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Courtesy Photo: Cleveland Charge
Donté’s Gift Express Team Members honored at Cleveland Charge Event
Written by: Tyisha Blade
A group of East Clevelanders continue to selflessly give back to their community and, this year, they were recognized in a major way. Acknowledging 10 years of ‘unwrapping the joy of family’, Donté’s Gift Express (DGE) was welcomed by the Cleveland Charge for an on-court award acceptance during the February 2023 Black Heritage Month Celebration at Wolstein Center in downtown Cleveland. Donté Gibbs, Dominique Tucker, India Moore-Harper and Seretha Etheridge stood center court accepting an autographed basketball from the Cleveland Charge as friends, family and fans cheered them on.
Gibbs, founder of DGE, says the idea began as a conversation between he and his current barber Marcus Hunter. Gibbs and Hunter discussed celebratory ideas involving Christmas. Gibbs later spoke with his grandmother and members of his team to officially create DGE. The event originated in 2013 at the East Cleveland Neighborhood Center. Currently the team works out of the East Cleveland Salvation Army for gift wrapping and distribution. DGE started with distributing 100 gifts to East Cleveland families. Since then, the community event raised more than $100,000 and delivered gifts to more than 6000 families in and around East Cleveland.
The most recent gift express was so phenomenal that the event lasted over a period of three days. The organization started at the East Cleveland Salvation Army for gift wrapping for day one. The event transitioned to utilizing Tower City Center located in Downtown Cleveland as a venue for day two. Gibbs, is also Vice President of Community Partnership for the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park. In this role, Gibbs says he was able to partner with Bedrock, a “full-service real estate firm specializing in innovative city-building strategies.” Bedrock also owns Tower City Center and partnered with the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP) and the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park to reimagine the indoor space at the center. Through this partnership, Skylight Park was created to highlight natural beauty and greenery inside Tower City Center. Gibbs says Bedrock learned about the gift express and reached out to support the event. Soon, collaboration ideas of hosting the event at Tower City Center began. “I hit up the team: India, Seretha and Dom,” he said. “If Tower City gave us the keys to the building what would we do,” he asked his ambitious team members. “How can we take this historical asset and create new memories for more families throughout Cleveland and East Cleveland?”
The team brainstormed the 10th anniversary event and created a family funday welcoming over 19,000 residents to Tower City Center for DGE 2022. “It was really a magical day for families,” Gibbs recalled. “It was a good day for people to rediscover Tower City and have Donté’s Gift Express be a backdrop for the Christmas memory of 2022. It was quite an achievement.” Gibbs says the team does plan to partner with Tower City Center for future events.
The entrepreneur also says the 10th year anniversary budget was the largest of all previous years combined. Organizers partnered with Leah D. Hudnall, founder of Legacy Perspective, a business that “assists families, community leaders and organizations in building the legacies they desire and deserve.” Hudnall served as project manager aiding to secure sponsors for the event and co-create the family funday. Together they also created sponsorship packages. Initially, Gibbs and his team reached out to Cleveland Cavaliers personnel to involve the basketball organization as sponsors and volunteering for DGE. However, after missing the submission deadline for the Cavaliers Community Foundation grant cycle, Gibbs sought out other ways to involve the NBA company. “We stayed in contact,” Gibbs said. “We definitely wanted to begin to build a relationship. We wanted to continue to let them learn more about us.” Gibbs says he later shared a recap video of DGE 2022 with Cleveland Cavaliers personnel. After sharing the video, he says he got an email welcoming him, his team and close friends and family to the NBA organization’s Black Heritage Month Celebration with the Cleveland Charge, the G League affiliate of the Cleveland Cavaliers. He and his team were ecstatic in accepting the invitation and also thrilled to have their families accompany them. “Gift Express is all about unwrapping the joy of family,” Gibbs said. “When we talk about our own families, we talk about how we are not just dragging them along with us, but how we are honoring them as well. This is just as much theirs as it is ours.”
Gibbs also shared with The East Clevelander Magazine that he was nervous about taking the court and accepting the award at the Black Heritage event. “It was realizing that [DGE] is something bigger than us,” he said. “It’s had an impact throughout our region…and we are able to shine a light on our city that is much needed. We don’t take that for granted.” He says they were also proud to be from East Cleveland and walk out on the court embracing an amazing moment. “As [we heard the announcer] say everything that we’ve done, it was like ‘wow, we actually did that. This is us,’” he added.
For all their work and support, co-organizers of DGE received a $5000 check from Gibbs during day one of DGE 2022. “I know I have all these ideas and the team rocked with me through it all,” Gibbs explained. “They’ve been there for 10 years and we’ve been friends even longer. I really wanted to honor them in a way to show that I truly, truly, truly appreciate them. I wanted to honor them in a way that I knew would change their Christmas.” Day three of DGE 2022 included gift distribution to East Cleveland families.
He thanks The East Cleveland Salvation Army for acting as the DGE’s headquarters. He also shows great appreciation to The East Cleveland Police Department for escorting the team through the city during distribution. “It shows a different side of how we interact with our law enforcement,” he said. He also thanked several other partners and sponsors for helping to see his vision through. Lastly, Gibbs thanks family and community. “The way the community has been able to embrace us has been amazing,” Gibbs said. Organizers of DGE say they continue to build families up because that is what keeps communities together.
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