Our Mission

The mission of Santa Claus Inc. is to provides essential goods to children and families facing hardship across the Inland Empire. We source clothing, books, school supplies, and holiday gifts, then get them into the hands of families through our own programs and a network of partner agencies serving San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.

Our Story

In 1952, Mignon Schweitzer led San Bernardino’s Family and Child Division, and she refused to accept that any child in the city should wake up to nothing on Christmas morning.

She rallied her neighbors and raised $100,000 to build a workshop. A thousand children were served that first year. The idea was simple: meet a family with respect, hand them what their children need, ask nothing back.

That idea still runs the place.

Walk into the warehouse on East 6th Street in December and you’ll see parents moving down the aisles, choosing. A coat in the right size. The book a kid has been asking about for months.

A toy picked because it’s exactly right, not because it was the last one in the box. Nothing on the shelves costs them a dollar. The choosing is the dignity, and the dignity is the whole point.

For decades, that work ran on a single season. What changed is the calendar.

Since 2012, the Christmas distribution has kept serving approximately 10,000 children a year. But the work outgrew December. Clothing, books, school supplies, foster care support, all of it now reaches more than 250,000 people across the Inland Empire, year-round.

Different building now. Same idea Mignon started with.

YES! Year round distributions wrap up with Santa’s signature founding program, saving Christmas for thousands of children each year through our Christmas Distributions.

Our Goal

Our goal is simple: reach every child who needs us. For more than seventy years, that has meant getting essential goods, clothing, shoes, books, school supplies, into the hands of Inland Empire families when they need them most. The work has earned the community’s trust. We intend to keep earning it, one child at a time.

Financials

2025 Form 990