Traci Donnelly: The Mission Behind Santa Delivers All Year Round
For Traci Donnelly, helping others isn't simply a career or a calling. It is a mission shaped by personal experience, faith, family, and a belief that small acts of kindness can create lasting change.
As the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Santa Delivers All Year Round Inc., Donnelly has helped transform what began as a simple effort to bring Christmas joy to one family into a registered nonprofit serving families throughout Northwest Indiana year-round.
Santa Delivers All Year Round, often called Santa Delivers AYR, provides community-driven support to families experiencing temporary crises. That support can mean helping keep the lights and heat on, preventing an eviction, filling an empty pantry, or making sure children have gifts during the holidays.
At the heart of the organization is a simple belief: no family should feel forgotten, invisible, or alone when they are facing a difficult season.
Overview
Meet Traci Donnelly
The Story Behind Santa Delivers All Year Round
From One Family to a Year-Round Nonprofit
Turning Personal Experiences Into Purpose
The Impact of Santa Delivers AYR
The Power of Community Support
What Santa Delivers All Year Round Needs Today
A Vision for the Future
Leading With Compassion and Accountability
Finding Balance While Serving Others
What Traci Donnelly Is Most Proud Of
Advice for Women Finding Their Calling
The Lessons She Hopes to Pass to Her Children
Life Outside of Nonprofit Work
The Power of Everyday Acts of Kindness
Final Thoughts
Meet Traci Donnelly
Traci Donnelly is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Santa Delivers All Year Round Inc., a nonprofit serving families throughout Northwest Indiana.
Originally from Houston, Mississippi, Donnelly now lives in Portage, Indiana, with her husband, two sons, and daughter.
Family is at the center of everything she does.
She describes her home as being filled with love, laughter, adventures, and the unique chaos that comes with raising a family. She and her family are all neurodivergent, an experience that has shaped her perspective and strengthened her appreciation for individuality, empathy, and community.
While Donnelly has not followed a traditional career path, her varied experiences have ultimately led her toward the work she feels called to do.
From Tattoo Artist to Nonprofit Executive Director
Donnelly describes her professional background as less of a traditional career and more of a collection of experiences.
She has always known that she wanted to work with people. She also has a strong creative side and spent years working as a tattoo artist.
As her family moved, however, she never found another studio that felt like the right fit. At the same time, her youngest son began requiring more of her attention at home.
What initially seemed like a limitation created an opportunity.
Being home gave Donnelly the ability to become more involved with Santa Delivers and help shape the organization into something much larger than a seasonal Christmas program.
Her journey demonstrates that a person's calling doesn't always emerge from a carefully designed career plan. Sometimes it develops through the circumstances of life.
The Story Behind Santa Delivers All Year Round
Santa Delivers All Year Round began in 2015 with a simple idea.
Donnelly and her husband wanted to help families experiencing the same kinds of difficult circumstances they had witnessed growing up.
Her husband expressed a desire to give back to others in the way his community had once helped his mother when she was struggling as a single parent.
The question was how.
How could two people without a large budget or extensive network make a difference?
Donnelly's response was simple: people want to help; they just need to know their kindness is reaching real families in need.
They decided to put the idea out into the community and see what happened.
That decision changed everything.
From One Family to a Year-Round Nonprofit
The organization's first effort involved helping one family around the time their youngest son turned one.
That initial act of giving quickly expanded.
By that Christmas, they were helping several families.
What began as a grassroots effort eventually became a registered nonprofit serving families throughout Northwest Indiana throughout the year.
The mission expanded beyond Christmas gifts.
Today, Santa Delivers All Year Round works to provide support to families experiencing temporary crises, whether they need assistance with food, housing stability, utilities, or holiday needs.
The organization's philosophy is straightforward:
No family should feel like there is nowhere else to turn.
Turning Personal Experiences Into Purpose
Donnelly's passion for this work is deeply connected to lived experience.
Both she and her husband have experienced circumstances that helped them understand the importance of community support.
Those experiences shaped her belief that even small acts of kindness can have a profound impact.
Every parent struggling to provide for their children and every person facing an unexpected crisis reinforces her determination to keep going.
For Donnelly, hope is powerful.
Knowing that people care and watching communities come together to support one another fuels her work.
She describes her journey as being guided by God and believes there is no way she could have built the organization entirely on her own.
The Impact of Santa Delivers All Year Round
Since its founding, Santa Delivers AYR has helped hundreds of families across Northwest Indiana.
The organization has provided emergency assistance, Christmas support, and critical resources to families facing difficult circumstances.
That support has included helping families:
Prevent eviction
Keep their electricity and utilities on
Maintain heating and air conditioning
Put food in their pantries
Receive holiday gifts
Navigate temporary financial crises
But Donnelly believes the organization's true impact cannot be measured by numbers alone.
The impact can be seen in families who are able to remain in their homes.
It can be seen in parents who experience relief after believing they had run out of options.
And it can be seen in the renewed hope of people who realize their community has not forgotten them.
The Power of Community Support
One of the most important aspects of Santa Delivers AYR is its community-driven approach.
Neighbors help neighbors.
People who may have never met a family in crisis step forward to offer support.
Strangers become part of a family's temporary support system.
For Donnelly, this is what community should look like.
The organization's work isn't simply about financial assistance. It is about reminding people that they matter.
When someone is struggling to keep a roof over their family's head or put food on the table, knowing that someone cares can be just as meaningful as the practical assistance itself.
What Santa Delivers All Year Round Needs Today
As the nonprofit continues to grow, so do its needs.
