothing donated from several vendors. This year, Big Sunday is also collecting non-perishable food to help stock the organization’s new, year-round food pantry, opening later this year. The rising cost of groceries and increasing food insecurity in the community prompted the need for this new Big Sunday resource. Big Sunday’s celebration includes a delicious big community breakfast for all participants, who will be entertained throughout the day by the Blue Breeze Band. Big Sunday’s extremely popular—and growing—staff-curated Civil Rights Exhibit will be on view, along with several fun arts and crafts projects for volunteers to create that will benefit several local non-profits. Volunteers will also lend a hand with the Big Sun Day mosaic art project, a year-round art project that is a big hit with the Big Sunday community. The event will incorporate a special school beautification project at South Park Elementary School, including gardening and other tasks. Attendees will be invited to participate in Big Sunday’s memorable “Something in Common” photo project, where one and all are asked to meet someone new, and find something – anything! – that they have in common, and then have their picture taken together. This beloved annual MLK Day Big Sunday project exemplifies a key focus of the organization – uniting people of all ages, backgrounds and beliefs to work together for a common cause. Big Sunday likes to think that “Something in Common” is in the spirit of Dr. King’s ideals, and something that he worked hard to fulfill.
People can participate in several ways: volunteers can collect and pack items in-person at the MLK Day event, and/or via Big Sunday’s clothing and food registry, where people can purchase new underwear and socks along with kid’s pajamas and/or non-perishable pantry items and Big Sunday will shop for you. A Week’s Worth of Undies may be sponsored for $25.00 apiece, which people can choose to sponsor for a period of anywhere from 1 to 500 weeks. People can also help by leading a gently used clothing collection, or by leading a new sock, underwear, or pajama collection in their community, and dropping off donations at the Big Sunday headquarters in Hollywood. People can make Bon Appetit! cards at home for community members receiving food from the new Big Sunday pantry. In addition, fun Big Sunday swag, which supports the organization, is available for purchase. Big Sunday also welcomes event sponsors, which helps keep this program free for everyone. Sponsorships start at $500. The clothing, which helps thousands of underserved and grateful people of all backgrounds, will be provided to more than 60 organizations like schools, domestic violence and runaway youth shelters, non-profits serving the homeless population and low-income communities, veterans facilities, and several other organizations, many of whom will be on-hand at the MLK Day event to collect the donations for their respective constituencies.
David Levinson, Big Sunday’s founder and executive director, said, “I always love our MLK Day event but this year, with so much bad and troubling news coming to us daily, I am especially happy that Big Sunday can bring together so many people – of all ages and backgrounds, from every neighborhood – in the name of kindness, compassion, and community. I like to think that this event reflects what Dr. King and so many others worked so hard for.” Levinson, author of Everyone Helps, Everyone Wins: How Absolutely Anyone Can Pitch In, Help Out, and Give Back to Make the World a Better Place, is an expert in the field of volunteerism who is consulted widely by cities, nonprofits and other volunteer groups.
Big Sunday (www.bigsunday.org) has been connecting people with opportunities to help, volunteer and to do good works together since 1999. Founded in Los Angeles 27 years ago by David Levinson with just 300 volunteers, Big Sunday has touched over 1 million lives, engaging, empowering and uniting people of every imaginable background all over California, from San Diego to San Francisco, and in more than 25 different states as well as Australia, Asia and Europe. Big Sunday has completed in excess of 1.75 million volunteer man-hours and the organization has collected and distributed hundreds of thousands of items of clothing, food, toiletries, school supplies, furniture, appliances and other essentials. The organization functions as an efficient and impactful clearing-house of volunteerism, giving and community engagement. Big Sunday produces, promotes or sponsors over 2,000 unique helping opportunities every year, which engage, empower, and unite people of every age, background and means to work together to support the huge variety of causes that they care about. Big Sunday’s mission is to connect people through helping. Big Sunday builds community driven by the belief that absolutely everyone has some way that they can help someone else. Big Sunday was named by the Points of Light Foundation as one of “10 national nonprofits that are making a tremendous impact on our country’s most critical challenges by mobilizing volunteers…These organizations also demonstrate a collaborative spirit through partnerships with other organizations to help strengthen communities across the nation.”
For more information, or to help in other ways, please visit Big Sunday’s MLK Day event page.
Media RSVP and Talent Inquiries: Rachel Schwartz at PR AdvantEDGE, Inc.
Generous Sponsors of Big Sunday 14th Annual MLK Day Clothing Drive & Community Breakfast:
The Rota Foundation
Second District LA County/Supervisor Holly Mitchell
Disney
Albertsons
Fifth Season
Aliza & Michael Lesser
Woolf Kanter
Kay Gallin
Media Contact:
Rachel Schwartz/PR AdvantEDGE Inc.
310.990.2764
[email protected]
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SOURCE Big Sunday
