Pillows for Puppies had two missions this year at the San Francisco Valentine’s Day Pillow Fight: Donating pillows to charity and cleaning Justin Herman Plaza to make the pillow fight self-sustaining!

We collected and donated 200 pillows to the Sisters of Mercy, who distributed them to their low-income housing residents today. Thank you for the kind donations, pillow fighters!

We coordinated 30 volunteers, through facebook and on-the-spot requests for help, who stayed until 10:30pm cleaning the plaza. Dozens of participants also filled a bag or two with fluff before heading home, after a kind request from our volunteers. We filled 150 big trash bags with the stuffing from burst pillows and left a very light smattering of feathers, rather than the usual 4-6 inches of fluff, feathers, and empty pillowcases. Next year we’re bringing power washers of our own - that’s all there was left to do!

Our volunteers reduced the event cost for the city from $16,000 in 2010 to $3,500 in 2011, according to numbers provided by Gloria Chan of the DPW [edit - the $35,000 previously cited turned out to be incorrect: it was the 2009+2010 costs combined]. This 78% cost reduction is due to our amazing volunteers and the participation of pillow fighters in cleaning up after themselves when offered trash bags and loving encouragement to pick up.

Here is Justin Herman Plaza mid-fight, ankle-deep in fluff and discarded pillows.  This is the condition it’s been left in previously. (Photo courtesy bapnoyndamix)

This is Justin Herman Plaza after we finished, before the power washing was done by the Parks Department (Following photos courtesy Jennifer Small):

And some of our volunteers in action! (I didn’t take many pictures because I was cleaning, too!)

The Department of Public Works employees, the Parks Department, and the local Police Department were happy to see us collecting donations and cleaning up, and let us borrow brooms and rakes. Thank you for being accomodating, Departments!

The fountain had been drained for regular maintenance and was not clogged this year, which was a major source of damage in previous years. We’ll try to coordinate a draining each year with the DPW.

What a great evening! Thanks for having us San Francisco. We’ll see you again!

Look, we’re in the blogs! Neat!