In Kansas City, Missouri, the owners of e2 Embroidery & Screen Printing have shown up for one of their community members in a big way.  

According to the Kansas City Star, Graham Hoffman, a Kansas City firefighter-paramedic, lost his life in a fatal stabbing while on the job. Dawn and Joe Eddings, e2’s owners, launched a T-shirt fundraiser on April 28 with a design dedicated to Hoffman, thinking it would bring in a few thousand dollars to support the Hoffman family.

The left-chest design on the fundraiser T-shirt. | Credit: e2 Embroidery & Screen Printing

The print shop regularly organizes fundraisers for first responders, with $5,000 to $10,000 being the norm for fundraised dollars, Dawn shares with the Kansas City Star. “When we did this fundraiser for Graham, we just assumed it would be around the same – $5,000 to $10,000 extra to donate to the family. And then all of a sudden, after an hour, it got to $17,000, 24 hours it got to $100,000. It just spun and kept spinning and spinning across the country and across the world.”  

As of Sunday, May 11, when the online fundraiser closed, the shop sold over 36,000 T-shirts and raised $381,500 for Hoffman’s family. Shirts were purchased from people in all 50 states and 14 countries, including U.S. military bases. Orders are going out to over 32,000 addresses.  

The Kansas City Royals MLB team was one of those orders. The team wore the T-shirts before their game on May 5 against the Chicago White Sox.  

Kansas City Royals wearing the fundraiser T-shirts printed by e2 Embroidery & Screen Printing.

Asking how the fundraiser gained so much traction so quickly, a spokesperson from the shop tells Apparelist, “We have a fireman on the department who has a huge following on his KCFD Station 10 page with followers from all over that really just sparked the immediate attraction to the store.” 

Managing Fundraiser Success

With fundraisers this large, shops and buyers must stay vigilant. Scammers take to platforms like Amazon and TikTok when they see fundraisers doing well and create counterfeit listings, taking advantage of unsuspecting supporters who think they’re benefiting a real cause.  

Asking how the business mitigates these issues, the shop says, “The best thing that we can do is just catch and report any that we come across. There is not much more that we can do, but we have luckily had quite a few people reach out to us to confirm that we are a real business just to avoid being scammed. But it is very unfortunate to see that happening.” 

While an order this size isn’t out of the ordinary, they’re trying to get T-shirts out the door in a timely fashion, alongside its regular work that’s still coming in and needs to stay on deadline. Luckily, the shop has volunteers coming in to help its 16 employees with the massive effort of folding and shipping orders to buyers. 

“The fulfillment is the hard part, individually folding and packaging 26,000 individual orders, over 36,000 pieces,” e2 Embroidery & Screen Printing tells Apparelist. “But we have had tons of volunteers, related to the department or just people that heard the story and wanted to help.” 

As of Tuesday, May 27, the shop has 8,900 orders left to fulfill, hoping to wrap up the orders in the next week. It’s operating at its normal 40-hour workweek and splitting time to ensure its regular jobs move through as normal.

“We are splitting our time to make sure we keep on our other customers’ timelines,” the shop spokesperson says. “Because they have their timelines, we can’t have them hold what they need for us. And with us donating all of the proceeds from the order, we still have bills to pay.” 

To cover the costs of T-shirt fundraisers, the shop allocates a set dollar amount from each sale as a donation, while the remaining funds go toward printing and labor expenses.

For Joe Eddings, a retired Kansas City firefighter himself, the cause hits close to home.  

“I think, as a fellow firefighter, there is such a strong connection within the fire family – it’s a brotherhood,” the shop spokesperson says.  “These men grow such a bond with one another they are almost a second family, just because they spend so much together and all risk their lives for one another. I think for any firefighter actively or retired, you always have the fear of what if, or what if that was their guy on their crew, or their child. It definitely hits close to home as a coworker or a parent.”