One of the organization's greatest challenges is manpower.
Donnelly currently wears many hats and is looking for professional volunteers who can help with areas such as marketing and fundraising.
The organization is also seeking:
Funding
Business sponsors
Community partnerships
Volunteers
Ongoing donors
Santa Delivers AYR has set a goal of raising $100,000 to help expand into an office and increase its ability to provide crisis assistance and holiday support.
The organization's growth depends on the generosity and involvement of people who believe in its mission.
A Vision for the Future
Donnelly's vision extends beyond simply maintaining the nonprofit's current programs.
She hopes Santa Delivers All Year Round can eventually become a year-round last-resort assistance network for families facing temporary crises.
The goal is to create an organization that families can turn to when they have exhausted other options and need a helping hand to get through a difficult period.
Making that vision a reality will require additional volunteers, funding, partnerships, and eventually staff.
For now, Donnelly continues to do what she can with the resources available.
The workload can be overwhelming, but her motivation remains clear.
She believes no family should feel invisible when they are experiencing a crisis.
Leading With Compassion and Accountability
Donnelly hopes the legacy of Santa Delivers All Year Round will extend beyond the individual families it serves.
She wants to demonstrate that nonprofits can be both heart-driven and effective.
Compassion and accountability do not have to exist separately.
In her vision, love becomes even more powerful when it is organized with intention, responsibility, and purpose.
She hopes to inspire a return to a culture where neighbors actively help neighbors.
More importantly, she hopes that approach becomes contagious.
Her ultimate goal is to make community-driven compassion something people see as normal rather than extraordinary.
Finding Balance While Serving Others
Running a nonprofit while raising a family is not easy.
Donnelly openly admits that balance is something she continues to struggle with.
Prayer, reflection, and family help her stay grounded.
She has also learned an important lesson about leadership: rest is part of the work.
For someone deeply invested in helping families, taking time away can create feelings of guilt. When you know there are people struggling with housing, food, or other basic needs, stepping back can feel difficult.
But Donnelly recognizes that she is one person and can only do so much.
If she burns out, she will be unable to continue serving the people who depend on the organization.
Learning to recognize when she needs to scale back is therefore not giving up. It is part of sustaining the mission.
What Traci Donnelly Is Most Proud Of
Personally and professionally, Donnelly is proud of how far Santa Delivers has come despite having limited manpower.
She is proud that a grassroots idea evolved into a registered nonprofit capable of making a measurable difference across Northwest Indiana.
Building something meaningful with limited resources requires persistence, creativity, and a willingness to keep moving forward.
For Donnelly, the organization's growth is proof that ordinary people can create extraordinary impact when they work together.
Advice for Women Finding Their Calling
Donnelly's advice to her younger self and to other women searching for their purpose is simple:
Stop waiting for the perfect moment. Start.
Purpose doesn't always arrive fully formed.
Sometimes it develops through trial and error, unexpected opportunities, failures, and faith.
Waiting for someone else to take the first step can mean that nothing happens.
Donnelly's own story illustrates this perfectly.
She didn't set out to become a nonprofit executive. She stepped into an opportunity to serve her community and allowed the mission to evolve.
Her advice is to take the first step, learn along the way, and understand that falling down doesn't mean the journey is over.
You can get back up stronger than before.
The Lessons She Hopes to Pass to Her Children
As a mother, Donnelly hopes her children learn three fundamental lessons:
Kindness is power.
Faith is strength.
Love can change the world, even when it starts small.
Those principles are reflected in the work she does every day.
Her children have the opportunity to see firsthand that helping others doesn't require extraordinary wealth or influence.
Sometimes it starts with one person deciding to care.
Life Outside of Nonprofit Work
When Donnelly isn't working on Santa Delivers All Year Round, she enjoys spending time with her family and creating memories together.
She loves being outdoors and finding peace in nature.
She also enjoys:
Crafting
Photography
Outdoor adventures
Spending time with family
These activities provide opportunities to recharge and reconnect with the people and experiences that matter most.
The Power of Everyday Acts of Kindness
The philosophy behind Santa Delivers All Year Round can be summed up in one idea:
Every act of giving creates ripples.
A single donation can help a family through a difficult week.
A volunteer can provide hours of support that allow an organization to serve more people.
A business partnership can create opportunities that wouldn't otherwise exist.
A simple gesture of kindness can remind someone who feels forgotten that their community still cares.
Donnelly believes today's acts of compassion also help shape tomorrow's leaders.
By showing children and young people what it means to serve others, communities can create a culture where generosity becomes part of the next generation's identity.
Final Thoughts
Traci Donnelly's journey is a reminder that your calling doesn't always arrive in the form you expect.
Sometimes it emerges from your own experiences.
Sometimes it begins with one conversation.
And sometimes, it starts with simply asking, "Why not?"
Santa Delivers All Year Round began with a desire to help one family. Today, it has grown into a nonprofit serving hundreds of families across Northwest Indiana.
Its mission remains rooted in something simple: making sure families facing temporary crises know they are not alone.
Donnelly's story demonstrates what can happen when compassion is paired with action, faith, persistence, and community.
Her hope is not simply to build a successful nonprofit.
It is to help rebuild a culture of neighbors helping neighbors.
Because sometimes the smallest act of kindness can become the beginning of something much bigger.
And, as the philosophy behind Santa Delivers All Year Round reminds us, love really does deliver.
The original piece is from the Work it Mama section of the November 2025 issue of Mom to Mom Magazine.
